Blogs

One state estimates around a fifth of offenders are rearrested within three years of the prior conviction. Expand that window to five or ten years and the rate is likely substantially higher.

One or two (risk factors) is not as suggestive of repeat offending as four or five. But it does allow a clinician to apply a rough risk profile to a particular offender.

It’s difficult to squeeze a lot of motivational work into the course of outpatient counseling. Clinicians are anxious to get to the behavior change part.

Public perceptions of how we should and shouldn’t treat offenders often result in less than optimal solutions both for the addict/alcoholic and for the victims and the larger society that must pay.

Some members are talkative enough, but others participate minimally and a couple are openly hostile and challenging.

My outpatients get discouraged very easily. They may actually be doing pretty well for somebody new to recovery, but they don’t seem to realize it.

So the professional’s real value to an intervention is as a guide. One who can offer something the family really does need: a degree of informed objectivity.

Use examples. It’s hard for someone with alcoholism to grasp the idea that he or she can’t go back to drinking at some future point – after a year of abstinence, for instance. But the old saw that a pickle can’t go back to being a cucumber – that people seem to understand.

The previous director is suddenly… nowhere to be found.

If the clinicians view the PO as an outsider with the potential to interfere with treatment, there will be inevitable conflict.