VALIDATION OF A SCALE FOR NETWORK THERAPY - A TECHNIQUE FOR SYSTEMATIC USE OF PEER AND FAMILY SUPPORT IN ADDICTION TREATMENT

Substance abuse treatments are increasingly employing standardized for mats. This is espe cially the case for approaches that utilize an indi vidual psychotherapy format but less so for family-based approaches. N etwork therapy, an approach that involves family members and peers in the patient's relapse prevention efforts, is theoretically and clinica lly differentiated in this paper from family systems therapy for addic tion. Based on these conceptual differences, a Network Therapy Rating Scale (NTRS) was developed to measure the integrity and differentiabil ity of network therapy from other family-based approaches to addiction treatment. Seven addictions faculty and 10 third- and fourth-year psy chiatry residents recently trained in the network approach used the NT RS to rate excerpts of network and family systems therapy sessions. Da ta revealed the NTRS had high internal consistency reliability when ut ilized by both groups of raters. In addition, network and nonnetwork s ubscales within the NTRS rated congruent therapy excerpts significantl y higher than noncongruent therapy excerpts, indicating that the NTRS subscales measure what they are designed to measure. Implications for research and training are discussed.