Treatment Methods
Treatment Methods
Treatment Methods
Team of Licensed & Certified Professionals
The most important component of our program is our team of highly effective addiction specialists. Programs are administered by a team of professionals, many of whom are master’s-level clinicians with substance use disorder treatment experience. Our team utilizes evidence-based modalities during individual therapy, group therapy, and life skills classes.
Relapse Prevention TherapyTeaching individuals how to prevent a potential relapse, and respond to an actual relapse, is an essential part of substance abuse treatment. We use relapse prevention therapy to help clients understand the relapse process, identify core issues and triggering situations, manage urges, and strengthen their recovery, rather than experience a possible setback.
Addiction Education
Understanding the underpinnings of addiction is a key part of the First Step House therapeutic process. First Step House understands that addiction is a complex chronic health issue similar to diabetes or heart disease. We teach clients the contributing factors of family history, biology, genetics, the environment in which they were raised, and the various ways in which drugs interact with the brain and body.
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), Developed by the late Albert Ellis, is the basis for the First Step House process groups and has been widely used in the therapeutic profession for over 50 years. REBT helps people identify and correct their irrational beliefs so they can learn more effective and rational emotional coping. Some First Step House therapists have received training and certification from the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City.
Moral Reconation Therapy
Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT) is the premier treatment modality for individuals who are mandated to complete treatment because of legal involvement resulting from high-risk and antisocial behaviors. Designed to help individuals make pro-social decisions based on an empathetic understanding of others, MRT teaches clients through homework and group process over a 16-module course. Many First Step House therapists are certified to teach this effective form of treatment.
Shame Resiliency
The Daring Way™ curriculum is a promising practice developed by Brene Brown. This curriculum has been successfully used for many years to help clients recognize shame, test their conceptions with reality, and practice empathy so they can constructively move through shameful self-thought, rather than choosing destructive behavioral to manage difficult emotions. Clients learn to challenge beliefs around vulnerability, which allows them to begin building healthier connections and relationships in recovery. Outside of class, clients learn to focus on managing destructive anger outbursts, manipulation, people-pleasing, and the withdrawing and isolative behaviors that are based in shame and lead to continued use of substances, broken relationships and maladaptive choices.
Grief and Loss
A life of addictive behaviors is often correlated to a life filled with grief and loss. Our counselors use material taken from multiple sources including, Grief Work Healing from Loss by Frank Zamore and Ester Leutenberg to learn about various stages of grief so they can begin to talk about difficult emotions that are often suppressed though substance abuse. Clients also learn about and begin to dispute the myths around grief, and guilt is introduced as a behavioral motivator rather than an unhealthy negative emotion. Clients learn about moral injury and empathy is taught and practiced in the class to support connection and healthy communication skills. Over approximately 8 weeks, clients focus on increasing awareness of emotional responses, needs around grief and loss to encourage and support healthier behaviors around difficult emotions rather than using substances, avoiding emotion, and acting in anger as many clients have done for years.
Dialectic Behavior Therapy
Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a cognitive behavioral therapy created to target specific emotional skill deficits. There are four modules of DBT: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. DBT combines in class role-plays as well as weekly homework to help clients integrate these skills into their daily lives. Each module targets specific behaviors to decrease and increase, both of which are tracked through diary cards. DBT has been proven to be highly effective in treating some of the emotional difficulties found in people with specific personality and substance use disorders.
Client-Counselor Alliance
Partnering clients with the right therapists is one of our primary concerns. Having a strong therapeutic rapport is essential to the recovery process and greatly improves the chances of long-term success. Upon admission, the Clinical Director reviews each client’s assessment with the admissions team and selects a staff member who provides customized care and oversees all aspects of treatment. This selection pairs a client, based on his needs, with the clinician whose traits compliment the client’s personality, history, and diagnosis.
Motivational Interviewing
Many clients are skeptical about the changes treatment will bring to their daily routines. We truly believe in every individual’s ability to change and improve. We use motivational interviewing and enhancement techniques to help resolve ambivalent feelings toward treatment and create motivation to help sustain long-term recovery.
Education and Employment
For most clients, we place a strong emphasis on education and employment. Our program partners with the Department of Workforce Services and Vocational Rehabilitation to provide employment counseling and job training. We also work with the Horizonte Instructional Training Center to offer GED education and testing for high school graduation.
Medication Assisted Treatment
While we strongly encourage clients to maintain abstinence from all mind-altering substances, we are aware of the emerging science that supports the use of various medications to assist clients in their recovery. Vivitrol, Suboxone, and other medications have demonstrated efficacy in not just helping clients with withdrawal symptoms, but maintaining long-term abstinence from alcohol and illicit drug use. First Step House will work with clients and our community partners, such as Project Reality, when is appropriate for the client. These determinations are made on a case-by-case basis.
Assumption of Personal Responsibility
Understanding the importance of personal responsibility is a key step in our program. Our therapists give clients the opportunity to make decisions and accept the consequences and rewards of those decisions. Consequences and rewards are delivered using gradually increasing sanctions and decreasing external rewards in order to help clients make decisions from an internal locus rather than basing their decisions on external factors.
Provide a 4-6 page paper (excluding title and reference pages), using at least three outside scholarly sources. If you were superintendent of a training school, which treatment methods would you use? Why? What treatment technologies would you use in a residential program for juvenile probationers? What type of staff members would be effective in carrying out the treatment method you have chosen?
Treatment Technologies
Cognitive Programming
Behavioral Modification
Peer Culture Influence
You can use any other treatment technologies to include one listed above.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
- Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
- Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
- One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
- I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
- Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
- In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
- Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
- Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
- Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
- Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
- I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
- I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
- As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
- It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
- For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
- Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
- Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
- Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
- The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
- Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
- If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
- I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
- As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
- Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
- Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
- Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Treatment Methods
