Therapeutic Communities: A Family-Centered Approach to Drug Addiction

173 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1983.This dissertation focuses on therapeutic communities as one of the efforts being made to help persons who are abusing drugs. Therapeutic communities are drug-free residential treatment centers for drug addicts. They are committed to a treatment plan based on the belief that drug addiction is a human rather than a chemical dilemma and that the family milieu is the center of drug abuse treatment.The major purpose of the study is to portray life in a therapeutic community in order to provide a vicarious experience using language, at times the residents' words, to make the world of the therapeutic community more accessible. It is the writer's intent, not so much to evaluate therapeutic communities as to describe and analyze them; to add to existing knowledge about therapeutic communities, and to further understanding of them.The recommended way to learn about therapeutic communities is to experience them. For those persons who wish to have some knowledge of the treatment plan and who have not yet visited a therapeutic community the writer would describe the treatment plan as representing: (1) a caring family approach to healing; (2) a place to grow and to outgrow; (3) a setting dedicated to maximizing human potential; (4) a view of man which insists he is not fragile; (5) the use of confrontation, followed by reflection, and reconciliation as the major tool for furthering self-awareness; and (6) a lifestyle dominated by the values of honesty, responsibility, and involvement.In the United States there are therapeutic communities in forty-seven states. In the World Federation of Therapeutic Communities all continents are represented. The existence of Therapeutic Communities in all parts of the world indicates not only the extent of the response to drug addiction but also the scope of the problem.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD