Speaker
Description
Background: The selective drug and alcohol prevention program, PreVenture, was recently shown to reduce long-term risk for Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) among youth reporting personality risk factors for substance misuse. This study investigates the intermediate change processes that mediate the five-year SUD outcomes using a mediated moderation analytic approach.
Methods: The CoVenture Trial (NCT01655615) is a cluster randomized trial involving 31 secondary high schools from the greater Montreal area agreeing to conduct annual health behaviour surveys for five years on the entire 7th Grade cohort of assenting students enrolled at the school in 2012 or 2013. Half of all schools were randomly assigned to be trained and assisted in the delivery of the personality-targeted PreVenture® program to all eligible 7th grade participants.
The intervention consisted of a brief (2-session) group cognitive behavioural intervention that is delivered in a personality-matched fashion to youth who report elevated scores on one of four personality traits linked to early onset substance misuse: impulsivity, sensation seeking, anxiety sensitivity, or hopelessness.
Restuls: Mixed effects multi-level Bayesian models were used to estimate the effect of the intervention on the year-by-year change in probability of SUD. To test mediated moderation, we calculated significance of indirect effects using a Monte Carlo method. Mediators evaluated were short-term reductions in personality risk, alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, substance use norms, and mental health symptoms. Long-term protection appeared to be achieved through a combination of small intervention effects on cognitive-behavioural processes, earlier onset substance use, and social norms.
Conclusions: This study reveals how personality-targeted interventions might protect against longer-term development of SUD through short-term changes in cognition and behaviour.
National Clinical Trials Registry: NCT01655615, https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT01655615
| Conflict of interest | no financial conflicts of interest, I co-own the copyright to Preventure manuals. |
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