These clients may believe that they are hopelessaddicts and failures, that they will never be able to achieve and maintainsobriety, and that there is no use in trying to change because they thinkthat they cannot succeed. Cognitive therapy adheres to the basic substance abuse counseling goals of planned brief therapy, buttreatment times can vary. It typically lasts from 12 to 20 weeks, with theclient and therapist meeting once per week. However, it can be conductedin less time–for instance, once per week for six to eight sessions.
Network Therapy
Some may view these responses as unhealthy, enabling, compensatory, or counterproductive, but they serve a purpose— to keep the system operating. This operating system directly influences treatment engagement, treatment outcomes, use of support systems, and sustained recovery for each family member. To ensure use of family counseling and family services to their greatest potential within SUD treatment, it is essential to broaden the focus of SUD treatment from an individual to a family perspective. It is common to acknowledge the unique individual factors (e.g., environmental, genetic, biological) that may influence a person’s substance misuse and SUD treatment outcomes. Yet equally important are interpersonal factors— social, occupational, and familial (relationships, dynamics, and interactions).
What are the Benefits of Family Systems Therapy
Your goal is to help families develop effective coping and communication skills that promote recovery and prevent returns to substance use. Your overall focus in family counseling is on the roles, relationships, and communication patterns of the family system (van Wormer & Davis, 2018). Be aware of the core objectives of family-based interventions as you work with family systems to identify their specific treatment goals.
Regular Sessions
MI and MET seek to help clients resolve their ambivalence about change, reinforce clients’ statements about why they want to change, and strengthen clients’ commitment to actually change their substance use behavior (Miller and Rollnick, 2002). MI is a relatively brief intervention (often limited to one session) that can be provided prior to the beginning of a treatment episode to try to enhance clients’ motivation for change or offered as a stand-alone intervention for individuals who are contemplating changes in their substance use. MI and MET emphasize counseling processes that are consistent with social control, social learning, and stress and coping theories. Family counseling in SUD treatment also differs from more general family systems approaches because it shifts the primary focus from being on the process of family interactions to planning the content of family sessions. The counselor primarily emphasizes substance use behaviors and their effects on family functioning. For example, in a couples session in which the couple discusses the husband’s return to drinking after a period of abstinence, the counselor would note the interactions between the husband and wife but zero in on the return to use.
The Impact of Substance Abuse on Parents of Adult Children
Recently, family counseling has thrived, as has research into family-based SUD treatment for adolescents and behavioral couples therapy (Lassiter et al., 2015). Family psychoeducation (Exhibit 1.6), multifamily groups, and limited family sessions are common approaches to integrating family counseling with SUD treatment, and objectives have expanded to support healing of entire families. By the 1980s, family psychoeducation programs became the hallmark of family-based interventions in SUD treatment programs.
Common Components of Effective Treatment
Issue 2. How well do the presumed active ingredients predict treatment outcomes?
- A 12-session CBT for cocaine addicts suggested that thislength of treatment is sufficient to achieve and stabilize abstinence fromcocaine (Carroll, 1998).
- When substance misuse occurs in the family, members will try to manage the behavior of the person who is using drugs or alcohol and the consequences of that use for the family.
- Normative feedback and increasing the discrepancy between current and desired behavior should help to motivate and sustain change, especially when the information is shared with an empathic, directive counselor.
- When family members become involved in counseling, they may want to tell you secrets outside a family session.