Reducing youth's drug abuse through training social workers for cognitive–behavioral integrated treatment

Chau-kiu Cheung and Steven Sek-yum Ngai

Children and Youth Services Review, 2013, vol. 35, issue 2, 302-311

Abstract: Cognitive–behavioral integrated treatment (CBIT) is an intervention that social workers can learn to treat youth's drug abuse by cognitive restructuring, behavioral modification, and goal setting. A way to enhance the learning is training specifically for CBIT. Evaluation of the effectiveness of such training in raising social workers' CBIT practice and their young service users' illicit-drug-free days is the aim of this experimental study. This study first randomly assigned 14 outreach social workers to receive training for CBIT and 14 outreach social workers not to receive the training. The study also assessed 222 young service users (aged 11–22years) engaged by 28 outreach social workers before the training and 169 of them after the training in a six-month follow-up. Furthermore, the study identified the reduction in the youth's dysfunctional cognition of playfulness as a means to deter the youth's drug abuse, based on personal interviews with outreach social workers and their young service users before the training. Derived from the statistical analysis of assessment data, results principally showed cascading effects from the social worker's reception of the CBIT training to the young service user's reception of CBIT, reduced playfulness, and lengthened drug-free days. A supplementary finding was that the young service user's time in the outreach social work service prolonged drug-free days and reduced playfulness. These results imply that the outreach social work service, CBIT training, and CBIT are useful for treating youth's illicit drug abuse.

Keywords: Outreach social work; Drug abuse; Cognitive–behavioral integrated treatment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740912004094
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:35:y:2013:i:2:p:302-311

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.11.006

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().