The role of family and significant others in the engagement and retention of drug-dependent individuals.

Family factors have been part of the drug abuse lore at least since Fort's early (1954) paper commenting on the parents of heroin addicts. Subse-quently, the literature on family variables in the process and treatment of drug problems has shown steady and increasing accumulation; there were nearly 400 such publications between 1954 and 1978 (Stanton 1978), and that total would appear to have at least doubled by now (Heath and Atkinson 1988; Kaufman 1985; Mackenson and Cottone 1992; Sorenson 1989; Stanton 1988).