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Confrontation Vs. Client Centered Treatment in Substance Abuse

Substance abuse is a terrifying addiction, both for the person addicted and for his loved ones. Fortunately, there are many effective treatments for addiction. Two approaches to counseling addicts are confrontation and the client-centered approach.

  1. Confrontation

    • Confrontation is a direct approach to giving patients a wake-up call to their behavior.

      The Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth describes confrontation as "the process by which a therapist provides direct, reality-oriented feedback to a client regarding the client's own thoughts, feelings or behavior." This can vary tremendously from one example to the next in the way in which it is carried out.

    Questionable Tool

    • Confrontation as a therapeutic tool for addiction is a contested tool.

      Confronting an addict has been a common approach to addiction treatment, but its efficacy has been disputed and implications questioned. Douglas L. Polcin, Ed.D., an instructor in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley-Extension, maintains that more specific research needs to be done before confrontation as a therapeutic tool is discounted.

    Motivation

    • How an addict views the confronter's motivation is one of the factors that affect the efficacy of the treatment.

      Douglas L. Polcin, Ed.D., who is also a research psychologist at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco, believes that confronting an addict as a form of treatment can be effective, but that many factors must be carefully handled, such as how the patient views the motivation of the person confronting him.

    Client-Centered Approach

    • Client-centered therapy is based on the belief that the patients have the answers to help themselves.

      The client-centered approach was developed in the 1940s by an American psychologist named Carl Rogers. According to "Psychology Today," the client-centered approach is "based on the empowering idea that the client holds the answers to her problems."

    Therapist's Role

    • The therapist asks helpful questions to allow patients to find their own individual answers that will help them change.

      There is still an essential role for the therapist to play in the client-centered approach. Though the patients may hold the answers for their own recovery, the therapist plays a powerful role in listening and asking questions that can help them reach their own necessary changes.

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