Jill B is a 49 woman who voluntarily attends an outpatient psychotherapy clinic for assistance in reducing her drinking habits. While trying her best to stay sober at all times, Jill often runs into a number of high-risk situations which puts her at risk for lapses or relapses to occur. One high-risk situation is Jill recently getting divorced for a second time. Experiencing feelings of irritability and fatigue stemming from the loss of her job which is also a high-risk situation.…
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(1), 3-16. Doherty, W.J., & Simmons, D.S. (January, 1996). Clinical practice patterns of marriage and family therapy: A national survey of therapists and their clients. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 22(1), 9-26. Duncan, B.L., Solovey, A.D., & Rusk, G.S. (1992).…
A meta-analysis (Powers, Vedel, & Emmelkamp, 2008) have recognized that behavioral couples therapy (BCT) isn’t only for drug abuse client’s cohabitation, but also it can have a positive effect on alcoholism for individual based treatments client’s as well. Rather it’s a female or male client in treat counseling inclines treatment retention, while declining the use of drugs (heroin) use. In addition for the client to cope with reality they’re likely being slowly weaned off any ATOD with either an opioid detoxification, in addition to methadone, or followed up by rehabilitation maintenance. This demonstrates another form of having a reinforcement based treatment (RBT) which is individually based and the (BCT) is grouped based.…
“Getting sober is hard. Making sobriety last is much harder” (Rosenberg). Relapse rates for drug and alcohol abusers is much higher than it should be. Only about 50 percent of people who have attended a residential drug treatment facility stay in recovery (Rosenberg). In the article “Staying Sober After Treatment Ends,” Tina Rosenberg discusses how continuing sobriety after rehabilitation services, specifically impatient services, is much harder than one would think.…
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a prevalent problem in today’s society. It is characterized by an addiction or dependence to alcohol that causes harm for the individual and those around them(Halter, 2014). One of the forms of treatments for AUD is attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). This group aims to help people suffering from AUD by helping them get sober using a 12 step model (Halter, 2014). The goal of this paper is to gain insight on the AA program and to better understand people suffering from AUD.…
The consequences of alcohol consumption can be severe, especially for the poor. Alcoholics spend all of the money they have to sustain their addiction, and in return can cause their family to face extreme consequences such as not being able to afford clothes, rent, or even food. Alcoholics do whatever they can to get their hands on alcohol, while their family is doing whatever they can to survive. In The Glass Castle, Rex Walls serves as an example of how alcoholism can have serious financial consequences and severely affect a family. Alcoholism is defined as an addiction to the consumption of alcohol, or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from dependency on alcohol.…
This could provide the couple with the opportunity to identify and share feelings and create a space for open communication. If a partner is able to understand the addicts problem, they will be able to deal more effectively with it and become less emotionally reactive. If the addict was only to attend couple therapy without individual therapy, they may not receive the help they need. In couple therapy, the addict will only learn how to communicate better with their partner. Without individual therapy, the addict will not be provided with the opportunity to work on themselves and learn new ways of coping to reduce impulses.…
More than two million individuals vouch that A.A. is working for them and can work for others. Through providing the assurance of anonymity, it gives individuals who have this problem a safe and judge free environment. As a result, this group is successful in serving as a support system. They strive to establish a program of recovery and are fulfilling this by creating and promoting a program of abstinence. It is known that the “Twelve Steps” has worked well as a guide for alcoholics to maintain sobriety.…
Psychological Issues Impacting on Health Needs (Niven, 1994 pp.118-119.) stated “although psychological well-being is difficult to define, one condition that contributes, in a negative way, to well-being is depression”. Marjory’s low mood has taken an impact on her family, self identity and self esteem. Marjory is displaying Becks cognitive theory of depression where she is exaggerating negative events and minimising the positives, she also has selective abstraction, only thinking about the negative points of their behaviour. Marjory has felt she has lost all her dignity, this is due to not being able to use the toilet when she wants instead, having a urinary catheter attached, not being able to breathe on her own and given continuous oxygen to help Marjory breathe. This can make any person feel as they have lost their identity, loss of self-esteem and loss of independence, (Perkins, 2012).…
The Alcoholic Anonymous is a program targeted to help individuals on their road to recovery from alcoholism. Founded in 1935, the program has since then changed the stigmas associated with alcoholism and substance abuse, and has allowed individuals to join the meetings with dignity. This paper focuses on a first hand account of a nursing student’s experience at an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting. This paper also focuses on the effects of substance abuse on the mental health of people and the Twelve-Step programs associated with helping people overcome substance abuse. The data and information in this paper was derived from my attendance of the meeting as well as professional literature.…
Harm reduction is an effective way of help people with addiction issues, it meets the addicts where they are on their journey and doesn’t try to force abstinence on them, which let’s face it, tends to backfire! “Harm reduction allows us to assess each person individually and plan treatment that is tailored to the individual’s relationship with alcohol and other drugs. It also incorporates other important problems: emotional disorders, family problems, social alienation, and medical complications. (Denning, 2001.)” This allows the people to have other focuses without losing sight of addiction and it is unique in the sense that patients don’t have to commit to abstinence.…
In the book, ‘Substance Abuse and the Family” by Michael D. Reiter stresses on how the family structure regulates around the use of substance and the abuse cause from it. In chapter 14, he stresses about family recovery and the recovery process in which the family must take to restructure the family and their rules where they have an open honest relationship due to communicating. Brown and Lewis presented a four-stage developmental model of recovery for families dealing with alcoholism. The first stage of the model is the drinking stage. Brown and Lewis describes the emphasis of the family during this stage: to hide and maintain the secret, to be in denial and create excuses for the alcoholic, and to have the firm certainty that there…
I cannot imagine the amount of courage it takes for someone to walk into an AA meeting for the first time, admitting that they have a problem. Sitting outside of the Portland Recovery Community Center (on Feb. 15th at 17:32) was extremely intimidating and frightening experience as is, let alone if I was entering the meeting acknowledging that I was an alcoholic and that I needed help. I can see how individuals enter their first meeting with a loss of face due to the fear of humiliation and social embarrassment. I was kicking myself in the butt for not doing more research about the typical AA meeting (having no idea what to expect in the minutes to follow) as I anxiously walked through the door. I think I rambled off ten questions at the poor…
In the process of obtaining healthy goals that surpass abstinence the client must develop a plan that incorporates an educational approach to relapse. Not every client is a carbon copy of another and there for must be approached with a degree of honest self-assessment in order to identify contextual differences that may affect the overall success of the client. Relapse prevention begins with the process of treatment as it is structured, the contextual changes presented in social structures, and the models used in relapse prevention. Proper planning begins the process of change necessary for recovery, and addresses the expected deterioration of change many will experience.…
may not take much to make them lose their way on the road to recovery. As a result, they feel justified with returning to alcohol or drugs. This is why it is important for self-efficacy to remain high for recovering addicts. One’s commitment to abstinence is a strong predictor for motivation in the reductions of drug and alcohol use. The level of commitment to abstinence at treatment end predicts sustained abstinence, a requirement for recovery (Laudet & Stanick, 2010).…