Social Identity Mapping for Adolescent Recovery: Developing a Novel Social Network Intervention

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary-Abstract Adolescence is an important developmental period, yet yearly over 700,000 adolescents experience the onset of an Alcohol use disorder (AUD). Alcohol use affects the developing brain, which compromises the achievement of key developmental milestones and leads to injury, illness, dependency, or death. Despite evidence-based treatments for adolescents with AUD, they often quickly return to alcohol use after treatment. One of the key challenges undermining AUD recovery for adolescents is that treatment often occurs in a setting removed from their home and community, where there are strong social risk factors for returning to use substances. Social identity mapping (SIM) is one interactive way to capture social network risk and protective factors among adolescents. The SIM process involves posing a series of questions with participants to produce a visual map of the individual within their social network using paper, markers, and stickers. This experience results in a visual of the network’s potential influences on one’s substance use behavior. SIM is an innovative and interactive tool for data collection that, combined with a set of standardized, reflective questions, could be integrated as a treatment module to generate new insights by the adolescent. This study will build upon our foundational work in this area which adapted the SIM approach as a data collection tool for adolescents, to finalize a standardized adjunctive intervention module, Social Identity Mapping for Adolescents in Recovery (SIM-AiR), for use with adolescents in clinical settings and conduct an initial pilot. In Aim 1, we will present the SIM-AiR developed during our pilot work with 15 adolescent-focused addiction clinicians to gain their feedback. This feedback will be used to finalize the SIM-AiR adjunctive intervention module in an iterative process through several rounds of feedback and adaptation. In Aim 2, our team will pilot the SIM-AiR intervention module with 60 adolescents (12-19 years old) with AUD. As part of our approach, we will collect patient acceptability feedback and clinician acceptability and feasibility feedback. The pilot will recruit adolescents receiving outpatient AUD treatment to receive the SIM-AiR module and to participate in follow-up study visit to collect acceptability information. SIM-AiR sessions will be coded for fidelity using a checklist developed through Aim 1. Between 3-5 clinicians implementing the SIM-AiR will be surveyed and interviewed regarding their experience using it clinically. This proposal addresses the priority special emphasis group, adolescents, using innovative methods, in response to NIAAA’s PAR-23-249 Alcohol Treatment, Pharmacotherapy, and Recovery Research. Ultimately, our investigative team seeks to contribute to the NIAAA strategic priority of using a life course approach in alcohol research by developing and piloting a novel, yet promising intervention to meet the unique developmental needs of adolescents, which future larger clinical trials can examine and test.