Addiction : CBT For Addiction Flashcards
What is the idea behind CBT for addiction?
According to CBT, addiction is a learnt response which stems from irrational thoughts processes and maladaptive behaviours. CBT therapists treat addiction by guiding addicts to learn new patterns of thinking and behaving that help them avoid engaging in their addiction.
Outline Functional Analysis as a technique for dealing with addiction.
- How does it work? The client and therapist work together to identify the high risk situations which trigger the client to experience cravings that lead them to engage in their addictive behaviours. (Eg. Time & place).
- Why is it effective? Addictions involve habitual behaviours and patterns of thinking which occur in response to cues. By guiding a client to understand the cues, the therapist can help the client find ways to respond to the cues.
Outline Cognitive Restructuring for dealing with addiction.
- How does it work? The therapist helps the client examine the thought processes which precede the addictive behaviour. The therapist then works with the patient to help them challenge these thoughts. This could be done by questioning the logic of their thoughts (logical disputing) or asking them to provide evidence to challenge their thoughts (empirical disputing).
- Why does it work? CBT views irrational patterns of thinking as a root cause for addiction. Changing these patterns can produce changes in behaviour and the negative behaviours and emotions that support an addiction.
Outline relaxation techniques as a way of dealing with addiction.
- How does it work? The therapist teaches the client relaxation techniques they can use to calm themselves down in a way that does not involve their addiction.
- Why does this work? This can help as addicts often deal with stress by engaging in their addiction.
What research support is there into the effectiveness of CBT for reducing addiction?
For example, Petry (2006) found that participants who received 8 sessions of CBT and attended Gamblers Anonymous (GA) gambled significantly less after 12 months than controls who only attended GA. This suggests that CBT may have long-term benefits in the treatment of gambling addiction. This study’s use of a control group strengthens its internal validity and therefore ensures that its conclusions are correct on the effectiveness of CBT as a method for reducing addiction. This is because using a control group makes it possible to infer that the use of CBT was the factor that caused people to reduce their gambling behaviours. However, this study only provides evidence for the effectiveness of CBT as a way of treating gambling addiction. It would be wrong to assume that this finding would generalize to other addictions, especially as gambling addiction has a substantial cognitive element (addicts irrationally believe they can win more than they do), and this means CBT may be more beneficial for this type of addiction than drug addictions.
Why is a limitation of CBT as a treatment of addiction that it offered a reductionist approach to treating addiction?
CBT is a method of treating addiction that focuses only on the irrational thinking and maladaptive
behaviours that sustain addiction. However, this method of treatment is arguably limited as it only focuses on addressing issues arising
from only one level of explanation: the cognitive. This is limited as according to the biopsychosocial model of addiction, there is no single pathway to addiction, as addiction develops from the interaction of multiple levels of explanation, including neurochemical, cognitive and social factors. CBT fails to
address these other factors, like the neurochemical basis of symptoms associated with withdrawal syndrome or the underlying social and economic circumstances that led a person to become an addict, and as a result it offers a limited method for treating addiction. Arguably it would be better to treat addiction in a holistic way, addressing all the factors that led a person to become an addict. Drug
therapies could be an important part of this holistic treatment, but they would still only be one part.
Why may CBT be the most cost-effective talking therapy for reducing addiction?
This is because CBT can involve a limited number of sessions and can be delivered in a range of formats, such as in group settings, over the phone or in interactive online sessions. In general, talking therapies for addiction are expensive to deliver on a large scale because they require multiple sessions with highly trained therapists. In comparison, CBT can be delivered to a large number of people for a fraction of the cost of other therapies. Despite this relative saving, CBT is still likely to be more expensive than treatment via drug therapy. Given that funding for treatments for addiction is always very limited, it is extremely important to consider both the cost of CBT in relation to other forms of treatment before decisions are made about its use as a way of reducing addiction.
