Behavioral Interventions for Individuals Dually Diagnosed with a Severe Mental Illness and a Substance Use Disorder

The prevalence of substance abuse among severely mentally ill (SMI) individuals with a schizophrenia-spectrum or bipolar disorder is about three times the rate of the general population. However, few effective interventions exist to address the problem. In this paper, we evaluate recent studies of behavioral interventions for substance abuse among SMI individuals. These include cognitive–behavioral, motivational interviewing, and contingency management interventions, as well as combinations thereof. Consistent with prior systematic reviews, ours indicates that no behavioral intervention has clearly demonstrated efficacy beyond that of usual care. Unfortunately, most of the reviewed studies suffer from methodological problems that hamper detection of treatment effects. Also, it can be argued that interventions tested thus far may not be well-suited for this cognitively impaired population. A programmatic series of studies is needed to further develop and test behavioral interventions for treating substance abuse in this population.