Overview
Student 2 to respond to
As I consider serving clients and their families, the thing that might be the most challenging aspect for me personally is understanding expectancies that can stem from different cultures and being aware that the client might not have those same views/ideas as their parents or other family members. In the reading titled Assessment of Addictive Behaviors in Ethnic-Minority Cultures, it states “Researchers among college students (Daisy, 1989), between native Puerto Ricans and college students in the United States (Velez-Blasini, 1997), in alcohol expectancies between Puerto Ricans and Irish Americans that mirrored cultural norms concerning the appropriateness for loss of control (Johnson &Glassman, 1999), and in smoking expectancies between Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites” (Blume et al., 2005, pp. 60-61). This shows to me that different cultures/ethnic groups have different views/thoughts about what they expect about substances and how you should act when using it. The reading also goes on to say “And just to complicate things further, in one intergenerational epidemiological study, the investigators found that expectancies varied across generations within ethnic-minority groups…” (Blume et al., 2005, p. 61). Knowing that people's ideas and thoughts involving substance use can be dissimilar and this can happen even within families because of differences in age, this all contributes to why understanding and discussing expectancies might be the most challenging aspect for me. I feel like it could be the most challenging for me because it may be hard to remember and/or comprehend the information I learn about different cultures relating to their expectancies, especially when I am learning about multiple cultures and on top of that I think it would be difficult to work with discussing expectancies in families because they can all have different views within their family. Older family members may think in a certain way and younger ones may think in another and I feel like it would be hard to understand/remember various different views within a family, especially if I am working with many families, and it would make trying to keep every member happy/satisfied with the sessions really hard because going one route could upset another person.
Working with a family complicates the issue of confidentiality because information about one person might be shared to other individuals in the family. For example, in the textbook titled Clinical Textbook of Addictive Disorders (4th ed.), it explains that when working with a family to help an adolescent with a substance problem, it states that some things that practitioners do are they help with “assisting parents and family members to initiate and maintain efforts to get the adolescent into appropriate treatment and achieve abstinence; helping parents and family members to establish or reestablish structure with consistent limit -setting and careful monitoring of the adolescent’s activities and behavior…” (Mack et al., 2016, p. 521). This may mean that the practitioner might inform the family about things regarding the client so that the family could make changes in their life and may make it harder to keep things between one individual and the practitioner, which could lead to the client(s) reacting in a negative way. I might respond to these challenges by making changes in our sessions/relationships to keep the client happy and eager to continue working as well as help the family strengthen their relationship so that they can discuss important things so that major details are not found out through sessions. In the textbook, it states “…the clinician dealing with adolescents with SUDs should develop a treatment plan that uses modalities that target (1) motivation and engagement; (2) family involvement to improve supervision, monitoring, and communication between parents and adolescent…” (Mack et al., 2016, p. 518). Knowing this information from the textbook, I would make a plan to keep a certain amount of things confidential so that the client would stay interested in our work together and I would help the family build and strengthen their interaction techniques to get them talking so that all the family members are open/honest to each other.
The population I chose to read about is adolescents and the three most important considerations for the assessment process when working with them is to consider components/details regarding themselves, immediate relatives, and the people they interact with. Mack et al., (2016) explains components that increase the chances of getting a substance use disorder and influence their consumption which are things that involve themselves like their thought process, problems with education, and/or what happened in their life when they were younger, among others, as well as things that involve other people they interact with like their views and if they use drugs, including other components. Mack et al., (2016) also explains that components relating to immediate family involve their views towards drugs, if they consume, and if the client has a strong relationship with them, along with others. Considering these aspects in the assessment process when working with adolescents will help the overall process because it will help me gain crucial information about the client and will allow me to understand what areas we could work on. It could also help me understand what components we could use to keep them motivated to make progress/changes.
The strengths I can identify within families or other special populations from my readings that might help the recovery process for a client are that, if they come from a different culture, they can be a part of a group that is very close-knit and what a person does affects the group which could therefore influence them to care for how they impact others as well as they could know techniques that they obtained from groups they are a part of. In the reading titled Assessment of Addictive Behaviors in Ethnic-Minority Cultures, it states “ A comprehensive behavioral analysis of an ethnic-minority client should include how that person’s behavior fits into a larger social context. The social context may include family life and a large community life, including important social institutions within the community” (Blume et al., 2005, p. 54). This explains that different groups of people really place importance on how someone acts because it affects that said group. This is a strength for the recovery process because if someone believes that their actions impact their family or other groups of people, this could make them feel important/valued and influence them to want to maintain the changes and/or carefully make decisions because their actions are affecting more than themselves. In the reading, it also states “In assessing problem-solving skills, it is important to understand the normative ways to solve problems within the ethnic-minority community” (Blume et al., 2005, p. 55). This explains that when a person is a part of a culture, they may know many techniques at how they could help their situations that derive from cultural ideas/thoughts and these techniques can be used to help their recovery process by helping them develop a set of things to do involving those techniques which therefore makes me feel this a strength.
In this course, I have learned about many things like different disorders as well as what drugs can do to someone. I plan on furthering my knowledge in this area to help me become more educated about conditions involving substances. The most helpful information I gained from the course is learning about the different assessment tools because it can aid me in learning more about a person. The most challenging thing to learn about was learning about the changes that happened in the DSM-5 from the previous one because it was hard for me to remember what had been changed. The most surprising thing I learned was that it is difficult for people to get care for co-occurring disorders and this is surprising because I thought that our society was making good steps towards helping people with substance and mental health problems but it has made me realize that this is not exactly the case. What I learned changed my intended strategies for working with clients by adding more things to what I would do with a client. For example, if I were to work with a client, knowing what I know now, I would include motivational interviewing and assessment tools so that I could help the client in the best way I possibly can (Mack et al., 2016).
References:
Blume, A. W., Morera, O. F., & De La Cruz, B. G. (2005). Assessment of Addictive Behaviors in Ethnic-Minority Cultures. American Psychological Association. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-08720-002
Mack, A.H., Brady, K. T., Miller, S.I., & Frances, R. J. (2016). Clinical Textbook of Addictive Disorders (4th ed.). Guilford Press: New York.