Maite P Mena

• Doctor of Psychology
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Miami

Effective family‐based interventions are needed for youth who are experiencing emotional and behavioral difficulties and who are impacted by powerful environmental stressors. Culturally Informed and Flexible Family‐Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) is a manualized and evidence‐based, multicomponent family‐based treatment that has been shown...

Rigorous randomized trials that test promising culturally centered treatments for Latino youth and families are needed. This study adds to the knowledge base by comparing the efficacy of Culturally Informed and Flexible Family Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) to an Individually Oriented Treatment-As-Usual (ITAU) in its ability to retain Latino yo...

Objectives: The comorbidity of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse disorders among adolescents and adults is well-documented in the literature (Colder et al., 2013). The current study investigates the relationship between psychiatric and substance use disorders in a sample of treatment-seeking Hispanic adolescents. Methods: The study uses bas...

Methods: This study examines baseline data from a study evaluating a family based substance abuse treatment program for Hispanic adolescents. Participants were 14-17 years old (N = 156, 44% female). Adolescent reports on the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children Predictive Scales measured psychiatric symptoms of major depressive disorder, att...

Family interventions have been shown to be effective for adolescents with behavior problems. Current literature supports both adaptive treatments and technology assisted interventions as highly promising innovations for treating at-risk adolescents. The purpose of this investigation was to develop and test the efficacy of a computer assisted versio...

Objective: Hispanic youth in the general community experience traumatic events and display symptoms of psychological distress more frequently than do Caucasian youth. However, little is known about how traumatic experiences in this ethnic minority population relate to psychopathology in clinical samples and whether these outcomes vary by gender an...

In this study, we examined data from 200 families to investigate whether family functioning and adolescent psychiatric symptomatology were associated with differential attendance in a family-based or individually focused intervention for Latino adolescents. Latent profile analysis was used to identify families, and regression models were used to ex...

Motivation is a prominent target for substance use interventions because it is theorized to increase engagement in therapy and predict treatment outcomes. Establishing the validity of measures relevant to motivation among Hispanic/Latino adolescents will improve the resources available for screening and measuring change processes in a multicultural...

The purpose of this randomized trial was to investigate the efficacy of 2 behavioral treatments focusing on different change mechanisms in ameliorating a borderline personality disorder constellation of behaviors and substance use in adolescents referred by juvenile diversion programs. Forty adolescents 14-17 years of age and meeting Diagnostic and...

Objective The paper made a comparison between liquid phase extraction and solid phase extraction on the analysis of metabolite of heroin in hair. Methods Both heroin abused hair and 6-monoacetyl morphine spiked in hair were released with methanol under ultrasonic assistance followed by liquid extraction and solid extraction respectively. Then the e...

An RCT was conducted to test Culturally Informed and Flexible Family Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) to an individuallyoriented treatment (TAU) in modifying Internalizing and Externalizing symptoms, and family conflict. CIFFTA integrates individual, family, and psycho-educational interventions using an adaptive approach to tailor the treatment t...

There is growing interest in identifying interventions that have been tested and found efficacious with minority families. This interest is fueled in part by the growth of Hispanics in the U.S. as well as by research findings that suggest that Hispanics have better outcomes when treatments are adapted to their unique experiences, and risk and prote...

Prescription opioid use has grown rapidly, but few studies examined whether users have similar treatment responses as heroin users. Participants were 1,648 opioid users in Florida Access to Recovery (2004-2007). Participants engaged in methadone or buprenorphine maintenance had better retention than those in nonmaintenance treatment. Heroin only us...

A small randomized trial investigated a new family-based intervention for Hispanic adolescents who met DSM-IV criteria for substance abuse disorder. The Culturally Informed and Flexible Family-Based Treatment for Adolescents (CIFFTA) is a tailored/adaptive intervention that includes a flexible treatment manual and multiple treatment components. The...

Aim: The current study investigated whether adolescent gender, acculturation, and psychiatric variables could predict the frequency of participation in sexual activity among Hispanic substance abusing youth. Further analyses investigated whether the same variables could predict risky sexual practices among those adolescents that were already sexual...

The increasing utilization of evidence-based treatments has highlighted the need for treatment development efforts that can craft interventions that are effective with Hispanic substance abusing youth and their families. The list of evidence-based treatments is extremely limited in its inclusion of interventions that are explicitly responsive to th...

Hispanic adolescents have been shown to have high prevalence of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and substance abuse has been linked to risky sexual behaviors. The literature indicates that good parent-adolescent communication about sexual risk and safe sexual behaviors may help protect youth, yet little is known about this type of communic...

A growing emphasis on the utilization of empirically supported treatments for drug abuse and other psychiatric disorders (Barlow, 1996; SAMHSA, 2001) has also led to a need to specify treatments that have been developed and tested with Hispanics. Chambless and Hollon (1998, pp. 7–18) define empirically supported treatments as “clearly specified psy...

There is great significance to improving our understanding of predictors of treatment utilization among Hispanic substance abusing youth. One hundred and ten Hispanic substance abusing adolescents and their parents participated in a study of treatment utilization. Analyses showed that adolescents with lower numbers of externalizing disorders (χ = 4...

With the growing acceptance of the borderline personality disorder diagnosis for adolescents has come a need for specialized treatments for this challenging population. Further, because of the prominence of the family system during early and later adolescence, family treatments are particularly needed. The purpose of this article is to present the...