AGE GROUP-DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSE TO TREATMENT FOR PROBLEMATIC ALCOHOL-USE

That structural characteristics act as markers of modified treatment o utcome is a long standing idea in the alcohol treatment field. In orde r to test whether patient age is a factor to be considered in making t reatment assignments, we examined data collected under a clinical tria l. Two hundred and twenty-nine patients were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: extended cognitive behavioral treatment (CB), relationship enhancement (RE), or relationship and vocational e nhancement (VE). This paper reports on outcome (alcohol use) 3-6 month s after treatment assignment. Our question was, would different age gr oups assigned to the treatment conditions exhibit different outcomes? There were no significant main effects by either treatment condition o r age group. There was a significant treatment condition by age group interaction. With increasing age, the differences in treatment seemed to increase. For the younger aged group (18-29 years old) no statistic ally significant treatment differences were detected. Middle aged pati ents (30-49 years old) did best in the RE condition. Older aged patien ts (50 + years old) did best when assigned to the CB condition. These findings lead us to conclude that patient age is a variable which shou ld be considered when testing patient-treatment matching hypotheses.