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Adolescent Substance
Abuse Treatment Program Provides Help to Palo Alto Teens
in Need
by Rafy Cahill
Paly Voice
Mary was a girl who used any drugs she could get. Cocaine,
alcohol, marijuana, meth – whatever was available: "I
never said 'No'." At one point, she hated her life,
had a bad attitude, and refused to face her problems.
All of this changed over the course of one year, thanks
to the Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program,
or ASAT, a local program that is a part of Adolescent
Counseling Services.
Now a 17-year-old, Mary, who asked that her last name
not be used, is but one of the many teens that ASAT has
helped over its 15 years of service to the Palo Alto
community.
"I didn't want to be here, but I am so glad I was," Mary
said.
The Palo Alto Unified School District alone referred "from
20 to 25 teens in just the last five months," according
to Brenda Stern, ASAT's program director.
According to its annual report, ASAT has played a role
in improving the lives of 283 clients this year alone
through its professional assessments and intensive treatment.
A state certified outpatient treatment program, ASAT
helps 12- to 18-year-old adolescents who abuse drugs
and/or alcohol.
"We are motivational, supportive, and in no way
punitive," Stern said. "We are here to help."
According to Stern, ASAT uses the Adolescent Community
Reinforcement Approach, which relies heavily upon family
participation.
"It really takes a lot of support to recover, so
if a teen's parents are not even involved, that's really
not the best way to help them," Stern said.
The process begins when a member of the community, usually
a doctor, a psychiatrist, a therapist, a school, or the
teen's parents refers him or her to ASAT.
According to one of ASAT's informational brochures,
the first step in the program is assessment, where treatment
professionals evaluate the level of "use, misuse,
abuse, and dependence of substances, a depression index,
suicidal ideations, self-esteem and other emotional disturbances."
According to the brochure, the assessment is split into
three parts. The first session is with the parents and
the teen, and covers family history and previous medical
conditions, along with other current issues.
The second session is a meeting alone with the adolescent,
and includes drug history information and an assessment
of levels of depression, suicidal ideations, self-esteem,
stress, and other issues of conflict.
In the third and final session, the professionals give
their recommendations based on their assessments from
the previous two meetings to the adolescent and his or
her parents.
According to Stern, the cost of the assessment is $300,
but since ASAT and ACS are contracted with PAUSD, if
the teen is referred by PAUSD, the assessment is free
to the student and his or her family.
After the assessment, ASAT either admits the teen into
its outpatient treatment program, refers him or her to
a residential treatment facility elsewhere, or refers
him or her to counseling either at school or elsewhere.
In ASAT's outpatient treatment program, the teen attends
one individual session per week, one peer group session
per week, one family therapy session per week, and two
12-step meetings (such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics-Anonymous,
etc.) per week. According to Stern, this basic outline
is personalized to each adolescent and revised every
30 days.
The teens also undergo one or two urinalyses per week
to ensure their abstinence from drugs and alcohol.
According to Stern, along with their discussions, the
teens also learn coping strategies, problem solving skills,
time management skills, communication skills, drug and
alcohol education, and learn other skills that their
drug and alcohol abuse may have affected.
The teens are not the only ones who have meetings to
attend. ASAT believes that the family unit plays a very
important role in the teen's recovery, so the teen's
parents attend meetings as well. There are usually one
or more parent group meetings per week, one multi-family
meeting per month (in which the teens are involved as
well), and also the two 12-step meetings.
Stern stresses that ASAT is not judgmental of the people
it treats. "Substance abuse is not about the substance," Stern
said. "What is important are the underlying reasons
for the abuse. The reasons for the teens' abuse are that
they are coping and self-medicating, so the drug they
choose doesn't really matter. We care very deeply about
these teens, and we understand them even when their parents
sometimes don't."
ASAT accepts outpatient clients from anywhere into their
program, although the majority of its teens are from
Palo Alto. Over the course of the treatment program,
which is usually a minimum of 90 days, ASAT seeks to
help and educate its teens, and also rebuild their trust
with their families.
"A lot of the time the problem is a communication
or trust issue," Stern said.
Although ASAT seeks to do good for the teens and the
community, it faces its fair share of problems.
"It amazes me," Stern said, "but the
biggest problem we face here at ASAT is that since treatment
programs sometimes have a social stigma, there are parents
who are in denial of the fact that their teens need help;
they think that they can just get through it on their
own. A person who is constantly under the influence can
get very hopeless, and although people think that it's
about willpower, it's really not."
Despite this and other setbacks, ASAT improves the lives
of hundreds of teens each year through their whole-family
approach to treatment. Mary, who went through ASAT, has
been sober for two years.
"Teenagers need a lot more structure than they
know, and ASAT gave me the structure to move on and move
forward with a healthy lifestyle and good boundaries," Mary
said.
To learn more about ASAT, visit www.acs-teens.org, call
their number at (650) 329-9410, or visit them at
445
Sherman Avenue, Suite J.
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