68 Chapter 3 assessments of adolescents and young adults’ emotional and behavioral problems in order to avert potential self-report bias. This study is the first to demonstrate that the effect of a personalitytargeted substance use prevention program is equally beneficial for young adults with a mild intellectual disability who have high and low behavioral problems. Whereas the personality-targeted substance use approach was more effective for youngsters of average intelligence with higher levels of externalizing symptoms (Perrier-Ménard et al., 2017), our findings support the notion that a personality-targeted program reduces substance use regardless of how severe their behavioral problems are (Edalati & Conrod, 2019). This finding has important clinical implications, as it suggests that the program is applicable for youngsters with varying levels of emotional and behavioral problems. All participants received care in specialized intra- and extramural care facilities for adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability. In order to be admitted to these treatment facilities, the adolescents and young adults were screened on all diagnostic criteria for intellectual disability (intelligence, adaptive functioning and onset; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As participants were all recruited from specialized care centers, they naturally belong to our target group. We therefore only obtained IQ scores via client files and we did not screen participants on all criteria of a mild intellectual disability. Whereas we do not expect that this impacted the results, the small sample size does form a limitation for the statistical power. As with other substance use intervention studies for adolescents and young adults with a mild intellectual disability and complex emotional and/ or behavioral problems (van Duijvenbode & VanDerNagel, 2019), recruiting a sample with sufficient statistical power was difficult. Many adolescents and young adults who—according to their clinician—could benefit from Take it Personal!, lacked the intrinsic motivation to change and thus did not comply. Substance using people with a mild intellectual disability generally do not perceive their substance use as a problem, and therefore refuse to engage in programs that aim to change substance use or related problems (Taggart et al., 2006; Chapman & Wu, 2012). Furthermore, it is a common characteristic of people with a mild intellectual disability that their motivation to change can vary strongly from day to day (Frielink et al., 2015). Therefore, timing the offering of an intervention/prevention program is essential. Specific features of our study, such as the required three or four participant Take it Personal! group constellations and the possibility of being included in the control arm, further hampered recruitment efforts. Consequently, this study’s findings on emotional and behavioral problems in Take it Personal! should be seen in the
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