|
Engaging Resistant and Difficult-to-Treat Clients in Collaborative Treatment
Resistance and hostility are not unexpected parts
of many mental health and addiction clients’ presentation. Yet many
clinicians feel ill equipped to deal with resistance and hostility.
They try confrontation to “break through denial”, or passive styles of
psychotherapy to explore psychodynamics and internal conflicts. The
training of mental health and addiction treatment professionals
frequently neglects strategies on how to engage patients into
participatory treatment planning and how to finesse counseling skills
to prepare people for change.
This course is designed to help participants improve assessment and
treatment of resistance and hostility in addiction and mental health
patients and become better acquainted with how people change. It will
teach skills that can help retain patients in treatment and encourage
honesty, not game playing; accountability, not arguing and
confrontation.
Besides improving clinical approaches, this course will also discuss
the changes needed to re-configure treatment services to better match
patients’ readiness to change. The format of the course will provide
the opportunity to build skills around the assessment, engagement and
treatment of patients who are at varying stages of readiness to change
through the use of videotaped interviews, role play and participant
exercises.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
At the conclusion of this course, the participant should be able to:
1. List ways to better deal with resistance
2. Demonstrate skills to assess readiness to change
3. Apply strategies to engage patients into collaborative treatment
|
