Dual Focus Schema Therapy for Improved Retention in Therapeutic Community Treatment

Therapeutic Community (TC) treatment can be effective psychosocial modality for addiction, but premature dropout remains a major problem. Personality disorders are very common in residential programs, and TCs regard personality disturbance as core to all people with addiction. Severe personality dysfunction is associated with higher dropout rates from TCs, and adding cognitive-behavioral treatments may improve retention and outcome. We hypothesize that severe personality disturbance causes significant problems with an individual?s initial adjustment and effective utilization of TC processes and techniques. We predict that a behavioral therapy that targets personality pathology will result in better early retention and engagement than will a more standard addiction counseling approach. To begin to improve retention, TC research must begin to systematically evaluate the impact of adding interventions targeted at decreasing premature dropouts through controlled clinical trials. We have developed the first empirically tested treatment manual for the full range of personality disorders in substance abusers and propose to conduct a randomized clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of Dual Focus Schema Therapy in comparison to Individual Drug Counseling as 6-month manualized individual behavioral therapy enhancements to the orientation/early treatment process of 100 TC residents. In addition to evaluating retention differences, we will analyze the rate and degree of change for these two conditions monthly and at 6, 12, 18, and 24-month follow-up for psychological indicators related to personality disorder and therapeutic processes related to the TC.