Customer Reviews

Adolescents, Alcohol and Substance Abuse: Reaching Teens through Brief Interventions

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book offers a review of current research on substance use in adolescents and college age students, but I was looking for more practical guidance on doing therapy with kids who use drugs, and this was only covered slightly. I was hoping that this would be the main focus of the book, considering the subtitle "reaching teens through brief interventions". It was kind of a let down.

In difference to the other review I read on this site this book is quite informative. I would be concerned with any text that would attempt to simply spell out how to conduct a broad category of treatments, such as "brief intervention." Instead, this edited book includes work from some of the foremost authorities in the field and even has a few chapters that detail some specific intervention plans that were a burgeoning of therapy modes. Most importantly, the authors dare to present novel yet controversial approaches to framing adolescent substance use and treatment. If "how to" is what you are looking for, you should properly contact the authors of the various chapters as they are mostly associated with training programs and seminars.

This is the best available at this time for working with adolescents who are abusing substances. The only flaw in the text is the chapter on internet treatment. The websites are not always good or appropriate for teens. Otherwise, the text is excellent and with this corrected I would give it 5 stars.