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Background: Brief interventions have shown promise in reducing adolescent alcohol and marijuana use. This manuscript presents a secondary analysis of a randomized trial that compared a brief parent motivational intervention (Family Check Up; FCU) to brief psychoeducation (PE) condition and found no effect of treatment condition on either binge drinking or marijuana use days. The current analyses explored whether the response to treatment may have varied as a function of six empirically-based baseline moderators and predictors: biological sex, age, race/ethnicity, mental health problems, parent-adolescent communication, and peer deviance. Methods: Data from the parent trial randomizing 102 parents to either the FCU ( n  = 51) or PE ( n  = 51) interventions were re-analyzed across four time points (baseline, 3-, 6-, and 12-months). Moderators and predictors were tested via a series of hierarchical linear models. Results: Parent-adolescent communication and peer deviance emerged as significant predictors of adolescent treatment response. Specifically, low-levels of parent-adolescent communication or peer deviance were associated with worse treatment response (i.e., significant increases in binge drinking days and marijuana use days) in the PE condition, but not in the FCU condition. Non-Hispanic Whites and girls had worse treatment response, regardless of treatment condition. Conclusions: The FCU condition appeared to mitigate risks of poor parent-adolescent communication and affiliation with deviant peers better than the PE condition. Clinical recommendations for decision-making around assignment to brief interventions are discussed.

Background: Among the most persistent public health problems in the United States is the gap between adolescents who need therapy for a substance use (SU) disorder and those who seek therapy. The role of parental factors (e.g., impressions of the adolescent's symptoms, sociodemographic factors) has been well documented in work examining adolescent help-seeking from professionals and paraprofessionals but has not been evaluated in studies of therapy-seeking for adolescents with SU. This study's primary objective was to identify parental sociodemographic and parent-reported clinical factors associated with therapy-seeking among parents concerned about their adolescent's SU. A secondary objective was to explore reasons why parents reported not seeking therapy and whether these reasons were associated with sociodemographic and clinical variables. Methods: We conducted a survey of 411 parents of adolescents (age 12-19) who reported elevated concern about their adolescent's SU. Parents were asked whether their adolescent had a history of therapy, and those who reported no history were asked an open-ended question about reasons why they had not sought therapy. Responses were rated by 2 independent coders and used to sort parents into 3 groups: "treaters" (those who had sought therapy), "acknowledgers" (those who acknowledged their adolescent had SU problems but did not seek therapy), and "deniers" (those who denied their adolescent had SU problems). Multinomial logistic regression examined the relationship between sociodemographic and clinical factors and group membership. Results: Multivariate analyses revealed that parent-reported SU severity, internalizing distress, and externalizing behavior problems were all associated with therapy-seeking behavior, with internationalizing distress emerging as the strongest predictor. Additionally, non-Hispanic white parents were more likely to seek therapy than minority parents. Conclusions: Parent report of symptoms, especially internalizing distress, and parental race were associated with therapy-seeking behavior, highlighting opportunities for targeted outreach to engage parents in therapy.

Objective: Children with ADHD have been widely reported to overestimate their abilities in social and academic domains, but a similar overestimation of physical abilities has not been examined., Method: Twenty-four elementary school-age boys with ADHD and fifteen boys without ADHD were compared on their ability to accurately estimate their ability to complete four lab-based physical tasks, varying on three levels of difficulty: (a) within their ability, (b) 8% beyond their ability, and (c) 13% beyond their ability., Results: Children with ADHD were significantly more likely than controls to overestimate their physical ability at difficult levels of the task., Conclusion: Implications of these results for preventing risky behaviors in children with ADHD are discussed., (© The Author(s) 2013.)