Teens who participate in residential treatment programs for drug and alcohol abuse benefit from attending support meetings as part of their aftercare, according to a new study from Harvard University.

Even attending a few Alcohol Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings improved long-term outcomes; in fact, researchers concluded that going to just one meeting translated to about two days of abstinence.

Dr. John Kelly of the MGH-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital tracked 160 teenagers who had remained for four to six weeks in residential treatment programs. He and his team then reassessed them six months later, and then again one, two, four, six and eight years later.

Teens who attended AA and/or NA meetings in the first six months after rehabilitation had better long-term outcomes. The study found those teens with severe addictions and those who believed they could not use drugs or alcohol in moderation were more likely to attend most frequently. However, attending even once a week helped - and participating in three meetings a week was associated with complete abstinence.

"This suggests that youth may not need to attend as frequently as every day, [which is] sometimes recommended clinically, to achieve very good outcomes," said Dr. Kelly, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

This study appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Labels: AA, NA, recovery