Multisystemic Therapy
 MST is an intensive family- and community-based treatment that addresses multiple aspects of serious antisocial behavior in adolescents. The multisystemic approach views an individual's behavior as being influenced by the "systems" around them-family, peers, school, neighborhood-as well as by the individual's thoughts and feelings about those systems. As such, MST interventions address the many factors that are known to contribute to delinquency across the key settings, or systems, within which youth live, work and play.
- MST strives to promote behavior changes in the child's natural environment, using the strengths of each system (e.g., family, peers, school, neighborhood) to facilitate change.
- MST is a home-based therapy. This design helps overcome barriers to service, increases family retention in treatment, allows for the provision of intensive services (i.e., therapists have low case loads), and enhances the maintenance of successful behavior changes. The usual duration of MST treatment is approximately four months.
- MST typically targets chronic, violent, or substance abusing juvenile offenders who are at high risk of out-of-home placement away from their families.
- Empirically-supported clinical interventions are delivered through a home-based model, including strategic family therapy, structural family therapy, behavioral parenting training, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, as appropriate.
- A recent study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated savings of $31,000 to $131,000 for each youth served in MST (based on MST preventing a subsequent incident requiring social or judicial services).
- The implementation of MST has shown decreased adolescent substance use, decreased adolescent psychiatric symptoms, reduced long-term re-arrest rates 25 to 70 percent and reduced long-term out-of-home placement 47 to 64 percent.
Learn more about MST
Visit MST's Web site
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