Brief strategic family therapy (BSFT) combines interventions from structural and strategic family therapies and assumes that substance use as well as other behavioral problems are symptoms of family dysfunction. Thus, the treatment focuses on influencing maladaptive patterns of family interaction, alliances, boundaries, and scapegoating of individual family members. Data reported from multiple studies support that BSFT is efficacious in decreasing adolescent substance use a year after treatment, that changes in family functioning mediate the relationship between BSFT and outcomes, and that parents receiving BSFT also decreased their drinking after treatment.43
