Addiction Research

Codependent Behaviours in the Family Family members often feel incredible guilt. They think that they are at fault. The chemically dependent person keeps denying responsibility, and someone must be held accountable, so the family member often takes the blame. These...

According to Hands (1996), codependency is a complex set of behaviours, beliefs and attitudes involving: Care-taking Shame and low self-worth Controlling Obsession Repression and denial Lack of trust Anger Weak boundaries Neglect of self Typical manifestations of...

A codependent person has been defined as someone who is obsessed with controlling the person who is out of control (Beattie, 1987; Weinhold & Weinhold, 1989). This is essentially an extension of the disease concept of addiction, from an individual focus outwards...

The Impact of Substance Abuse on Family Members The impact of addiction on family members varies. However, there are general issues which often arise in households where addiction is taking place: Unpredictability of the abuser Financial strain Disruption in the...

Are Brief Interventions Effective? It is perhaps counter-intuitive to believe that a brief intervention can be as effective as long-term, residential, treatment. However, research suggests that: “Briefer and less costly treatment modalities appear to be at least as...

How do You Know When Someone With an Addiction is Motivated to Change? A client displays his motivation by his behaviour, by what he does (or fails to do): “In general, we know that our clients are motivated when they get moving – take their medication as prescribed,...

The Grief Cycle Model was developed in the 1960s by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss psychologist who specialised in working with terminally ill cancer patients and their families. She noticed that both the cancer sufferers and their families tended to move through a...

Recovery from addiction is essentially about profound change, on all levels. The Transtheoretical Model of Intentional Human Behaviour Change (DiClemente and Prochaska; 1985, 1998) is used by addictions counsellors all over the world to explain this process. The...

Bulimia Nervosa is a disorder in which eating binges are followed by self-induced vomiting or ‘purging.’ The DSM-IV-TR criteria are mostly about observable behaviours, but there is also a crucial psychological element, i.e. that the eating disordered individual...