Headshot of Dr. Michael Dennis
Michael L. Dennis, Ph.D.
SENIOR RESEARCH PSYCHOLOGIST & DIRECTOR OF THE GLOBAL APPRAISAL OF INDIVIDUAL NEEDS (GAIN) COORDINATING CENTER, NORMAL, IL

Dr. Michael L. Dennis is a Senior Research Psychologist and the Director of the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) Coordinating Center at Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington IL. He was the coordinating center principal investigator (PI) of the largest adolescent treatment experiment to date, the Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) study. Over the past decade he has been coordinating center director or co-PI of over a dozen other adolescent treatment experiments and grant programs funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Dennis is currently chair of the Society for Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment (SASATE) and is a past chair of the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE). He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters, manuals, or monographs, and other kinds of technical reports, edited several special journal issues on adolescent and adult substance abuse treatment, has or is serving on multiple journal editorial boards and grant review groups.

 
Dr. Dennis is the primary developer of the GAIN -- a standardized biopsychosocial to help make clinical decisions about diagnosis, placement, and treatment planning -- that is designed as a key piece of infrastructure to bridge the gap between clinical research and moving practice towards evidenced based practice. Under his direction, the GAIN Coordinating Center has provided training and support to use it for over 500 adolescent and adult research studies, demonstration grants, states, and agencies through out the U.S., Canada and Mexico. He received his Doctorate in Psychology from Northwestern University under fellowships to improve the quality of community-based research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Dennis recently received JMATE's 2006 Award for Research to Evidenced Based Practice and a 2004 MERIT award from NIDA to extend his work on managing substance use a chronic condition.

 

RECENT POSTS

May 26, 2010
Adolescent Substance Abuse: JMATE Call for Presentations and More

adolescent-substance-abuse-treatment_JMATE-photos-of-teensInterested in juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse treatment?

Then you don't want to miss the nation's only conference devoted exclusively to adolescent substance abuse treatment -- the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE). It will be held in Baltimore this year, December 14- 16, 2010. You can learn more at the new conference web site, which you'll want to bookmark: www.jmate.org/jmate2010. Registration will open on June 1, 2010. A call for abstracts will be open from April 1–June 4, 2010. [May 25, 2010 UPDATE: According to the JMATE web site, the deadline to submit proposal abstracts for presentations has been extended to July 1, 2010. - Ed.]

The 2010 JMATE offers a unique opportunity for practice, research, and recovery communities to exchange ideas and data, thereby moving the field of adolescent substance abuse treatment toward effective, evidence-based, and promising practices. As a premiere meeting, JMATE provides high-caliber content and speakers.

January 12, 2010
Integrating the GAIN ABS System with an Electronic Record System like WITS

[As adolescent treatment providers invest in eletronic medical record systems, a natural question arises: how do we integrate our assessment tool into our new record system? Dr. Michael Dennis, creator of the GAIN, has some answers. --Ed.]

This post is a little technical, so here's the bottom line: we will be happy to work with individual treatment providers or with vendors to customize their systems to integrate GAIN data into their electronic medical records. (Scroll to the bottom of this post for contact information.)

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During the past 3 years, Chestnut Health Systems has collaborated with the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) and over 30 agencies to revise the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) instrument and software to allow it to better integrate with the growing number of electronic medical records systems. Several people have asked us to give a brief update on the status of what we have done so far in this area.

January 12, 2010
GAIN Short Screener IDs Needs of Adolescents in Washington, No Matter Which Door They Come In

adolescent-substance-abuse-treatment-screening-WA-state-data-GAIN-graphIn January 2007, the state of Washington mandated use of a 15-item, past-year version of the GAIN Short Screener (GAIN-SS) for all adolescents and adults seen by the Department of Social and Health Services in the state’s chemical dependency, mental health, child-welfare and justice programs.
 
Lucenko and colleagues1 recently used the data gathered through these sources to compile a report to the Washington legislature on the prevalence of co-occurring disorders in people presenting to these services. 
 
Figure 1 summarizes her results for adolescents. Consistent with prior research, the report shows that implementation of a simple screener identified youth with mental health, substance use or both in each setting.

October 13, 2009
Adolescent Substance Abuse: GAIN-Related Publications Using Practice-Based Evidence

One of the great advantages of using the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) to assess individuals for substance abuse and mental health issues is the amount of high-quality data it collects that can be used to improve services and tailor treatment -- in this case, for adolescents. 

Before the GAIN, there wasn't a lot of reliable data available about adolescent needs. Now there is. By June 30, 2009 there were over 1,127 state, county, agencies and grantees (including 271 from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment [CSAT]) using the GAIN.  This includes 271 CSAT grantees that have pooled their data and made it available for secondary analysis by local evaluators, researchers and students to help move the field forward with "practice-based evidence".  Close to 50 different scientists from over three dozen agencies are using the data.