Modifying Group Therapy for Bipolar Substance Abusers - 1

Bipolar Disorder, Substance Dependence

substance abuse

The purpose of this study is to modify Integrated Group Therapy (IGT), which is has been found successful for patients with bipolar disorder (BD) and substance use disorder(SUD), so that it can be more readily adopted by community drug abuse treatment programs. IGT is being reduced from 20 to 12 sessions in this trial, and is being conducted by front-line drug counselors, to test its effectiveness in a more community-based setting. The training has been expanded so that counselors without much psychopathology training or cognitive behavioral therapy experience can conduct IGT.

IGT is being compared with 12 sessions of Group Drug Counseling (GDC) in a randomized controlled trial, with a sample size of 60 subjects. GDC is the type of treatment one would likely receive in a community drug abuse treatment program, in that it focuses primarily in substance use, unlike IGT, which focuses equally on SUD and BD issues. Patients are followed for a year after the end of the group therapy, to examine the long-term effects of the treatment, and also to examine the longer-term relationship of substance use and mood. Patients in the trial must be taking a mood stabilizer to enter the study. Any drug of abuse is accepted, and all subtypes of BD are accepted.

United States