Fidelity Failures in Brief Strategic Family Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abuse: A Clinical Analysis

As evidence-based family treatments for adolescent substance use and conduct problems gain traction, cutting edge research moves beyond randomized efficacy trials to address questions such as how these treatments work and how best to disseminate them to community settings. A key factor in effective dissemination is treatment fidelity, which refers to implementing an intervention in a manner consistent with an established manual. While most fidelity research is quantitative, this study offers a qualitative clinical analysis of fidelity failures in a large, multisite effectiveness trial of Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) for adolescent drug abuse, where BSFT developers trained community therapists to administer this intervention in their own agencies. Using case notes and video recordings of therapy sessions, an independent expert panel first rated 103 cases on quantitative fidelity scales grounded in the BSFT manual and the broader structural-strategic framework that informs BSFT intervention. Because fidelity was generally low, the panel reviewed all cases qualitatively to identify emergent types or categories of fidelity failure. Ten categories of failures emerged, characterized by therapist omissions (e.g., failure to engage key family members, failure to think in threes) and commissions (e.g., off-model, nonsystemic formulations/interventions). Of these, "failure to think in threes" appeared basic and particularly problematic, reflecting the central place of this idea in structural theory and therapy. Although subject to possible bias, our observations highlight likely stumbling blocks in exporting a complex family treatment like BSFT to community settings. These findings also underscore the importance of treatment fidelity in family therapy research.

Adapting and implementing an evidence-based treatment with justice-involved adolescents: the example of multidimensional family therapy

For over four decades family therapy research and family centered evidence-based therapies for justice-involved youths have played influential roles in changing policies and services for these young people and their families. But research always reveals challenges as well as advances. To be sure, demonstration that an evidence-based therapy yields better outcomes than comparison treatments or services as usual is an accomplishment. But the extraordinary complexity embedded in that assertion feels tiny relative to what we are now learning about the so-called transfer of evidence-based treatments to real world practice settings. Today's family therapy studies continue to assess outcome with diverse samples and presenting problems, but research and funding priorities also include studying particular treatments in nonresearch settings. Does an evidence-based intervention work as well in a community clinic, with clinic personnel? How much of a treatment has to change to be accepted and implemented in a community clinic? Perhaps it is the setting and existing procedures that have to change? And, in those cases, do accommodations to the context compromise outcomes? Thankfully, technology transfer notions gave way to more systemic, dynamic, and frankly, more family therapy-like conceptions of the needed process. Implementation science became the more sensible, as well as the theoretically and empirically stronger overarching framework within which the evidence-based family based therapies now operate. Using the example of Multidimensional Family Therapy, this article discusses treatment development, refinement, and implementation of that adapted approach in a particular clinical context-a sector of the juvenile justice system-juvenile detention.