Working with Adolescent Addiction: A substance abuse provider and a parent discuss their experience in an adolescent intensive outpatient program

Adolescent substance abuse is a growing problem in the U.S. associated with risky behaviors and lethal outcomes. Substance abuse is often co-morbid with other psychiatric disorders. Effective evidence-based treatments exist, however many families have little access to them. For those patients who are dually diagnosed, treatments are even less available. Duke University's Center for Adolescent Substance Use Treatment has been treating adolescents and their families with compassionate, evidence-based care for over 25 years. They offer an abstinence-based intensive outpatient program where young people are able to re-establish their life direction without being placed in a hospital or residential treatment program. This requires an extraordinary amount of work by treatment staff and families. In the first video, Gary Sauls, a licensed clinical addiction specialist with the program, talks about his approach to treating adolescents with substance abuse and their families, the levels of care system, the dangers of substance use to normal brain development, and the keys to successful treatment. The second video is of the parent of an adolescent patient talking about what it was like to bring her child to the substance abuse treatment program and how her counselor, Gary Sauls, intervened in a crisis.