Substance Abuse Case Study

Edward is an approximately 30 yo Caucasian male who lives in California. Edward presented in the interview as relaxed and confident, sitting with his arm stretched over the couch. Edward stated his main goal today was in the spirit of helping others by telling his prescription substance use disorder story.

Each 16 bed facility houses female patients with substance use disorders who may also have co-occurring mental health disorders. The primary focus of treatment is on substance use at three of the four sites. One house is a co-occurring disorder focus house. The women are mothers who either have their children under age 5 placed there, they are awaiting placement, are pregnant, or are trying to regain custody of their children. All of these conditions may apply to one mother.

Mr. Boyd reported in October of 2013, Ms. How-Boyd became a United States citizen. He stated that she said “now that I am an American, I can marry any undocumented alien, so they may obtain a green card”. Mr. Boyd stated that it was clear she no longer had any use for him. He stated that the tension grew in the home. He indicated that he believed Ms. How-Boyd was intentionally trying to “annoy him”. He stated that Ms. How-Boyd would arrive home as late as 4:00 a.m., and come into the home slamming the front door and being rambunctious. He indicated that the mother did not seem to care that the noise was affecting Annick as well. He stated that the child complained that she would sometimes fall asleep in school, because of the noise the mother was making. He reported that Ms. How-Boyd would often remove Annick out

In this scenario, client Edward is an African American college student who is currently studying in local public university. His major is Engineering with a minor in criminal justice, and it is dangerous for him right now because he started to stop going to school which might influence his current scholarships. Edward had health insurance and his reports showed that he was in good health two years ago, but he never did physical after that.

My brochure is meant to bring awareness to the options for help with battling a prescription opioid drug abuse. I created this brochure because I know that North Carolina has a problem with prescription drug abuse; I found that the rate of overdoses have been increasing. I chose to start my opening panel with a hook in order to draw attention. I found the image first of a person holding bars made of different pills. That image gave me the idea of comparing drug dependence to a life sentence because people end up staying dependent on opioids for their life or in some cases, die after an overdose.

He is often seen going to the nurse to get vaseline for his lips instead of buying his own chap-stick to bring to school. When he takes his medication, he does not eat much at lunch stating that he is not hungry and then will gorge on food when he gets home after school. For substance abuse screening, he tested negative and received "none" for alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, illicit drugs, and misuse or prescribed and over the counter drugs. He has had no suicidal or homicidal ideations. He is somewhat compliant with his treatment. There are days where he is not compliant at all and will want to do his own thing. He also has a history of multiple diagnoses.

Since Sara believed that if she lost weight, she would feel desired again. Not to mention, she was grieving her husband’s absents and abused the drug to cope with her emotions. Brooks and McHenry (2015) state how the older population is never identified for having an addiction problem, however, the uniqueness of the group is that they start abusing substances later in life, such as coping with social, emotional, relational, medical, or pragmatic problems (Brooks & McHenry, 2015, p. 37). In Sara’s case, she believed if she fit into the red dress again, life would go back to the time when her husband was alive, life would be better, and she would not feel lonely again.

A particular situation I can recall was when I began working in the field as a parent aide. I was supervising a visit between a mother and her children and did not realize that the mother was intoxicated. I had observed the mother fall asleep a few times, but I never thought she might be intoxicated. The case manager happened to stop in to the visit to observe and asked the mother to step out for a moment; when they reentered the room the case manager told me that she was going to end the visit early, due to the mother being under the influence of drugs. I felt really bad that I did not recognize the symptoms and had allowed the mother to interact with her children. I did not notice because I had never been in the presence of anyone under

Although the DSM 5 does not identify the distinction between substance abuse and substance dependence, it is still important to understand the difference, as it would be helpful for diagnosis and treatment planning. According to Stanford (2008), substance abuse is when a person continuously uses a substance despite the frequent undesirable consequences related to that specific use. The undesirable consequences may include loss of a job, legal difficulties (DUIs), health issues or marital problems (domestic abuse) among many other consequences. However, in regards to a diagnosis, the maladaptive pattern of the substance use must have occurred repeatedly over a twelve-month period.

What I learned about the presentation about SUB is that the American psychiatrist association are removing the Diagnosis abuse of drugs and drug independent. It used to be seen and define as different problems. There will be 11 criteria for diagnosis these problems that are substance abuse disorder. A substance abuse disorder is a partner of substance abuse of distress. If a person meets two or more of the elven criteria’s in a 12 months, they can be diagnosis with substances abuse if they are meet four or more they are categorizing with a server of the disorder. This will be a better used to see how alcohol and drugs affects people and understand how much people they need help. A substance abuse disorder deal with two symptoms tolerance

Substance abuse in an all too common occurrence. It can truly change a person, and leave a person addicted often alone with little to no support from others. A client seeking help is a client taking a large step, and help can be seen as taking a big risk.

Mark (not his real name) is an 11 year old boy, the oldest of three children. He will be attending middle school in the fall. His brother and sister are 10 and four years old, respectively. Mark’s mother has worked with my wife for many years. Prior to this assignment, my knowledge of Mark came almost entirely from conversations with my wife. The mother is a youth group minister, and the father is in police work. My wife and I socialized with the parents a few times over the past 10 years, primarily at adult-only work events. We did watch the boys for a day about five years ago. I remember them being unusually active. The mother has consulted my wife in the past for ideas for managing the boys. As a result of this background, I anticipated possible challenges with setting and

You made a very good point about CBT and how effective it has been in helping families with substance abuse issues. CBT and Behavioral approaches are based on the idea that maladaptive behaviors, including substance use and abuse, are reinforced through family interactions (Ozechowski & Liddle, 2000). For instance, drug abuse by adolescents may be directly modeled and reinforced by other family members. Furthermore, an individual with a substance use disorder generally brings a family into treatment, it is possible that more than one person in the family has substance abuse problems, mental illness, problems with domestic violence, or some other major difficulty. Behaviorally oriented treatment tries to change interactions and target behaviors

There are many reasons why individuals have a substance abuse addiction. There are many theories and pathways that have been researched and linked to substance abuse. However, according to David Smith, MD (n.d), the three most important aspects of the development of addiction progress is due to emotional, physical, and existence of addict’s addiction (Inaba & Cohen, 2014). In addition, according to Inaba and Cohen (2014), Individuals can have substance disorders resulting from combinations of environmental trauma, stress, the effects of psychoactive drugs that are addictive, and hereditary-predisposition. Furthermore, triggers and cravings are a major influence and factor to substance abuse. Individuals may be in a certain type of environment

Well, it is more than obvious that Jen has some issues in her life that she tries to suppress with alcohol or that she tried to overcome with marijuana usage. Moreover, it is important to look at all aspects of her problems. Smoking marijuana in order to ‘’reduce stress’’ (more likely to forget about her abuse as a kid) through her high school time doesn’t look like a big issue, but it might left a pattern that Jen picked up later in her life in order to deal with her problems. She obviously learned that facing problems through substance usage is her way to go and to deal with the same, which is completely wrong. In my opinion, as I stated, smoking marijuana does not present a substance abuse problem, but rather a core for something that became substance abuse later in Jen’s life. She states that she can go couple of days without alcohol, but also that she uses it in order to reduce her stress. Furthermore, Jen feels anxious about the times when she does not use the alcohol.