Reducing Addiction - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Flashcards
Outline CBT as a way to reduce addiction (6 marks)
CBT aims to identify and challenge cognitive distortions that cause an addiction which is due to faulty thinking to help the client have more realistic thoughts through cognitive restructuring. First functional analysis is used where the client will work with the therapist to identify the negative thoughts connected to gambling and their high risk situations where the need to gamble is triggered. Next cognitive restructuring is where the client learns how to challenge these thoughts to change their faulty thinking through disputing. This includes empirical disputing such as the therapist asking where is the evidence you win more than lose? The client learns social skills so they can refuse gambling without embarrassment this is through role play and learn coping strategies to avoid high-risk situations such as taking a different route home. They then practise these behaviours in their everyday life until they feel confident to cope with situations where gambling is available which is a way to ensure relapse prevention.
Discuss CBT as a way to reduce an addiction (3 X AO3)
Research to support the effectiveness of CBT in reducing gambling addiction was conducted by Perty et al. They randomly allocated gamblers to a control group who received Gamblers Anonymous (GA) meetings or a treatment condition who received GA meetings and an eight-session CBT programme. It was found that the patients in the treatment condition were gambling significantly less than the control group of patients. Therefore, demonstrating the effectiveness of CBT in reducing addictions such as gambling.
However, a limitation of CBT in reducing addiction is that for some it may not be as effective as it require motivation from the patient. This is because the patient has to commit to a number of CBT sessions over months so they would have to challenge their irrational thoughts that are causing their addiction and would also be set homework to complete outside of the sessions such as avoidance strategies. This is unlike drug therapy where a patient just has to take a tablet or wear a nicotine patch to reduce their addiction. Therefore, CBT may be seen as a less appropriate treatment for reducing addiction than others such as drug therapy as patients may drop out of treatment and therefore relapse.
A strength of CBT as a way of reducing addiction is that it avoids chemical dependence. This is because the patients are taught the skills to identify and challenges their own cognitive distortions which are causing their addiction such as feeling that they can’t cope without the substance or behaviour and so are taking control of their own addiction. This is unlike drug therapy where the patient is dependent on the drugs to control their addiction by regulating their levels of nicotine or dopamine. Therefore, it could be argues that CBT is a more appropriate way to reduce addiction as patients do not become dependent on a drug.
