How to identify best practices for triaging adolescents with co-occurring substance use and mental health concerns

How to identify best practices for triaging adolescents with co-occurring substance use and mental health concerns

1. Comprehensive Assessment

 Multidisciplinary Approach: Employ mental health workers, substance use treatment experts, and doctors who will evaluate the mental health along with substance dependence.

 Standardized Screening Tools: Some recommended assessment tools are CRAFFT, GAIN-SS or the PHQ-9 that can be used in screening for substance use and mental health disorders.

 2. Integrated Care Models

 Collaborative Care: Adopt models of care that permit the co-ordination of mental health and substance use treatment where both disorders exist.

 Coordinated Treatment Plans: Assist the adolescent client in the development of individualized care plans that will include participation of the family, school, and different communities.

 3. Risk Stratification

 Severity Assessment: Evaluating the acuity level of the mental health and substance use disorder to decide on the level of care required (outpatient, intensive outpatient, residential treatment programme).

 Prioritization of Needs: Captive to the idea that some individuals should be given priority in treatment depending on factors like suicidal intent, serious substance use or other mutual intending life threatening issues, either physically or because of the dangers they pose to others.

 4. Family Involvement

 Family Education and Support: Involve families in the treatment process, thus educate them about the condition of an adolescent and include them in the decision-making process.

 Family Therapy: Family therapy should also be considered when working with an adolescent because aspect of the family can stop the adolescent from recovering.

 5. Continuity of Care

 Follow-Up Care: If you triage someone, provide consistent and consistent care after the assessment, with subsequent evaluations of progress to make the necessary changes.

 Transition Planning: As for discharge planning, there must be plans on how the adolescent client will be transferred to other levels of care or perhaps back to the community so he or she will always be supported.

 6. Evidence-Based Interventions

 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Integrate CBT in order to handle both substance dependence and mental illness, because this method is most efficient in conditions when both disorders are present.

 Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT): For teenagers with the severe substance use disorders consider MAT while careful on the side of effects on the mental health status.

 7. Cultural and Developmental Considerations

 Age-Appropriate Interventions: Education approaches should be developed to fit the age of adolescent client.

 Cultural Competence: Make sure to respect the adolescent’s culture when assigning and implementing triage and treatment ,respect the community standards.

 8. Training and Education

 Staff Training: Informed health care practitioners about the nature of the combined condition in adolescents and intake and management methods.

 Ongoing Education: Continuously brief the staff and bring new research and updated practices in the field of adolescent Mental health and substance use.

 References

 Winters, K. C. & Kaminer, Y. , 2018 Adolescent Substance Use/Screening and Assessing Adolescents for Substance Use Disorders. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, published online 30/12/ 2016, DOI 10. 108/009-0980-947.

 Sterling, S. , Weisner, C. & Hinman, A (2010). Substance use treatment in adolescent health care: Systematic approaches. This article was published in the Current Psychiatry Reports with volume 12, number 5, pp. 366-373.