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Saturday, October 24, 2009

A Multisite Randomized Effectiveness Trial of Motivational Enhancement Therapy for Spanish-Speaking Substance Users
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Volume 77, Issue 5, October 2009, Pages 993-999

Hispanic individuals are underrepresented in clinical and research populations and are often excluded from clinical trials in the United States. Hence, there are few data on the effectiveness of most empirically validated therapies for Hispanic substance users.

The authors conducted a multisite randomized trial comparing the effectiveness of 3 individual sessions of motivational enhancement therapy with that of 3 individual sessions of counseling as usual on treatment retention and frequency of substance use; all assessment and treatment sessions were conducted in Spanish among 405 individuals seeking treatment for any type of current substance use.

Results suggest that the individual treatments delivered in Spanish were both attractive to and effective with this heterogeneous group of Hispanic adults, but the differential effectiveness of motivational enhancement therapy may be limited to those whose primary substance use problem is alcohol and may be fairly modest in magnitude.


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