Study Explores Therapeutic Communities and Differences in Social Support

The number of women with a substance use disorder (SUD) has grown exponentially in recent years. Rebuilding social support networks that were strained due to an individual's active addiction is a significant protective factor for women in recovery. Support systems can provide individuals with emotional support, information, or material support like transportation or housing. Incarcerated women with SUDs can foster similar supportive relationships through therapeutic community (TC) models, which promote positive social connections, social learning processes, and peer support. Previous research shows that peer support relationships help decrease an individual's substance use and increase treatment retention rates, and also that TCs reduce recidivism.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky examined the nature of social support networks for incarcerated women with OUD in jails and the differences in support networks for women recruited from jail-based TCs and women recruited from jails' general population. The researchers found that those who were part of a jail-based TC had significantly more positive social support networks than those who were not receiving treatment. Participants were recruited from eight Kentucky jails: three jails that provided TCs for incarcerated women and five jails that did not offer TCs for incarcerated women. The researchers interviewed 445 incarcerated women using the Network Canvas "Interviewer" app to map out participants' egocentric social network inventories and to understand network members’ behaviors and experiences, including incarceration and substance use. Participants were asked to identify people (alters) who had offered them support over the past 90 days and to answer questions about those individuals, such as parents, other family members, partners, and friends.

The overall social network sizes of both sets of participants were small and similar. The differences the study found were:

• Network Composition: Women in treatment were less likely to name a romantic partner and more likely to name a substance use professional in their network compared to non-treatment participants. Family members made up the majority of participants’ networks (60% of each participant’s network, on average).
• Network Selection: Women in TCs were less likely to include individuals in active addiction in their networks and more likely to list those in recovery, which could serve as a protective factor.
• Support Functions: Women in TCs reported receiving a greater variety of support types (both general and recovery-specific) from their network members, including emotional support, financial support, and help with daily tasks. Women in treatment felt significantly closer to their alters (4.70 vs. 4.55 out of 5) and indicated that their alters fulfilled more social and recovery-specific support functions.

The study shows that women participating in jail-based substance use treatment reported more positive social support network attributes than those who were not in treatment. Specifically, these women were more likely to be surrounded by individuals in recovery and to receive multiple forms of support from their social networks, which could play a crucial role in their long-term recovery after release. This study was published in the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment and was led by Martha Tillson, Jaxin Annett, Michele Staton, John Schneider, and Carrie Oser from the University of Kentucky and the University of Chicago.