Introduction
One of the most important procedures for individuals in the drug use, abuse, or addiction cycle is receiving a personalized analysis of the current situation and providing the best fitting treatment approach. In this case, Charlie, a 45-year-old male, should be assessed and properly analyzed on his health and spiritual issues so that he could receive the correct and feasible method of curing. The information taken from Charlie must be confidential and should concern his personality background, physical, psychological, and genetic information. In addition, he will be properly asked several questions about his current family relations, which might also require collecting some personal information.
Reason for Assessment
Charlie is struggling with his substance addiction so that he demands receiving a practical method of curing that would help him significantly reduce the level of drug addiction or even eliminate it forever. The evaluator collects the most qualitative information concerning different aspects of the client’s health situation to assess the patient’s situation properly. Moreover, the collected data should be sufficiently precise so that the final opinion would have a qualitative informational base (Doweiko, 2014). If the data is properly derived and analyzed, the client could obtain an efficient and personalized treatment method. Last but not least, if the collected information does not concern a personal patient’s spiritual, genetic, or health aspect, the working method of curing could not be provided from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
Sources of Information
The main source of information is the client himself; no relatives were interviewed. Charlie applied for personal consultation because of significant depression and demotivation about the possible method of curing that would help him stop his increasing addiction strength tendency. The whole opinion about his current situation might be derived from his statements. However, Charlie provided some citations from Amy’s words so that the patient’s perception mistake in terms of the credibility of his words has a low probability of occurring.
Background Information
To begin with, background information provides the evaluator with a sufficient number of possible facts that might affect the individual’s causes of substance use, abuse, or addiction. Moreover, it will undoubtedly affect some aspects of their method of treatment. Charlie works as a union tradesman in a factory plant. He possesses the marriage status for 23 years, being married to his wife Amy, who works in an office. The couple has two children: Hannah and Bradley, who are 16 and 13 years old, respectively. Charlie has been substance-addicted for 15 years, and the first drug use occurred after the medical surgery due to a back injury at work. However, the most significant family factor concerns Charlie’s parents, who are addicted to opioids. Moreover, his father was dealing pills while Charlie was growing.
As a result, after becoming addicted, in some cases, his parents are the source of extra drugs, possibly due to financial obstacles. Finally, these days, Charlie’s marriage is experiencing a strong depression mainly due to the husband’s addiction, which harms everyday family life and significantly decreases the family budget possibilities.
Current Status
These days, Charlie is experiencing the severest stage of drug addiction, which he has been trying to overcome for years. Firstly, not only physical addiction to pills consummation but also emotional dependence on the amount of substance taken might determine his motivation to live. Charlie stops his regular activities and begins directing his human resources to the substance found without a sufficient dose of drugs. Secondly, he consistently spends a large sum from the joint family budget on his addictive needs. Consequently, the family is experiencing a crisis in its highest stage since Amy, his wife, is losing hope that her husband will have enough power to overcome addiction. Finally, the most influential part of Charlie’s regress in his fight with addiction might be the strong personal demotivation due to the failure to quit the drug addiction two times while being medically treated. In other words, these days, Charlie is in the last stage before psychological breakdown
Indicators of Use/Abuse/Dependency
Charlie’s situation is rather typical when it comes to drug use/abuse/addiction determination. More specifically, he regularly consumes substances, fails to quit taking them two times, and continues taking them despite the hard familial situation. As a result, it is evident that Charlie experiences a serious stage of drug addiction, which cannot be cured without a professional and holistic approach. Charlie buys the drugs regularly and consumes them due to the risk of having psychological depression in their absence. Finally, even though he has a strong dependency on substances, he confirms his addiction and trying to quit taking drugs, which is a positive sign for the current status. Despite the total demotivation, which is the last sign of drug addiction, Charlie has chances to cut his negative habit.
Attitude and Behavior
Charlie has a determined attitude to his pills and other drugs addiction. However, sometimes, he may also interpret his position differently, which results in contradictory behavior. More specifically, he was unintentionally addicted to opioids by using them during the back medical course treatment. On the other hand, when the health issues were cured, he became emotionally addicted to opioids and determined them as the only way to live without strong depression.
In this case, it may be stated that the family relatives do not pay much attention to his deficit of life motivation and are not interested in playing the role of “substitute” to the source of life motivation (May 2007). As a result, in reality, Charlie is “alone” in front of his addiction, which demonstrates the reason for his wide range of behavior, from being strongly motivated in quitting drug addiction to being discouraged by his ineffective efforts (May 2007). Last but not least, Charlie and his curing doctors have not paid much attention to his spiritual and emotional addiction, which is an extremely important factor in treating drug addiction (May 2007).
Social Functioning
Charlie does not have a large circle of communication: during this interview, he did not give any information about his friends or colleagues at work. As a result, the lack of close social contacts with no-family-related people concludes that Charlie is an introverted type of person. Thus, family relations play a pivotal role in his social life. On the contrary, family relatives are not interested in supporting his drug addiction quitting. Charlie is not really interested in improving the relations with his wife Amy since she accuses about family budget shortage do not significantly influence his motivation to quit drug addiction (Doweiko, 2014). Finally, when it comes to Charlie’s parents, their current effect on his struggle is considered to be strongly negative since they are the additional source of cheap opioids instead of being an emotional and if needed, financial support for him.
Occupational Functioning
In this case, Charlie’s main occupation, which is a union tradesman in an auto parts plant, directly affects his addiction. More specifically, his dependency began from experiencing an injury at work when he began taking special pills during the treatment process. As a result, oxycontin, which he gave, began his addiction story 15 years ago. Even though the patient did not emphasize the occupation during the interview, it still plays an important role in his life since this is his only source of income.
Financial Factors
When it comes to finances, it is crucial to distinguish two parts of a personal “balance sheet”: assets and liabilities. Charlie has a stable financial flow represented by their monthly salary from working as a union tradesman when it comes to assets. The income is not specified, but this information is not critical since the family budget is always “positive,” Charlie’s drug addiction is mainly financed by funds for family life activities. On the other hand, when analyzing the liabilities’ part, besides the drug purchases, the couple also has two immature children who cannot finance their living for themselves. As a result, Charlie takes a significant risk level on himself since if his drug addiction or any other factor will negatively influence his employment status, the couple would no more be solvent. In addition, the future development of the situation cannot be analyzed since there are almost no visible and possible alternatives for the financing source of family life and father’s drug addiction.
Familial Relationships
Nowadays, Charlie’s familial relationships are on their “change point.” More specifically, the future development of the family life entirely depends on the success of Charlie’s drug addiction cut. As a result, there are two contrary lists of positive and negative outcomes affecting the patient’s family life (Doweiko, 2014). On the one hand, if the substance addiction disappears, the family relationships would be considered “positive.” This is possible since the family budget will renovate and the couple and children would have the opportunity to realize their joint plans. However, if Charlie surrenders and remains drug-addicted, the couple will probably experience a divorce process, which will enforce the patient’s mental issues since he “… do not want to live away from his kids.” When it comes to parents, their current influence on Charlie’s addiction process is negative enough and will remain until the full patient’s recovery, since they might also play a “drug dealer” role.
Legal History
The patient’s legal history is totally clear throughout their whole life. Moreover, he had experienced a workplace injury, which is beneficial from a legal perspective since his employers cannot easily dismiss this worker without serious cause. On the other hand, Charlie’s name is registered in the medical database as the drug addict without success, adversely impacting his circle of additional employment possibilities. For instance, he cannot drive a car due to substance abuse, which eliminates the opportunity to have any additional main professional occupation connected with driving.
Health History
Charlie is a physically healthy person who does not have any serious problems, except drug addiction. However, 15 years earlier, he experienced a work injury, which affected his future life since he was treated through surgery invasion and given oxycontin to relieve the pain. Nevertheless, he became addicted to the substance physically and, later, psychologically (Bush et al., 2014). His psychological addiction ruins his life since he does not have enough motivation to live. As a result, the main emphasis of his health history issues is on the psychological part rather than analyzing the physical aspects of substance addiction.
Spiritual History
Charlie regularly attends Church with his family: every week. He goes with relatives to pray to God for different purposes. However, the main objective for Charlie is cutting the substance addiction. He has been praying for a long time but did not successfully quit his dependency on drugs. These days, he is completely demotivated. He almost lost the confidence in having a successful future.
Diagnostic Impression
Charlie is likely to experience a diagnostic impression of substance use disorder. Moreover, the earlier possessed an addiction so that he might correctly demonstrate his current status of quitting drugs abuse. At the same time, having a deficit of socialization, Charlie is a “clear” introvert type of person (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Finally, he has not established strong relationships with his daughters, and he does not keep regular contact with his wife during the workday. Even though this was not indicated during the interview, but which is possible according to his familial relationship analysis.
Treatment Recommendations
It is crucial to provide a balanced “holistic and focused” approach to assure a qualitative curing process when it comes to treatment recommendations. In this case, the patient should be professionally treated psychologically, and examinators should emphasize the importance of providing qualitative services to psychology specialists. First and foremost, the vast majority of efforts should be put into increasing Charlie’s life motivation. Providing both individual and group sessions, improving familial relationships, and limiting the parent’s contact for some time should help Charlie to become psychologically stable (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As a result, some concrete actions might be taken only when his spiritual situation normalizes, and he is settled for quitting drug addiction. More specifically, medically prescribing qualitative drugs to gradually decrease the patient’s drug use level to irregular which could be cured easier and more effectively. After that, Charlie will quit psychological addiction, so that he should regularly attend special group sessions of exchanging drug-addiction experience to become totally “clear”, which will take more than a year.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5(TM)) (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing.
Busch, S. H., Epstein, A., Harhay, M. O., Fiellin, D. A., Leader, D., & Barry, C. L. (2014). The effects of federal parity on substance use disorder treatment.NIH Public Access, 20(1), 76–82. Web.
Doweiko, H. E. (2014). Concepts of Chemical Dependency (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.
May, G. G. (2007). Addiction and grace: Love and spirituality in the healing of addictions. HarperOne.