Overview: www.addictionandfamily.org:

Our Mission
In the broadest sense, the mission of the Addiction and Family Research Group (AFRG) is to examine the reciprocal and interactive effects of alcohol and other drug use by individuals from a familial perspective. With this charge, the AFRG explores:

the emotional, behavioral, and social functioning of the family member or members who use alcohol and other drugs,
how this use affects other members of the family, and
how intervention methods (targeted at the individual and the family) may bring about healthful behavioral change.

Our hope is that a greater understanding of these issues will lead to individuals who have problems with alcohol or other drugs, along with their intimate partners and other family members, to work together in achieving abstinence and, in the course of that process, improve their relationships.

Brief Background
With certain exceptions, historically, alcoholism and, by extension, addiction to other psychoactive drugs, have been viewed as individual problems best treated on an individual basis. However, by the early 1970s, there was a growing recognition that the family often plays a crucial role in the etiology and maintenance of substance abuse. In turn, some authors posited that family-involved interventions may be effective in treating alcoholism and drug abuse. In a Special Report to the U.S. Congress in the early 1970s, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism described couple and family therapy as "one of the most outstanding current advances in the area of psychotherapy for alcoholism" and called for controlled studies to test the effectiveness of these promising methods (Keller, 1974).

This charge to the research community led to an empirical examination of the efficacy of the marital- and family-based treatments for alcoholism by several different research groups, initially with small-scale studies and, as evidence of effectiveness accumulated, followed by large-scale randomized clinical trials. The pioneering work of Timothy J. O’Farrell, Ph.D. and his Counseling for Alcoholics’ Marriages Project (a.k.a., Project CALM), which is part of the Harvard Families and Addiction Program, revealed robust positive effects of participation in Behavioral Couples Therapy (BCT) for alcoholic patients and their partners, in terms of reduced drinking and improved relationship functioning.

As this programmatic line of research evolved, BCT was successfully used with patients who abused drugs other than alcohol. Additionally, BCT has been applied to different types of substance-abusing couples (e.g., couples with alcoholic and drug-abusing female partners, methadone maintenance patients). Along with substance use and relationship adjustment, interest has also broadened to include the effects of treatment on other outcomes, including child adjustment and intimate partner violence.

Most recently, the principles of BCT have been used as a foundation for the development of other family-focused interventions for the treatment of substance abuse. For example, BCT has been combined with parent skills training to determine if this hybrid treatment (PSBCT) has more positive effects on custodial children than BCT or parent training only. Elements of BCT have also been used with family members other than spouses (parents, siblings) to enhance medication compliance among HIV-positive substance abusers and those substance abusers being treated with naltrexone. Thus, BCT and its variants are now subsumed under the umbrella term Learning Sobriety Together (LST) to capture the broadening of focus from the marital to larger family systems.

Areas of Emphasis
The Addiction and Family Research Group (AFRG) consists of investigators who are primarily (although not exclusively) interested in the effects of alcoholism and drug use on marriage and the family, with an emphasis on the effectiveness of family-involved treatments for these disorders among adults. The AFRG is fundamentally focused on:

research
dissemination of findings (via this website, professional publications and presentations, and other outlets)
consultation to treatment programs and counselors who are attempting to implement Behavioral Couples Therapy/Learning Sobriety Together into their treatment armamentarium with their substance-abusing patients

What We Don’t Do
The Addiction and Family Research Group (AFRG) does research on couples and family therapy for substance abuse; we do not provide direct treatment to substance-abusing patients or their family members. Although we often get requests for help from individuals who are having problems with alcohol or other drugs or those who live with individuals with these disorders, we are not in a position to provide any kind of clinically informed advice and would view providing such advice as irresponsible. When such requests are received, we encourage individuals to seek treatment with one of their local substance abuse treatment programs and/or to enter a local chapter of a self-help organization (e.g., AA, NA, ALANON). Additionally, many substance abuse treatment programs provide marital and family interventions for their patients; however, the AFRG does not keep a listing of programs that provide such services. We encourage individuals seeking marital and family interventions as part of treatment for substance abuse (whether for themselves or other family members) to ask about the availability of such services with their local substance abuse treatment providers.

At present, the AFRG focuses on substance abuse by adults (i.e., those 18 years of age and above) and not adolescents. We recognize that there are several excellent research groups throughout the U.S. and the world that are using family-involved treatments for adolescent substance abuse. For those interested in this body of research, an excellent place to start is with the Center for Treatment Research on Adolescent Drug Abuse (www.miami.edu/ctrada).