The impact of youth internalising and externalising symptom severity on the effectiveness of brief personality-targeted interventions for substance misuse: A cluster randomised trial.

tim

Presents a study which aims to examine the moderating effects of preexisting mental health symptoms on the effectiveness of Preventure interventions on alcohol outcomes. These results will inform on the potential applicability of this intervention to clinical child and adolescent populations, as well as with individuals with a dual diagnoses, who are currently under-served by treatment programs. This study examined whether psychiatric symptoms moderated the effect of personality-targeted interventions on adolescent substance use in the Adventure trial. This is the first examination of whether children with preexisting mental health symptoms would benefit equally from this intervention approach. Results indicate that high-risk youth with depression and anxiety symptoms did not respond differently to the intervention with regards to reducing their alcohol consumption or alcohol-related problems. The results suggest that personality targeted interventions should be considered as a potential treatment adjunct in order to improve the provision of mental health services to at-risk youth.