This application is a request for a Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award (K23) that will enable Dr. Johnson to develop her career as a clinical researcher with a programmatic line of research on interpersonal group treatments for high-risk women with substance use and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Incarcerated women provide an ideal population with which to begin this endeavor because of their high rates of co-occurring substance use disorders (SUD) and psychiatric disorders. Her initial goal is to adapt group interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT-G) to treat co-occurring SUD and depressive (major depressive and dysthymic) disorders in incarcerated women, as an adjunct to prison SUD treatment. Dr. Johnson's training goals are to: 1) Attain expertise in SUD phenomenology and behavioral treatment research. 2) Develop expertise in the phenomenology of and treatment research with co-occurring SUD and depressive disorders. 3) Advance skills in behavioral treatment research with incarcerated and ethnic minority populations. 4) Become a recognized IPT-G trainer to supervise study therapists for a larger (R01) clinical trial. 5) Develop R01-level skills in research methodology and the behavioral treatment development process. 6) Improve grant-writing and manuscript preparation skills. 7) Develop R01-level skills in research ethics for substance-using and incarcerated populations. These goals will be accomplished through 1) resources at Brown Medical School, 2) mentorship from Drs. Caron Zlotnick, Damaris Rohsenow, Richard Brown, and Peter Friedmann, and consultants Drs. Luis Zayas and Robinson Welch, 3) coursework, seminars, and supervised clinical experiences, and 4) implementation of the proposed project. Dr. Johnson will implement a 5-year research project, during which she will adapt and test IPT-G for incarcerated women with co-occurring SUDs and depressive disorders. IPT-G will address interpersonal and social support issues that contribute to depression, SUDs, and prison recidivism. IPT-G will be compared to psychoeducation on co-occurring disorders;both treatments will be adjuncts to prison SUD treatment. Year 1 will be devoted to adapting IPT-G and piloting it in an open trial. Subsequently, Dr. Johnson will conduct a small randomized trial to estimate effects sizes for SUD, depressive disorder, and depressive symptoms, which will be used to justify an R01 application for a full-scale clinical trial.
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