Apart from helping people, a clinical professional must strive to make them feel comfortable during a session. This is why I believe it is unacceptable to marginalize their patients by labeling them ‘addicts’ and ‘alcoholics’. When hearing these words, patients feel alienated from others, and their psychological conditions may worsen (Lassiter and Culbreth, 2017). People who struggle with alcohol and substance abuse need support and help rather than stigmatization. Moreover, there are many ethical ways to refer to someone, for example, ‘a person with a substance use disorder’ or ‘a person with an addiction’. These terms make it seem like a person has a problem, and that problem does not define them.
The difference in terminology is critical as terms define a patient’s image in society and result in prejudices related to that image. Moreover, an individual might think about themselves in a negative way if they hear words like ‘crackhead’ or ‘junkie’ frequently used. As a consequence, they might have less motivation to be involved in treatment as they can see themselves staying ‘dirty’ in the eyes of society forever.
The objective of the psychosocial assessment is to aid a professional in determining all of the aspects of a patient’s experience. According to PsychotherapyNet (2014), having this assessment before beginning substance use disorder treatment is useful because it saves time and provides a professional with information on which they can build. The most common barrier to the assessment can be a social stigma: people who have mental illnesses typically receive negative labels from society.
The main advantage of a more standardized assessment approach is that the outcomes of the evaluation can be predicted, which helps a practitioner. The assessment should be closely connected to a patient’s readiness to change because the direction of the evaluation and treatment as a whole depends on them. Furthermore, the type of care one receives and specific counseling methods have to be taken into consideration as well as these are important factors shaping one’s experience. In the PsychotherapyNet (2014) YouTube video, the most crucial problem was the constant anxiety of the patient. The interviewer assessed for addiction disorders by asking a question related to the patient’s life before the addiction. In addition to that, I would ask the patient about their childhood to possibly get a better understanding of their situation.
References
Lassiter, P. S. & Culbreth, J. R. (2017). Theory and practice of addiction counseling. Sage Publications.
PsychotherapyNet. (2014). Clinical interviewing: Intake, assessment & therapeutic alliance video [Video]. YouTube. Web.