General Interest > Feed Your Head
Group Therapy increasing Drug Risk?????/
Troll Control:
Ursus happens to be correct in this case, Danny. Of course, someone who has purported to have completed research that bears certain scientific conlusions should be held to a higher standard than, let's say, a message board poster.
It's called "peer review" and it represents the gold standard in scientific study. Most people familiar with studies and their review and publication process know this. A published, peer reviewed study can be taken seriously. An unpublished, non-peer reviewed study is unpublished and unreviewed for a reason: it's invalid and the author knows this.
Anyone wanting their study taken seriously submits it for peer review and if it passes muster, has it published, usually in a reputable trade journal.
--- Quote ---The arbiter of scientific quality
Developments in science and medicine are frequently the subject of news headlines and public discussion. With increasing amounts of scientific information being put into the public domain, and a growing number of organisations involved in promoting and discussing scientific research, it can be difficult to judge which research claims should be taken seriously.
With so much information it is often difficult to judge which research claims should be taken seriously. Which are ‘scares’? Sometimes scientists are reported as saying conflicting things. How do we know what to believe?
There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public.
More than one million scientific research papers are published in scientific journals worldwide every year. Despite its extensive use and recognition among scientists in assessing the plausibility of research claims, in the rest of society very little is known about the existence of the peer-review process or what it involves.
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I think that last sentence applies to a couple of posters in this thread.
DannyB II:
--- Quote from: "Dysfunction Junction" ---Ursus happens to be correct in this case, Danny. Of course, someone who has purported to have completed research that bears certain scientific conlusions should be held to a higher standard than, let's say, a message board poster.
It's called "peer review" and it represents the gold standard in scientific study. Most people familiar with studies and their review and publication process know this. A published, peer reviewed study can be taken seriously. An unpublished, non-peer reviewed study is unpublished and unreviewed for a reason: it's invalid and the author knows this.
Anyone wanting their study taken seriously submits it for peer review and if it passes muster, has it published, usually in a reputable trade journal.
--- Quote ---The arbiter of scientific quality
Developments in science and medicine are frequently the subject of news headlines and public discussion. With increasing amounts of scientific information being put into the public domain, and a growing number of organisations involved in promoting and discussing scientific research, it can be difficult to judge which research claims should be taken seriously.
With so much information it is often difficult to judge which research claims should be taken seriously. Which are ‘scares’? Sometimes scientists are reported as saying conflicting things. How do we know what to believe?
There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public.
More than one million scientific research papers are published in scientific journals worldwide every year. Despite its extensive use and recognition among scientists in assessing the plausibility of research claims, in the rest of society very little is known about the existence of the peer-review process or what it involves.
--- End quote ---
I think that last sentence applies to a couple of posters in this thread.
--- End quote ---
Thank you DJ,
I really do know a lot of what you just said but you failed to capture my point. I'll try again, none of you are peers, have ever published any articles, hold a Doctorate, ect....so lets get down from our perches and remember who we are. Just because you read someones article including the research does not make you the expert. DJ I have been around enough Professors, Doctors, Professionals in this industry to know that there are not many experts here on fornits, I have a opinion that there are maybe two here, that rise to the level of professionalism.
So lets just quit with all this mumbo jumbo about peers, papers being authenticated checked for accuracy
and substance bull and get down to how all of you twist and manipulate the information you post.
It is a bunch of bullshit that you are trying to pass off as professional.
Lets say someone has read a opinion on a article from Maia S,"Time Magazine" she is not necessarily a expert nor does she have to go through the process you just described above for her article to be published, she is well respected around here. Maia also does not always quote her sources, she is a little loose. I don't see you guys harping on her for published reports from peer reviews. Shit!!!!, you would be told to go suck a egg.
My point is this is not necessarily a professional web site for Scientists, Scholars and Doctors, it is for the average Joe TT person who does not mind reading documented articles but is not pinning his hopes of getting help here depending upon this.
Whooter and yourself have big fat egos (like myself) that need to be fed, so we have to endure post after post of your feeding process.
All I'm saying is remember who we are.
Oh and just so ya know my 14 year old niece knew about the peer review process, it is not that unheard of.
DannyB II:
--- Quote ---http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2003160,00.html
Friday, Jul. 16, 2010
Does Teen Drug Rehab Cure Addiction or Create It?
By Maia Szalavitz
"Matt Thomas" (a pseudonym) had only recently begun experimenting with marijuana when he got caught selling a few joints in the bathroom at his junior high school. It was no big deal, Thomas thought, especially considering that his parents — an investment banker and a homemaker — smoked pot too.
But Thomas' grades had already begun to slip, perhaps because of his increasing alcohol and marijuana use; that, coupled with his drug-dealing offense, was enough for the school to recommend that his parents place him in an inpatient drug-treatment program. Thomas, then 13, was sent to Parkview West, a residential rehab center located a few miles from his suburban Minneapolis home. (See pictures of teens in America.)
But rather than encouraging sobriety, Thomas says, his seven-week stint at Parkview West helped trigger a decades-long descent into severe addiction — from regular marijuana user to daily drinker to cocaine and methamphetamine addict. "It was [in rehab] that they told me that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic," says Thomas. "There was no turning back. The whole event solidified and created this notion in my own mind and in my social status. Who I was, was an alcoholic and drug addict."
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This is disturbing, especially when the child does not even have the extensive drug history.
--- Quote ---In treatment, Thomas met other addicts. He attended daily group therapy with older teens, who regaled him with glamorized war stories about drugs he'd never tried. In rehab, says Thomas, one's first question upon meeting a new person is, "What's your drug of choice?" And that's often followed by, "What's that like?" Thomas recalls hearing a description of an LSD high so seductive that he pledged he would try it if he got the chance. He did, not long after getting out of rehab.
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This is sad.
--- Quote ---Increasingly, substance-abuse experts are finding that teen drug treatment may indeed be doing more harm than good. Many programs throw casual dabblers together with hard-core addicts and foster continuous group interaction. It tends to strengthen dysfunctional behavior by concentrating it, researchers say. "Just putting kids in group therapy actually promotes greater drug use," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
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They at least should separate the extensive from the dabblers in groups that will focus on drug use or better yet have separate treatment centers for this.
--- Quote ---The exposure can be especially dangerous for impressionable youngsters. "I've known kids who have gone into inpatient treatment and met other users. After treatment, they meet up with them and explore new drugs and become more seriously involved in drug use," says Tom Dishion, director of research at the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon, who has documented such peer influence in scientific studies.
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This is true, my story to some extent.
--- Quote ---In academic terms, the problem is known as deviancy training, or the negative impact of friends on teen behavior — what parents would simply call a bad influence. In one 2000 study, in which researchers measured how much time teens spent together and how much they encouraged their peers' misbehavior, Dishion found that social exposure to delinquent peers at age 14 accounted for 53% of adolescents' life problems five years later — including criminal convictions, sexual promiscuity, relationship issues and drug use.
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Ok we have to be careful here on accountability, this is accurate I am not arguing but kids do make bad choices and others don't even the "impressionable ones".
--- Quote ---In another study looking specifically at the impact of group interventions, teenagers who had been identified as being at high risk for drug use and delinquency at ages 11 through 14 were more likely to smoke cigarettes and have disciplinary problems at school three years later if they had been enrolled in a teen focus group about drugs, compared with those who underwent private counseling sessions with their immediate families. "Any condition that promotes kids talking about or endorsing drug use [with one another] would increase the likelihood that the treatment would have a negative effect," says Dishion.
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Could see this, when I was in Daytop I do remember talking about drugs not having much experience but trying to act cool and many older folks just laughing at me.
This would definitely not be happening in our household.
--- Quote ---In addition, researchers find, the harm of many teen drug-treatment programs may come not only from the negative influence of new relationships but also from the degradation of positive bonds with family. In a 2003 paper, Jose Szapocznik, chair of the epidemiology and public-health department at the University of Miami, found that teens who used marijuana but still had healthy relationships with their families saw those relationships deteriorate — and their drug habits increase — when they were assigned to peer-therapy groups. Among these teens, who were in treatment for a minimum of four weeks, 17% reduced their marijuana habit, but 50% ended up smoking more. "In group, the risk of getting worse was much greater than the opportunity for getting better," Szapocznik says, adding that in contrast, 57% of teens who were assigned to family therapy showed a significant decrease in drug use, while 19% used more.
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Ok this is a little sketchy and she doesn't quote the research nor who was doing the research. What was all this based on....a bit of a stretch Maia S.
--- Quote ---Although teens with fewer problems may be adversely affected by their more dysfunctional peers, the reverse can also be true: teens with severe behavioral problems actually improve when placed in groups with better-adjusted youth. The 2004 Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) trial, which included 600 teens, found that over the course of a year, marijuana use dropped 25% in teens in both group therapy and family therapy, no matter how severe their behavioral problems were.
--- End quote ---
Good less folks walking around confused all day.
--- Quote ---CYT's success may be due to the fact that while its participants had varying degrees of behavioral difficulties, they did not differ significantly in terms of substance use — the trial excluded anyone who had used any drug other than marijuana for 13 or more days in the previous three months. That factor alone may account for the across-the-board benefits, but in most teen rehab centers outside of research settings, patients continue to be lumped together with little regard for the severity of their drug problems.
--- End quote ---
This really needs to stop.
--- Quote ---It doesn't help either that the philosophy behind many drug-treatment programs can be easily misinterpreted by teenagers. Most programs in the U.S., including the one Thomas attended, are modeled after the 12-step recovery plan used by Alcoholics Anonymous. The first step encourages participants to accept that they are "powerless" over their addiction and to surrender their will to a higher force. For some people, it inspires mutual support and abstinence, but for others — especially teenagers — it can foster a feeling of defeat. "You get these 12-step teachings telling you that you're doomed, that you have this disease and this is the only way out," Thomas says.
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This is where I have my problem, why is AA being taught in these centers, forced on these kids. The essence of the AA principles are convoluted.
Man, this is just sad.
This is not the 12 steps or AA, it is whatever programs interpretation, which is usually sick.
--- Quote ---Indeed, surrender is not a word that comes easily to teens, and teaching them to believe they are powerless may create a fatalism that leads to relapse, according to Andrew Morral, a senior behavioral scientist at the Rand Corp. In his studies of teens treated at Phoenix House, one of the largest treatment providers in the U.S., he found that participants who subscribed to the tenet of powerlessness were more likely to return to drugs after treatment, compared with teenagers who did not take the message to heart.
--- End quote ---
I agree wholeheartedly, this is not something you just throw around recklessly, especially with impressionable
teens.
--- Quote ---Still, for an estimated 10% of teen drug users whose addictions are severe enough that they already feel helpless to control them, the 12-step method can help. For example, a study published in July in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence found that teens who had severe addictions to alcohol, marijuana, heroin or painkillers and chose voluntarily to attend 12-step meetings once a week for three months had nearly double the number of sober days as those who did not attend. "People who go to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous and stick with it are the most severe cases," says study author John Kelly, associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital – Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine, while people with milder problems typically don't feel they "fit" and quit attending.
--- End quote ---
BIngo, this is what I've been saying all along. Thank You.....Jeesh.
--- Quote ---The problem is that most treatment programs do not give teens a choice about 12-step attendance; it is usually a mandatory part of rehab or is in some cases legally mandated by a court.
--- End quote ---
Bingo again, this is the problem I've been saying also. AA can not be forced at all in any way or it fails miserably.
--- Quote ---Although individual and family therapy have shown more success with teen drug users than group treatment, most programs continue to use problematic approaches. One reason is cost. Group treatment allows a therapist to see many more patients in a day than individual sessions would. "If you can have four groups a day, you're going to do a lot better [financially] than if you have seven or eight individuals," says Szapocznik, noting that if insurers would pay for individualized treatment according to patient instead of by the hour, treatment for single patients or families could be made affordable.
--- End quote ---
always money in the end.
--- Quote ---The 12-step model also remains popular in part because such meetings are free and widely available. What's more, given that about half of addiction counselors are recovering addicts themselves, they tend to stay true to the treatment that worked for them — usually a 12-step program — and are not often well trained in other approaches like family therapy.
--- End quote ---
No kidding, this is another reason AA is misrepresented because you have uneducated folks with years of sobriety thinking they have the "answer" working at treatment centers. They are cheap, the turn over rate is huge.
--- Quote ---Some experts worry that unfavorable treatment strategies may only increase with forthcoming revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of psychiatry. In the current edition of the DSM, substance problems are divided into two diagnoses: "substance dependence," which signifies severe, chronic addiction, and "substance abuse," which applies to the kind of short-term risky behavior that many teens engage in but tend to outgrow.
--- End quote ---
Well this is a bunch of bullshit, are they just lazy or is it they still don't care about the young troubled teen.
--- Quote ---In the proposed fifth edition of the DSM, however, diagnoses will be divided by drug, then by severity, all under the umbrella category of "addiction." That would mean the label of "addict" may be applied equally to a college binge drinker and a long-term heroin addict, which would not only reinforce the negative labeling effect on teens but also encourage mixing patients with varying substance problems in group therapy. "Failing to make the distinction at diagnosis will contribute to failing to make distinction in treatment," says Dr. Allen Frances, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University and chair of the DSM task force that was in charge of the fourth edition.
--- End quote ---
and DJ and Ursus wants us to go a get documented articles from peer reviews boards, here is one for ya. The most esteemed, DSM. What a bunch of quacks, they really care about drug abuse.
--- Quote ---What impact the new diagnostic categories may have remains to be seen. For now, researchers say the evidence shows the most effective teen drug treatment involves non group settings, especially for young people whose drug habits have not evolved to include harder substances. Anders Hoff, 23, says he was able to overcome his alcohol problem through individual therapy and by avoiding groups that required him to bear the label "alcoholic." At 18, Hoff left his home in Minnesota to attend college in Vermont. By the end of his first semester, he had developed a drinking habit so severe that he was frequently falling down drunk and suffering concussions. He had powerful headaches, and his senses of taste and smell were damaged by brain injury, but he didn't stop binge drinking. Panicked three days before the end of the term, he says, "with a knot in my stomach, I called my parents, said I had a problem and told them I had to go home."
He began individual counseling for alcoholism with Bob Muscala, a nurse in private practice in Edina, Minn., who has worked in the addictions field for 40 years. Hoff had two slips during his three years of therapy, but unlike with the standard 12-step program, his stumbles didn't force him to go back to zero and start counting his sober days all over again. "It didn't make me shut down and say, 'I'm done, let's start again with my old behavior,' " says Hoff, who is now back in school. "When I admitted the incidents, no one said, 'Well, you're an addict. You're never going to stop.' "
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This is one of my biggest problems I have with some of the people in AA, is how they stigmatize the person who drinks again. They ask him to walk to the front of the room to pick up a white chip to show surrender. Some folks laugh and snicker, gossip about him ect... it is sad. I do not even like the handing out of the chips period, I really don't think I should be rewarded for doing what I am supposed to be doing for myself and love ones.
Ask any smoker how hard it was to quit and stay quit. There were ciggs smoked before they stayed, quit.
--- Quote ---NIDA is funding collaborations with drug-treatment programs throughout the U.S. that are aimed at bringing both youth and adult treatments in line with practices that are known to work — for teens, that means family therapy, selective groups or individual therapy that prevents prolonged teen interaction in waiting rooms or other common areas. "There has been an incredible acceptance of evidence-based treatment" in programs that have joined NIDA's initiatives, Volkow says; however, many more community-based programs are still using interventions that have not proved to work.
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They need to wake up and see what works.
--- Quote ---Meanwhile, some individual treatment providers, like Muscala, continue to do their part, reducing drug use in the U.S. patient by patient. Matt Thomas, who has been in counseling with Muscala for about a year, just celebrated 10 months of sobriety at age 41.
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One drunk helping another, that is how it works.
Whooter:
We have come a long way on Fornits!
A few years ago we would hear: “We want proof, show us that programs work”. So various posters provided them with first hand accounts of kids who did well and were set back on a healthy path.
Then they said: ”Well, we want to see studies”. So we provided them with studies which showed 60 - 80% of the kids succeed in programs and they said “Ha,Ha they are not accurate!! You call that a study? Ppsssfftt…They are merely internal studies. They could have just made that stuff up!”
Then we provided external studies which showed programs to be 60% - 80% effective and they said: “The studies are no good!! One of the people on the studies use to work in NATSAP!!! There could be a conflict of interest” Ha,Ha “The entire effort is negated.”
So we provided them with Independent studies which show programs to be 80% effective in getting kids placed back on a healthy path with third party oversight to insure there were no conflict of interests. They said: "Well…well…. Ooommm…..we want long term clinical trials!!!... yeah that’s it Clinical Trials which cover 5 years out. We don’t believe your studies we want clinical trials!”
“Oh,Oh wait and we get to pick the journal that it gets published in before we will believe it.”
Lol.
But in all fairness it is good to keep pushing for more and better controlled studies. I think we can all agree that the more studies that are done the better everyone will feel that the information is accurate and feel more confident about sending our kids there.
The push back here, against the study, is just a sense and impending awareness that certain programs are highly effective, there is no getting around this and rejecting the study out of hand is the only way to ignore the facts and still hold onto the belief that all programs hurt people. I think it is fair to say, as someone stated earlier, that Maia S. reports are not scrutinized the same or held to the same standard and there is no intention of accepting any report which shows programs to be effective peer reviewed or not.
...
Troll Control:
"Study" vs "magazine article." Most people understand the difference. Studies are peer-reviewed if they are credible and magazine articles are fact-checked if they are credible.
The last post is a long song and dance that ultimately simply admits that there are no peer-reviewed published studies of the TTI, nor any clinical trials of their methods. Just read between the rhetoric. After forty or more years of operation, you'd think someone would want to answer their critics...but...no.
FWIW, there was no "independent oversight" of the industry whitepaper presented as a "study." There was only third party review of the questionaire questions. These were given to kids still in the program who risked not being allowed to leave if they said they weren't helped or didn't improve. The bias and flawed methodology of the so-called "study" are why it wasn't submitted for peer review as all serious studies are. This is also why no follow-up was done a year out either. With no reason to "fake it" the former attendees wouldn't reliably report what the "researcher" was fishing for. The whole thing is bogus on its face.
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