Treatment staff's continuity of care practices, patients' engagement in continuing care, and abstinence following outpatient substance-use disorder treatment.

Objective: Although speculation suggests that continuity of care predicts abstinence following substance-use disorder (SUD) treatment, models examining staff's continuity of care practices and engagement in continuing care and whether they mediate or moderate the association between patient and treatment factors and abstinence are lacking. In this study, we aimed to model abstinence using combinations of independent pretreatment and treatment factors, discharge continuity of care practices, and posttreatment engagement and to identify mediators or moderators of relationships between these factors and abstinence.

Method: Staff in 18 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient SUD programs used the Addiction Severity Index to assess 429 nonabstinent patients' alcohol and drug problems at treatment entry.

Functioning status of adult children of depressed parents: a 23-year follow-up.

Background: We compared adult offspring of depressed or control parents who were followed for 23 years. Comparisons were on depression symptoms, physical functioning and disability, social functioning, and utilization of help and coping. Also examined was whether the parent's course of depression (stably remitted, partially remitted, non-remitted) was associated with offspring functioning.