Reducing addiction: Cognitive behavioural therapy Flashcards
What are the principles of CBT for addiction?
Emphasises irrational thought processes and suggests that addicts are essentially making a series of misattributions about their addiction eg: they may believe smoking helps stress or boredom, even though they are opposites
Skills training is also used to help develop coping strategies to deal with temptations to relapse
What is cognitive reframing?
Cognitive restructuring/reframing is also performed whereby the therapist may teach the client about addictions, how they work, how they can be overcome and specific things about the clients addictions to abstinence (e.g. teaching about the nature of chance in gambling, and address the cognitive biases that feed the addiction).
What is functional analysis?
Functional analysis is where for up to 5 session the therapist focuses on identifying behavioural patterns & thoughts relating to addiction
Client encourage to come up with their own reasons to wanting to change their behaviour ie problems that dependency brings and advantages of abstinence
( e.g. focusing on improvement in my breathing will help me give up smoking)
Together the client and therapist build a plan for change and future session monitor this plan
What is relapse prevention?
The therapist & client focus on understanding the thought when clients find themselves in high-risk situations which could lead to relapse. The therapist identifies where thoughts can be challenged so the client is able to rescue themselves from the situations.
These can be : intra or interpersonal factors
Relapse prevention focuses on helping the individual develop techniques to learn how to cope with temptation (positive self-statements or distraction techniques) and uses covert modelling (imagining a successful coping strategy in action).
What are intrapersonal factors?
Intrapersonal factors: stress or negative emotions that might trigger a desire to return to the previous addictive behaviour
What are interpersonal factors?
Interpersonal factors: social pressures, such as being in the pub or with certain groups of friends.
CBT: Research evidence?
Ladoucer et al (2001) Randomly allocated 66 gamblers to either CBT or a waiting list. The CBT involved cognitive correction and relapse prevention. Of those that completed the CBT, 86% were no longer classified by DSM criteria as pathological gamblers.
Also, after treatment gamblers had a better perception of control over their gambling problem. These effects were long lasting and remained after 6 months and a 1 year follow up.
CBT: Economical alternative?
Miller et al (2003) claimed that CBT has the best chance of any available treatments for addictions and is cost-effective. This is because it is quick acting and promotes coping skills. Having completed a meta-analysis of 381 studies, CBT emerged as the most effective treatment for alcoholism.
CBT: Effective?
It can be used either in individual or group therapy settings, and has been found to be highly effective in the treatment of numerous addictive behaviours such as alcohol, smoking, marijuana , cocaine, methamphetamines. It is a treatment that is evidence-based ( scientific), recovery-focused, and produces short and long-term benefits.
CBT: Individual differences?
This type of therapy does require a more long term commitment and the ability to have insight into your own thoughts that underpin and maintain the addiction so many clients my not have this ability or have the motivation to work on the future plan for change outside the therapy sessions on their own.
CBT: Further research evidence?
Petry (2006) found that Gamblers Anonymous (GA) with CBT was much more effective in treating gambling addiction than solely GA.
As with other treatments for addiction including drug treatments, cognitive behavioral therapy works best when combined with other recovery efforts.
