12-step facilitation: New evidence from the National Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network.

12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous have been a mainstay of community-based treatment for substance use problems for over five decades. However, there are substantial gaps in our knowledge about these programs as therapeutic options. These include questions surrounding effectiveness, such as what benefit can be expected from a patient participating in self-help groups, and which patients are most likely to benefit. Further, when 12-step participation is recommended, patients frequently fail to attend or to become meaningfully involved. Thus, clinicians need skills to more effectively motivate patients to attend and to support their attendance as part of a larger treatment plan.

To begin to address these questions, the NIDA-funded National Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network recently completed a randomized, controlled trial of manual-guided 12-Step Facilitation therapy compared to usual treatment in a large sample of patients entering treatment for substance problems at outpatient community-based treatment programs (protocol CTN-0031, “Stimulant Abuser Groups to Engage in 12-Step (STAGE-12)”). This symposium presented a description of the 12-Step Facilitation intervention and outcome data from this clinical trial, as well as discussion of the implications for clinical practice.

Related protocols: CTN-0031