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Treating Drug Takers: What Results and Relapse Rates Don't Tell Us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2009

Roger Paxton
Roger Paxton
Affiliation:
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Charing Cross Clinic, 8 Woodside Crescent, Glasgow G3 7UL
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Extract

People who take heroin, morphine, and other drugs of this type — the opioids — present difficult problems to the therapist. One London drug clinic psychiatrist described them as, “feckless and irresponsible” and even “chronic and untreatable” (Bewley, 1973). The results of treatments summarised below may seem to support these gloomy views, but alternative explanations for drug takers' behaviour in terms of pharmacological and social reinforcement contingencies are possible (e.g. Solomon and Marshall, 1973). The issue is clearly more than academic. If we regard them as untreatable, why treat them? Many people do consider them treatable, and in this paper conventional and behavioural treatments are briefly discussed. It is suggested that although recent behavioural approaches have improved on other treatments they still leave some central questions unanswered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 1 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 1978

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