Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous benefit adolescents who attend

A recent study has examined how helpful Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) may be for adolescents. They found that AA and NA appeared to have long-term benefits for adolescents even if they discontinued attendance after a certain time.

Results will be published in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at OnlineEarly.

The researchers recruited 160 adolescent inpatients (96 males, 64 females), with an average age of 16 years, who were enrolled at two treatment centres in California which focus on abstinence and based on a 12-step model. The study participants length of stay ranged from four to six weeks, after which they were re-assessed on a number of clinical variables at six months, and one, two, four, six, and eight years.

"We found that most of the youth attended at least some AA/NA meetings post-treatment," said Kelly. "Those patients with severe addiction problems and those who believed they could not use alcohol/drugs in moderation attended the most. The NA and AA focus on abstinence/recovery probably resonates better with these more severely dependent individuals who also typically need ongoing support."

Even though many of the youth discontinued AA/NA after time, they nonetheless appeared to benefit from attendance.

"We found that patients who attended more AA and/or NA meetings in the first six months post-treatment had better longer term outcomes, but this early participation effect did not last forever it weakened over time," said Kelly. "The best outcomes achieved into young adulthood were for those patients who continued to go to AA and/or NA. In terms of a real-world recovery metric, we found that for each AA/NA meeting that a youth attended they gained a subsequent two days of abstinence, independent of all other factors that were also associated with a better outcome."

Article published on 06/06/2008