The Benefits Of Outpatient Behavioral Therapy

Many participants engaged the group with stories of overcoming addiction or being sexually molested by family members as reasons behind their addiction. However all of their stories were compelling and empowering to the group of individuals who have seemed to endure some of the same sentiments as their fellow group mate. It appeared as if the individuals in the group even though that were court ordered appeared to be extremely engaged and very involved during the meetings. It seemed as though most who attended found peace and solice from the group during the NA meetings. As it stated by Krentzman, Robinson, Moore, et.al (2010), client’s state that their top two reasons for attending NA meetings were to promote recovery/ sobriety and to find support acceptance and friendships. One thing that I learned from the NA group that just as in AA, family support deems to be an important function on the perseverance of an addict and that the participation and involvement of family is detrimental in the treatment process for the addicts. In several of our readings many of the passages discussed the effects of family systems support as it pertains to substance abusers chemical addiction. The passages described the family system as being a detrimental part of the treatment process as well as for the treatment of the family as well. According to past studies, family involvement has aided clients in

The family has a central role to play in the treatment of any health problem, including substance abuse. Family work has become a strong and continuing theme of many treatment approaches , but family therapy is not used to its greatest capacity in substance abuse treatment. A primary challenge remains the broadening of the substance abuse treatment focus from the individual to the family.The two disciplines, family therapy and substance abuse treatment, bring different perspectives to treatment implementation. In substance abuse treatment, for instance, the client is the identified patient (IP)—the person in the family with the presenting substance abuse problem. In family therapy, the goal of treatment is to meet the needs of all family members.

In 1985 Dr. Howard Liddle developed Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) in an effort to combat adolescent substance abuse along with associated mental health and behavioral issues (Rowe, 2010). Combining multiple theoretical frameworks, such as developmental psychology, family systems theory, and the risk and protective model of adolescent substance abuse, Liddle created a multi-systems approach to focus on the adolescent as an individual, family member, and peer; the parents as individuals and their caregiving roles; the family and their interconnected relationships as well as the family environment; and extra-familial influential systems, such as school, peer networks, and the juvenile justice system (Liddle, 2010). This ecological conceptual framework allows for MDFT to delve deeper into understanding the adolescent’s intersecting environments and relationships in regard to their own development and substance abuse.

For this paper, I am focusing on two models; the Family Disease Model and the Multisystemic Family Therapy Model (MSFT). The Family Disease Model is based on the concept that addiction is a disease, and that this disease affects the whole household. Family members who are not addicted may become codependent on the addict for their emotional or material support. This model aims to treat the entire family by approaching addiction as a condition that can be addressed through modifications in behavior or environment. Family therapy in substance abuse treatment has two main purposes. First, it seeks to use the family’s strengths and resources to develop ways to live without substances of abuse. Second, it ameliorates the impact of chemical dependency on both the Identified Patient and the family. The person abusing substances is regarded as a subsystem within the family unit. Relationships within this subsystem are the points of therapeutic interest and intervention. The therapist facilitates discussions and problem-solving sessions, often with the entire family group or subgroups, but sometimes with a single participant, who may or may not be the person with the substance use disorder.

According to the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family (2017), the family systems theory is defined as, “a theory that of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems thinking to describe the complex interactions in the unit” (para. 1). When applying the family systems theory to the family that I assessed, I found that this family lacks emotional support from one another. The children in this family feels as if their mother is choosing her addiction over them. Therefore, based on the family systems theory, this family lacks an emotional strong unit. If drug abuse was not a factor in the family dynamics, then they could possibly have a strong family

More importantly, newer research has investigated the importance of family-based therapy for adolescents who practice drug abuse. Research by Liddle et al. suggests that multidimensional family therapy reduces substance abuse, delinquency, risks for future problems, and encourages the protective processes more than group treatments over the course of one year (21-22). Although previous research on family-based

Interventions that counselors can conduct when working with families of substance abusing adolescents, is family therapy because it can focus on a wide variety of problems. Other

3.) Outpatient Treatment - This is a transitional type of drug addiction treatment that provides professional therapies several times a week, sometimes coupled with independent or semi-supervised substance-free living arrangements.

The Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is a home-based treatment program developed by Henggler in 1970 that focuses on the factors of family and community. The program is intended to equip parents of troubled youth with tools to handle the difficulties of their behavior. The MST therapists work with the most difficult juveniles, male and female, between the ages of 12 and 17 who tend to have extensive criminal arrest histories. The MST concentrates on numerous aspects contributing to a delinquent lifestyle, such as juveniles’ homes, families, schools, teachers, neighborhoods, and friends. The psychoanalysts go to a child’s home and work with parents in order to put them in control over their kids.

The key concepts of behavior therapy are that it “is grounded on a scientific view of human behavior that accommodates a systematic and structured approach to counseling” (Corey, 2013, p. 250). The attention is focused on the behavior of the person. Behavior therapy is about giving control to the client to expand their freedom. “People have the capacity to choose how they will respond to external events in their environment” (Corey, 2013, p. 250).

Cognitive Behavior Therapy teaches the client to deals with these side effects by being able to process the information without feeling scared. During the sessions, the patient can liberate themselves from fear, desperation, and suicidal thoughts. It allows the client to build skills that will help them cope with these feelings and cravings for the drug (Baker & Lee, 2005).

Drug and alcohol treatment programs generally fall into one of two categories — inpatient or outpatient rehab. While equally focused on rehabilitation, each type has unique attributes and benefits to offer. Inpatient rehabs are intensive, residential treatment programs designed to treat addictions. Outpatient rehabs are part-time programs, allowing the recovering user to keep going to work or school during the day.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was developed as a method to prevent relapse when treating people with alcohol problems and then later it was adapted for drug-addicted individuals. Cognitive behavioral strategies are based on the theory that in the development of maladaptive behavioral patterns.

Another method to treating alcoholism is outpatient therapy. Outpatient therapy offers a wide variety of programs for patients who visit on a consistent basis. Almost all of the programs will offer psychological therapy of some sort, in the form of individual or group counseling. Often it is easier to talk about the addiction in a group of people with the same problems rather than alone. Out-patient therapy often is not effective by itself for the serious alcoholic. Usually this therapy is combined with another method.

Multidimensional family therapy is a family based therapeutic approach that focuses on adolescent substance abuse and other associated mental health and behavioural problems (Liddle, 2009). The overall aim of multidimensional family therapy is to eliminate substance abuse and crime, and to improve mental health, school performance, and family functioning (website). To achieve these aims, multidimensional family therapy (MDFT) uses both adolescent focused individual sessions, parental focused individual sessions, and joint sessions to enhance family functioning and stability (Liddle, 2009). During therapy, MDFT constructs full picture of the adolescent’s and the family’s behaviour by using a multidimensional assessment approach that targets 4 key areas: the adolescent as an individual and a member of the family, the parent as an individual and as a caretaker, family interactions, and extra familiar social situations like school and peer relationships (Liddle, 2009). MDFT concentrates on youth between the ages of 13-18 and is used in a variety of settings including, drug abuse and mental health settings, juvenile justice and welfare settings, and in an early prevention setting for young adolescents ("What is Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT)", 2017). There are ten main principals of MDFT including: adolescent substance abuse as a multidimensional phenomenon, problem situations provide important assessment information, change is multidetermined, motivation is malleable,