Brief interventions are structured conversations or sessions designed to address substance use among adolescents who are using substances, but do not need specialty SUD treatment. Brief interventions can vary in their duration, intensity, and structure, but all of them are designed to be delivered in non-SUD treatment settings such as medical offices, schools, justice programs, and other places where youth who are using psychoactive substances can be identified and engaged.

Brief Health Advice – Usually the intervention given to someone who has a low-risk score on their screen, Brief Advice is a short intervention (less than 3 minutes) used to raise awareness of, and assess a person’s willingness to engage in further discussion about healthy lifestyle issues.  Brief Advice is less in-depth and more informal than a Brief Intervention.  Brief Advice can be as simple as one or two sentences such as, “The best way to reduce your risk of health and other problems related to alcohol and drug use is to stop using. What you do with this information is up to you. I am here to talk it through if you like.” The clinician can expand on this advice by discussing strategies to reduce harm to help the youth use less, or in less risky ways.

Brief Intervention – Usually the intervention given to someone who has a moderate or high-risk score on their screen, Brief Intervention is a conversation that usually starts with Brief Advice and continues with a more in-depth motivational interviewing-style discussion.  Brief Intervention can be as short as 10 minutes or may last a few sessions.  The goal of a Brief Intervention is to have a full discussion aimed at empowering a youth’s self-determination to reduce risky behavior.  The following resources provide more information on Brief Interventions.