Group Psychotherapy With Addicted Populations

1
Group Psychotherapy With Addicted Populations

• HLSC 2120

2
A well conducted group

• Flores states A well-conducted group in
  conjunction with AA has a substantial impact on
  the treatment effectiveness with this population.

3
Group Psychotherapy

• Modern group therapy is aimed at resolving
  impediments of its members by saying new things
  and establishing new relationships.

4
1) Bridging

• Melt barriers of isolation.
• It is believed that clients are more apt to
  respond to peer influence rather than to
  authoritative influence.
• Similarity bridging
• Reactive bridging

5
2) Focus on Immediacy

• A group in which resistances to immediacy are
  resolved is a group that brims with life.
• Flores

6
3) Establishing the Observing Ego

• The insightful ones

7
4) Developing the Insulation Barrier

• The therapist has learned how to strengthen and
  thicken these insulation barriers so that these
  people can more successfully wall off what is
  noxious to their function and sense of self.

8
5) Accentuating Emotional Communication

• One of the most important technical operations is
  to keep the group on an emotional level.

9
The Influence of the Disease Model

• Rather, it is seen as a primary condition that
  must first be arrested if any progress in
  treatment is to be achieved and abstinence from
  all chemicals must by the first goal of recovery.

10
Disease concept

• However, the disease concept stands that view
  completely on its head. Depression, anxiety, and
  character pathology are now viewed as a
  symptoms-the result, not the cause-of addiction.

11
Specific Implications of Group Therapy with
Chemical Dependency

• the nature of the addiction process itself,
  which either produces or exacerbates depression,
  anxiety, isolation, denial, shame, transient
  cognitive impairment, and character pathology.

12
A disease of denial

• Addiction is, in fact, frequently cited as a
  disease of denial.

13
Altering a defensive style

• the advantages group psychotherapy provides by
  confronting and altering the addicts and
  alcoholic's defensive style is a major theme.

14
The power of peer influence

• By the crowd, they have been broken, by the
  crowd they shall be healed.
• Ettin (1998)

15
Group Therapy

• Washton (1992) summarizes advantages of group
  therapy
• 1) Mutual identification with and acceptance
  from others going through similar problems.
• 2) Positive role modeling for abstinence and
  reality testing about chemical use is enhanced
  because the addicted person has the opportunity
  to better understand their own attitudes about
  addictions and their defenses against giving up
  chemicals by confronting similar attitudes and
  defenses in others.

16
Group Therapy

• 3) Confrontation, immediate feedback and positive
  peer pressure for abstinence.
• 4) Affiliation, cohesiveness, social support
  while learning to identify and communicate
  feelings more directly.
• 5) Structures, discipline and limit setting while
  permitting experiential learning and exchange of
  factual information about recovery and drug use.
• 6) Instillation of hope, inspiration for the
  future and the pursuit of shared goals and ideas.

17
Addiction viewed as a disease

• Accepting addiction as a disease means viewing
  this condition as a physiological illness with
  emotional, behavioral, and conditioned response
  components, not as a secondary sign or symptom of
  some underlying mental or emotional disorder.

18
Disease concept

• Finally, the disease concept establishes
  addiction as the primary illness and not some
  underlying symptom that will be alleviated once
  the real problem is solved.

19
Physiological effects

• flexible thinking, fluid intelligence, and new
  learning, alcoholics and addicts consistently
  score in the brain-impaired range. Yet their
  verbal intelligence and old learning remains
  pretty much intact. Consequently, they will often
  appear unimpaired to the unsuspecting observer.