Treatment refusal/attrition among adults randomly assigned to programs at a drug treatment campus: The New Jersey Substance Abuse Treatment Campus, Seacaucus, NJ.

The New Jersey Substance Abuse Treatment Campus was funded to assess the feasibility of establishing a new model for delivering substance abuse treatment services and to serve as a research laboratory for conducting comparative evaluations of those services. The 350-bed campus was designed to improve treatment effectiveness by providing special services needed by underserved populations, and reduce treatment costs by serving large numbers of clients, centralizing services, and sharing facilities. First-time clients who met preliminary eligibility requirements during phone screening were randomly assigned to therapeutic community and chemical dependency programs.

Intermediate care programs to reduce risk and better manage inmates with psychiatric disorders.

Intermediate Care Programs were jointly established by the New York State Office of Mental Health and Department of Correctional Services to reduce risk and better manage inmates with psychiatric disorders. In an earlier study, we collected data from the mental health and corrections records of 209 inmates who were admitted to Intermediate Care Programs. Our analysis of those data showed there were significant reductions in the mean number of serious problem behaviors, correctional restrictions, and mental health crisis services during the six months before and after admission.

Domains of variables for understanding and improving retention in therapeutic communities.

This paper discusses the value of different domains of variables for understanding and improving retention in therapeutic communities for substance users. Retention is important because therapeutic communities have high rates of attrition, and no other variables have been found that have practical implications for improving client outcomes from programs. Research shows that most client variables do not predict retention, and those that do are generally weak and sporadic predictors.