Distress Tolerance and Drug Treatment Drop-Out

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Due to the high prevalence of illicit drug use and subsequent costs to society, a great deal of research in the past two decades has focused on the development and evaluation of effective drug use treatments. Although treatment outcome studies indicate that treatment does indeed lead to continued abstinence for a number of individuals, a large percentage of individuals entering treatment for drug abuse drop out early and very few are able to recover to achieve long-term abstinence. Unfortunately, individuals who drop out of treatment often receive little empirical attention, with most studies excluding dropouts from analyses. Clearly, investigating the differences between individuals who are able to persist through the difficult early stages of treatment and those who are not (dropouts) would provide needed guidance for tailoring treatments to fit the individual needs of this group. Following from cutting edge work in nicotine dependence, the role of distress tolerance, or one's threshold for tolerating physical and psychological distress, will be considered as a factor in early treatment dropout. Specifically, we propose to study 128 individuals entering a residential substance abuse treatment facility to examine the role of distress tolerance in early treatment dropout.