Finding Best Teen Drug-Treatment Programs

Jan. 14 -- When Marty Kehn found out his teenage son was on drugs, it was as though a stranger had moved into their suburban home, and he wasn't sure how to help.

"Life with Spencer while he was using was life without the Spencer I know and love," the father said. "Instead of family weekends, dinners and water skiing, there were calls from police, searching his room for clues to what was going on, only to find things that were stolen … another morning in court."

Spencer Kehn, now 16, tried out a series of drug-treatment programs before meeting success, and has now been drug-free for one year. But finding a program that worked entailed a lot of trial and error.

"The first program was unsuited for Spencer because it did not involve his family," said Barbara Kehn, Spencer's mother. "We then got him into a residential program which had after-care. So he has continued to learn and he's gotten a network of non-using friends."

More than 1 million American teenagers need treatment for substance abuse, but only one in 10 is actually undergoing treatment, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Parents who do seek treatment are often faced with an assortment of programs and need to know which work best. Today, a nonprofit group called Drug Strategies is releasing a first-ever comprehensive guide to teen drug treatments.

Getting Into a Teen’s World

Mathea Falco, the president of Drug Strategies, said parents who want help for their teens should look for some very specific things.

"A good program should use a nationally recognized assessment interview to determine a teen's drug use, their psychiatric history, their family and school situation," Falco told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "More than half the teens in drug-treatment programs have psychiatric problems that also need to be addressed. And these should be found in a screening."

The programs with the best track records should also use a comprehensive treatment approach, meaning they address factors other than drug use.