The Rewire Study (Mindfulness Mobile App to Reduce Adolescent Substance Use)

Mindfulness Mobile App to Reduce Adolescent Substance Use

The current proposal is aimed at developing a substance use cessation app (Rewire) for high risk adolescents who are involved in the juvenile justice system. The Rewire app will be based on the primary substance use cessation components tested in our previous work with juvenile justice-involved adolescents and on intervention components shown to be central to smoking cessation.

The Rewire Study will recruit 60 youth (30 boys and 30 girls) who have had contact with the Department of Youth Services in the last year. Consent will be obtained from parents or guardians for the youths' participation. The participating teens will come to Oregon Research Institute for a baseline assessment. During this visit, the teens will complete an assent form and spend 20-30 minutes completing an online survey with an assessor; topics covered in the survey include emotion regulation and drug and alcohol use. Teens will have the app loaded onto their phones and be provided with instructions for its use during this visit. Participants are asked to use the app over the next 2 weeks, completing 4 modules and spending 5-10 minutes each day answering questions about recent emotions and substance use. Teens will be contacted via email for follow up assessments at 8 weeks post-baseline. These emails will contain links to the follow-up surveys which also ask about emotion regulation and drug and alcohol use; surveys should take 20-30 minutes to complete.

Inclusion Criteria:

• ages 13 to 18
• involved with Juvenile Justice system
• documented substance use
• English-speaking
• living in the community

Exclusion Criteria:

• non English-speaking
• living in treatment or detention facility