Adolescents who seek substance abuse treatment, as a sizeable proportion of the substance treatment community, fail to reduce their substance use, or resume use following treatment. It is however important to recognize that adolescents present with difficult challenges while entering treatment. As their counterparts, adults enter treatment through highly internalized reasons: child custody, court order, family, "ready to change", while adolescents see treatment as a mandate that is persistent with the adult social network aimed at controlling youth and their decisions. Among programs that have served adolescents treatment outcomes, most studies have not documented the interventions sufficiently to allow program duplication.
             This void leaves programs pointing the finger. Who is to blame for adolescent relapse? Lack of social support, mismatch of treatment modality? Dare we say parenting or economics? Role models and mentors are factors for preventing substance use, is it so for recovery? Do youth continue to use because they haven't experienced "rock bottom" or the trauma of years upon years of living a life of addiction? Whatever the answer this evaluation examines various individual and program factors that may explain or predict treatment process.
             The research and topic derived for this paper was sought out through the UNLV library's Journal search engine. The article was found in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, volume 27, Issue 2, September 2004, pages 123-134. The title of the article is Evaluation of a group-based substance abuse treatment program for adolescents.
             The article looked at adolescent out-patient treatment, marijuana abuse, alcohol abuse, criminal activity and treatment outcomes. With adolescents most in need of treatment more likely to drop out of treatment prematurely the research team looked at two theoretical models of substance abuse treatment and recovery which...