Treating Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders: An Overview of Practice Issues and Treatment Outcome

The knowledge base and research gaps of the adolescent drug abuse treatment field are discussed. In addition to summarizing several challenges faced by clinicians treating drug‐abusing adolescents, traditional and emerging treatment strategies are described. The treatment outcome literature is seen as having several weaknesses, including that most studies are limited to descriptive designs. The author suggests that the most important research priority for the field is to address meaningfully the issue of which treatment approaches work best for which types of adolescent drug abusers.