15: Stress, Coping, and Health - Combatting Substance Abuse

Question 1

Combating Substance Abuse

Question 2

Psychological Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Answer 2

Disappointing results from traditional psychotherapy, such as long-term psychodynamic approaches, and limited effectiveness of biological treatments, pointed the way to cognitive-behavioural approaches, which have proven to be more cost-effective and successful in reducing abuse

Question 3

Psychological Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Motivational Interviewing

Answer 3

A treatment approach that avoids confrontation and leads clients to their own realization of a problem and to increased motivation to change

Question 4

Psychological Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Multimodal Treatment Approaches

Answer 4

Multimodal treatments – substance abuse interventions that combine a number of treatments

• Often combines a biological measure (nicotine patch) with psychological measures
  
  • Aversion therapy – undesired behaviour is associated with an aversive stimulus, such as nausea, to create a negative emotional response to the substance

Question 5

Psychological Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Relapse Prevention

Answer 5

Relapses – a return to the undesirable behaviour pattern

• Often occurs after a lapse (one time “slip”) in a high-risk situation (stressful event, social pressure)
• Lapse followed by abstinence violation effect (a person blames himself and concludes that he is incapable of resisting high risk situations)

Question 6

Psychological Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Harm Reduction Approaches to Prevention

Answer 6

Harm reduction – a prevention strategy that is designed not to eliminate a problem behaviour, but to reduce harmful consequences