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Does Delaying Adolescent Substance Use Lead to Improved Cognitive Function and Reduce Risk for Addiction?

NCT ID: NCT01655615

Last Updated: 2016-10-31

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

UNKNOWN

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

31 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2011-09-30

Study Completion Date

2018-12-31

Brief Summary

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The Preventure Program is the first and only school-based alcohol and drug prevention program that has been shown to prevent onset and growth in alcohol and substance misuse in British and Canadian youth. Unlike universal programs that tend to promote generic coping skills and balance normative attitudes around substance use, this selected personality-targeted approach is based on a psychosocial model and validated by Dr Patricia Conrod and targets four personality-specific motivational pathways to substance misuse: Hopelessness, Anxiety Sensitivity, Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking, each associated with different motives for substance use, drug use profiles and patterns of non-addictive psychopathology.

As a primary goal of the Coventure project, the investigators propose a long-term trial of this intervention strategy to examine how this evidence-based intervention can reduce onset of substance use disorders in young people and related secondary mental health, academic and cognitive outcomes.

As a secondary goal, the investigators propose to use sensitive neuropsychological measures to examine how this evidence-based intervention can positively impact on cognitive development over the course of adolescence, to tease apart some of the mechanisms involved in the causal pathway from early onset substance use to poor cognitive development and long-term addiction outcomes.

Detailed Description

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This is a cluster randomized design in which 31 high schools across Montreal, Canada will be randomly assigned to receive training and to deliver the program to two cohorts of Grade 7 students or to be trained and assisted in delivering the program to future Grade 7 cohorts. Assessment of participating students will occur annually from September to May until the end of high school year. Students will be assessed on personality, substance use, mental health and cognitive measures.

The program involves delivering specialized coping skills group workshops to students when they are in the 7th or 8th grade. About 45% of students in a given grade will be invited to participate in the workshops.

The workshops will focus on motivating children to understand how their personality style leads to certain emotional and behavioural reactions. They will be guided in learning cognitive behavioural skills on how to channel their strengths towards their long-term goals. Four different workshops will be run, focusing either on managing impulsivity, sensation seeking, anxiety sensitivity or negative thinking.

The students will first be asked to participate in a 45-60 minutes survey asking them about their personality, their strength and weaknesses, their risk-taking behaviour and their learning style.

Then, if their school has been trained to deliver the program, they might be invited to participate in two 90-minute workshops, delivered at school during class time or lunch hour. All children who agree to participate in the study will be invited to complete the same survey in each subsequent academic year for the next four years.

Primary outcomes:

1. Short-term: delayed onset of alcohol and substance use (up to two years post intervention)
2. Long-term: prevention of onset of substance use disorder (at 5th year follow-up).

Secondary intermediate outcomes are neuropsychological functions, for which two hypotheses will be investigated regarding the possible effects of delaying early substance use:

1. Global Effects Hypothesis: substance use and binge drinking will have global harmful effects on cognition and interventions that successfully prevent substance use onset will result in global improvements in cognitive function in participants who received the intervention relative to those randomized to control condition.
2. Critical Developmental Period Hypothesis: the toxic effects of alcohol and drug use are developmentally specific, so effects of interventions will be observed on cognitive processes that are maturing in adolescence, namely, executive functions and reward sensitivity, after controlling for general intelligence quotient (IQ) and memory function following procedure described by Séguin, et al (2004).

Secondary outcomes will be measures of poor mental health and functional cognitive measures such as academic achievement and school drop-out.

Conditions

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Alcohol Related Disorders Substance Related Disorders

Keywords

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Adolescent cognitive development mental disorders Mood disorders Alcohol-Related disorders Mental disorders diagnosed in childhood Substance related disorders

Study Design

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Allocation Method

NA

Intervention Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Primary Study Purpose

PREVENTION

Blinding Strategy

NONE

Study Groups

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Preventure programme

The interventions are conducted using manuals which incorporate psycho-educational, motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) components, and include real life 'scenarios' shared by local youth in with similar personality profiles. In the first session, participants are guided in a goal-setting exercise, designed to enhance motivation to change behaviour. Psycho-educational strategies are then used to teach participants about the target personality variable and associated problematic coping behaviours like avoidance, interpersonal dependence, aggression, risky behaviours and substance misuse.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Preventure programme

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

The interventions are conducted using manuals which incorporate psycho-educational, motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) components, and include real life 'scenarios' shared by local youth in with similar personality profiles. In the first session, participants are guided in a goal-setting exercise, designed to enhance motivation to change behaviour. Psycho-educational strategies are then used to teach participants about the target personality variable and associated problematic coping behaviours like avoidance, interpersonal dependence, aggression, risky behaviours and substance misuse.

Interventions

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Preventure programme

The interventions are conducted using manuals which incorporate psycho-educational, motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) components, and include real life 'scenarios' shared by local youth in with similar personality profiles. In the first session, participants are guided in a goal-setting exercise, designed to enhance motivation to change behaviour. Psycho-educational strategies are then used to teach participants about the target personality variable and associated problematic coping behaviours like avoidance, interpersonal dependence, aggression, risky behaviours and substance misuse.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* Public or private high school

Exclusion Criteria

* Schools cannot be classified as having a majority of their students coded as special needs students, because these schools are smaller and the intervention protocol would have to be tailored for their particular needs
Minimum Eligible Age

12 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

17 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sponsors

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Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role collaborator

St. Justine's Hospital

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Patricia Conrod

Full Professor

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

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Patricia J Conrod, PhD

Role: STUDY_CHAIR

Université de Montréal

Locations

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CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Site Status

Countries

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Canada

References

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Wallace J, Boers E, Ouellet J, Conrod P. A Population-Based Analysis of the Temporal Association of Screen Time and Aggressive Behaviors in Adolescents. JAACAP Open. 2023 Aug 24;1(4):284-294. doi: 10.1016/j.jaacop.2023.08.002. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Reference Type DERIVED
PMID: 39553451 (View on PubMed)

Boers E, Afzali MH, Conrod P. A longitudinal study on the relationship between screen time and adolescent alcohol use: The mediating role of social norms. Prev Med. 2020 Mar;132:105992. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.105992. Epub 2020 Jan 15.

Reference Type DERIVED
PMID: 31954144 (View on PubMed)

O'Leary-Barrett M, Pihl RO, Conrod PJ. Process variables predicting changes in adolescent alcohol consumption and mental health symptoms following personality-targeted interventions. Addict Behav. 2017 Dec;75:47-58. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.06.022. Epub 2017 Jul 4.

Reference Type DERIVED
PMID: 28692954 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

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3427

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id