Gestalt and Residential Tx of DualDx Clients

• Gestalt Therapy and Mental Health Care: Part 1 by Brian O'Neill, 11/3/96
  • Substance Abuse Therapy in Community Mental Health Centers by J. Richard White, 11/24/96
    
    

Richard, I was interested in your comments regarding the use of Gestalt in treating people with chemical dependency. In a residential treatment center for acute, CMI, Dual Diagnosis clients I have begun utilizing Gestalt, and with satisfying results. For one thing, they haven't heard this before. Instead of a rehash of 12 step slogans, recovery affirmations, and discussions of thinking errors, they get information on interpersonal process. As this unfolds, they make their own application to their particular circumstances and their individual addictions. For example, in a simple, and straightforward psychoeducational explanation of boundary disturbances, suddenly people began raising their hands and asking personal questions about their significant others and the best way to handle this or that recent glitch in their relationship. We have talked openly about power differentials, triangling, finding internal support in the ping pong between support and contact, and we've done experiential experiment. I would advocate the use of Gestalt theory in such psychoeducational settings. We are about to experiment with actually working in a Gestalt group, using the training group as a model, where clients would watch a therapist work with someone, then express how seeing that work effected them, and then asking any questions that came to mind as a result. I have been heartened to see people of meager resources in life, people disenfranchized, and with horrible track records, people who have become accustomed to the revolving-door approach to residential treatment, respond to Gestalt and become interested and show some hope once again.

Phil Brownell

• Your Group Experiment and Various Other Issues by J. Richard White, 12/4/96
• Update on experiment by Philip Brownell, 2/10/97