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Adm Policy Ment Health (2012) 39:118132 DOI 10.1007/s10488-012-0408-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Motivation for Youths Treatment Scale (MYTS): A New Tool for Measuring Motivation Among Youths and Their Caregivers
Carolyn S. Breda Manuel Riemer
Published online: 11 March 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract Treatment motivation can be important for treatment adherence and outcomes, yet few measures of motivation are available for youths in mental health settings. These authors describe the psychometric properties of the motivation for youths treatment scale (MYTS), an 8-item measure with forms for youths and caregivers that assesses their problem recognition and treatment readiness. Results indicate that the MYTS offers practitioners and researchers a brief, psychometrically sound tool for assessing treatment motivation of youths and their care-givers. Multivariate analyses of clinical and non-clinical characteristics of youths and caregivers show that youths symptom severity consistently predicts treatment motivation for both groups. However, the strain of caring for the youth adds signicantly to caregivers recognition of the youths troubles. While caregiver and youth motivations correlate, their agreement is low. Caregivers are nearly always more treatment motivated than youths. The authors discuss the implications of their ndings for measurement, treatment planning, and future research.
Keywords Treatment motivation Caregiver motivation
Treatment readiness Predictors of motivation
Youth therapy
Introduction
Youth commonly come to treatment pressured by parents, schools, or the judicial system. Yet, some (e.g., DiClemente and Prochaska 1998) suggest that such external pressures are inadequate to effect the treatment adherence required for positive clinical outcomes (McMurran et al. 2006; Breda and Heinger 2004; Simpson 2001; DiClemente and Prochaska 1998; Ryan et al. 1995; DeLeon et al. 1994). Thus, one focus of therapy is to transform external pressures into intrinsic motivation to seek and stay in treatment.
Denitions of treatment motivation generally include some aspect of the readiness among individuals to change their behavior (Prochaska 1995; Melnick et al. 1997). For example, the stages of change model (Prochaska 1995), which can be applied to substance use and mental health populations, identies ve phases through which one may progress (and regress) throughout the treatment process: precontemplation (not yet ready to recognize a problem), contemplation (willing to recognize a problem but not ready to commit to change), preparation (intention to take action), action (overt actions toward change), and maintenance...