Clinical Round Table 23 - Family Members as Underutilized Partners for Engaging and Retaining Individuals in Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Treatment

The proposed session will involve a clinical roundtable discussion of individuals holding diverse perspectives on the role of family involvement in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. Although addiction is sometimes called “a family disease”, treatment providers and systems rarely include family members due to concerns about confidentiality, a focus on intrinsic motivation, lack of confidence or competence to involve family members, lack of financial incentive, and other barriers. Exact panel member will be decided later, but will include a licensed professional counselor, a clinical social worker, a TBD family peer recovery coach, and potentially other stakeholders moderated by a psychologist/research scientist. The moderator will give a brief overview of the problem—rates of engagement and retention in SUD care are very poor and while family involved treatment has a strong evidence base it is not widely practiced. This problem will be framed as a clinical puzzle facing the field and family involvement will be introduced as a possible solution to the puzzle. That is, how can family members become potential partners to treatment providers and systems in the shared goal of caring for individuals with SUD? The moderator will then introduce the various panel members to the audience and shift to a Q&A/interviewer format in which the moderator will pose various clinical challenges related to SUD treatment engagement and retention. Panel members will be asked to share perspectives, opinions, and experiences on how family members could be engaged to overcome typical SUD treatment engagement and retention challenges. For example: 1) How can the behavioral health providers improve partnership with families to identify people in need of SUD treatment? 2) What can behavioral health providers do to care for distressed individuals who have a loved one with SUD? 3) How could providers broach the topic of family involvement with individual patients and navigate conversations on confidentiality and autonomy? 4) How does family involvement differ for different types of relationships (e.g., parental vs. romantic partner)? 5) What are the biggest challenges in working with family members? The session will end with additional Q&A from the audience.