Working with a family in the process of addiction treatment within therapeutic community

Use of mind-altering substances may result in an array of adverse, especially health and social, consequences for drug users as well as for their close persons. Help to solve mentioned problems provide various types of drug services. The vast majority of drug services in past did not take into account the fact that relatives might suffer due to drug use of their family member too and thus they also might need specific professional help. The aim of this work is to capture and describe the process of therapy with regard to the perception and experience of the close persons of clients of therapeutic community. In order to adequately understand the situations, we must first determine what elements constitute them. The work is based on a qualitative approach and research group consists of close persons of clients of the therapeutic community WHITE LIGHT I. The results show that it is possible, based on the analysis of data, to define each stage of the therapeutic process from the perspective of family members and name them according to chronology and important characteristic. The inclusion of persons close to drug users into treatment process contributes significantly to improvement of their lives and relationships quality. Findings bring into practise the ideas for therapeutic teams and help to improve..