The State of Evidence-based Parenting Interventions for Parents Who Are Substance-involved

Approximately 70 million children and adolescents live with at least one parent who abuses or is dependent on alcohol or an illicit substance. Given the negative parenting practices that substance-involved mothers and fathers tend to exhibit as well as the poor outcomes that their children, particularly their young children, experience, evidence-based parenting interventions are an important complement to substance abuse treatments. At this time, there are few studies that compare the efficacy of parenting interventions for these parents, however. Nonetheless, research has begun to examine skill-based and attachment-based parenting interventions for substance-involved families with young children. These parenting interventions should be considered within the context of the neurobiology of substance abuse, which emphasizes the role of dopamine in the reward systems that promote substance use. In the context of these neurobiological connections, parenting interventions that engender repeated intense emotional experiences may stimulate this same reward system and, therefore, may be more efficacious. Attachment-based interventions are particularly promising when such connections are considered. More attention needs to be paid to bringing impactful parenting interventions to substance-involved parents with young children.