Despite of the general decrease in the nonmedical use of legal and illegal drugs in recent years, the excessive consumption of alcohol and other drugs during the adolescence years is still a concerning social problematic. Alcohol impairs individuals in social, medical, academic and personal areas that are of crucial importance during school and university years.
Adolescents in treatment for alcohol use disorders (AUDs) have high rates of comorbidity with other substance use disorders and psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, impulse control disorders, mood disorders, sleep disorder or sexual dysfunctions (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2005). Drugs and alcohol can cause an adolescent without mental illness to experience the onset of symptoms. "For example, a twenty-year old college student who begins to hear threatening voices inside of his head and becomes paranoid that his chemistry professor is poisoning his food after smoking marijuana could represent a reaction to the drug (potentially called a "substance-induced psychosis ") or the first episode of psychosis for this individual (Duckworth & Freedman, 2013). ".
Furthermore, treatment seems to be less effective with youth who have more than one concurrent problematic. To date, researchers are developing specific treatments and adapting pre-existent adult treatments for adults to the adolescent population. "Youth prefer easy access and treatments that do not remove them from their primary home or academic settings far from the traditional adult treatments in rehabilitation clinics (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, n.d.). Some of the most promising interventions for adolescents with alcohol use disorders developed so far incorporate multiple components and systems. The incorporation of the family to the therapeutic dynamic has been proven to have a greater effect on the treatment's outcome (i.e., multidimensional family therapy [MDFT]).