Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Interview with substance abuse counselor: Mr. Smith
For my interview, I selected Mr. Smith (not his real name), a substance abuse counselor who approaches his practice from the point-of-view of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT has become one of the most popular therapies for treating substance abuse. When I asked why, Mr. Smith replied: "because it works." Substance abuse has long been regarded as one of the most intractable problems in the mental health profession. Substance abuse has a biological cause; is often exacerbated by environmental factors such as growing up in a society where drug abuse is normalized and prevalent; and then fundamentally rewires the subject's reward center in the brain, so the pleasures of the drug outweigh all other pleasures. One of the few techniques to 'unwire' this negative perspective has been CBT. Mr. Smith believes very strongly in the CBT format: he has a M.A. In clinical psychology but also received special training in the technique, which is quite specific in its orientation and approach
In previous forms of therapy, according to Mr. Smith, there was a focus upon the subject's past and trying to figure out what early experiences were at the root of the addiction. "This doesn't do much to cure the addiction," said Mr. Smith. "Often, you end up talking and talking about things that happened in the past that are really irrelevant to the subject's life. It's...
For example, instead of thinking, "it would be so much easier to get through this if I could just take a drink," CBT encourages the client to remind him or herself of all the times he tried to take a drink to relax, and actually made things worse. Mr. Smith would prompt the client: "did it make it easier when you took a drink at the last work function you went to?" To which the client would respond: "no, I got drunk and embarrassed myself." CBT also teaches the client positive coping mechanisms such as deep breathing, pausing before acting or speaking, and setting weekly goals to become abstinent.
CBT believes that by changing someone's thoughts, it is possible to change someone's actions and vice versa. Mr. Smith works with his clients to set positive, clearly-definable and concrete goals to help them change the structure of their lives, as well as to change their thoughts. Mr. Smith placed the emphasis on 'concrete' when he was talking about setting goals in CBT. A goal is not simply 'to do better.' Rather, the client must set a goal such as: "to go to the gym every day after work instead of going to a bar."
The goal-oriented nature is one of the advantages of CBT. Quite often, clients do not have an extensive amount of time to…
Linguistic analyses of conversational patterns indicate that most pauses can be predicted by linguistic structures, such as clause or sentence breaks" (Levitt, 334) by eliminating some of the non-verbal factors that may tend to undermine these silences, I would find that the interviewee was far more comfortable with the nature of the interview and its opportunity for a free and informal discussion relating to treatment experience, personal history and
Business (general) Please list sections according to instructions Exercise 1.1: Review of Research Study and Consideration of Ethical Guidelines Option 1: Stanford Prison Experiment Go to: http://www.prisonexp.org, the official site for the Stanford Prison Experiment. What do you think the research questions were in this study? List 2 or 3 possible research questions (in question format) that may have been the focus of this experiment. What happens when you put good people in an evil place?
. Even when the child in a home where DV occurs is not physically harmed, most of the time, these children know about the violence. As a result, they may experience emotional and behavior problems (The Domestic Violence…, N.d.). A victim of DV needs to be reminded: She is not alone. She is not at fault. Help is available. In The physician's guide to domestic violence, P.R. Salber and E. Taliaferro (N.d.). about stress
…Occupational Stress and Scientific MonitoringLiterature Review2.1 IntroductionThe definition of the term �occupational stress� is derived from the definition of its two constituent words. In this context, occupational refers to anything that is related to the workplace while stress is defined as a natural body reaction from physical, mental or emotional strain in an individual. Thus, occupational stress can be defined as any mechanism by which the body attempts to adapt
Forgiveness on human health. In its simplest form, the purpose of the study is to evaluate human psychological stress that might constitute a risk factor for heart disease. Further, the study will also evaluate the impact of forgiveness on heart disease. However, such a simple dissertation clearly demands further definition. What, exactly, do we signify when we speak of heart disease? What is properly considered as forgiveness? What impact does