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"I hope you tell kids that this really does work and I am an example."

Limits on Research with Adolescent Treatment Programs

Because the Catherine Freer program is dedicated first of all to the best interests of its clients, we have not been able to run the kind of experiments where half the clients at random are assigned to a group that gets no treatment of six months. That "gold standard" makes sense for new drugs, but not for children in serious trouble. So we have settled for gold standard client respect and "silver standard" research, which compares our clients with established norms for large numbers of adolescents with similar problems or treatments, as well as with teenagers living presumed trouble-free lives in their own communities. We have also done some qualitative (non-numerical data) research and developed some questionnaires on our own.

While not perfect research, it has been solid, ethical research and by its volume, and repeated studies in some areas such as depression and substance abuse, provides a solid basis for evaluating the overall effectiveness of the Catherine Freer program, and what it does well.

The most important problem with research that lacks a control group is that we don't know how well the kinds of kids who get treatment at Freer might have done had they gotten a different treatment, or no organized treatment at all. Unfortunately, there are "relatively few studies on adolescent substance-abuse treatment," (Russell, 2007), and even fewer of those are on residential treatment. Such studies can at least give a comparative idea of what works best, though, of course, it's important to be sure the clients are similar before drawing conclusions.

Learn more about our research: