Factors affecting the therapeutic alliances' impact on substance use disorder treatment outcomes.

The therapeutic alliance has been shown to significantly affect outcomes in both general psychotherapy research and substance-use-disorder specific research. The proposed study is an attempt to improve our understanding of how therapeutic alliance factors influence outcomes when treating substance-use-disordered clients. Two factors of the therapeutic alliance and outcome interaction were investigated: social support and timing of measurement of the therapeutic alliance. High levels of social support at baseline did not predict better outcomes when a strong alliance was not formed with the therapist. Alliance at termination was the most predictive of short and long-term outcomes.