54 Chapter 3 Abstract Adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability or borderline intellectual functioning are at-risk for problematic substance use and are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems than peers without a mild intellectual disability. A personality-based prevention program called Take it Personal! effectively reduces substance use in adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability or borderline intellectual functioning. We examined the program’s effectiveness on its secondary goal: reducing emotional and behavioral problems. Furthermore, the potentially moderating role of these problems on the program’s effectiveness on substance use was explored. Substance use and emotional and behavioral problems were compared between participants following Take it Personal! (n = 34) and those in the control condition (n = 32) in a quasiexperimental pre-posttest study design with a 3-month follow-up. Multilevel models assessed program effectiveness and moderation. Take it Personal! seems to reduce rule-breaking. There were no significant effects on anxious, withdrawn, and aggressive problems. None of the problem domains moderated the program’s effectiveness on substance use frequency. Findings suggest that Take it Personal! may effectively reduce rule-breaking. Moreover, adolescents and young adults with different levels of emotional and behavioral problems benefit equally in terms of reduced substance use. Keywords Substance use, Internalizing problems, Externalizing problems, Prevention, Adolescents, Intellectual disability.
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