Overview

The Women, Co-Occurring Disorders and Violence Study is a five-year initiative jointly supported by the three centers of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)-the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, the Center for Mental Health Services and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The three agencies collaborated on the development and administration of a study on women with alcohol, drug abuse and mental health disorders who have histories of violence. Knowledge that is gained from this SAMHSA study is expected to be useful in advancing national, state and local policy that affects how the various service systems respond to these women with co-occurring disorders who have histories of violence.

The Phases

The Study is composed of two phases. Phase One was Years One and Two and Phase Two is Years Three through Five.

Phase One:

Fourteen Study Sites were selected to participate in Phase One (Years 1 & 2) of the federal study. The sites were to develop integrated service system strategies for women with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders who have also been victims of violence.

The primary focus of Phase One was:

	The implementation of a strategy for an effective system of care;
	The refinement and implementation of a qualitative evaluation;
	The design of service intervention models; and
	The development of multi-site outcome evaluation and the study site specific evaluations.

Phase Two:

Currently in Phase Two of the Study (Years 3-5), nine sites were selected to participate in the second phase of the Study. These sites, with technical assistance from the Study Coordinating Center, focused on the full implementation of the process and multi-site, client-level evaluation developed in Phase One.

The primary focus of Phase Two is:

	Full-scale implementation of the array of integrated services intervention models;
	Full-scale implementation of the Phase Two multi-site evaluation protocols; and
	Implementation of the multi-site cost study