Establishing and Maintaining Job Skills and Professional Behaviors in Chronically Unemployed Drug Abusers

Abstract

The therapeutic workplace intervention is an employment-based drug user intervention that integrates abstinence reinforcement contingencies into an employment setting, intended for individuals manifesting chronic unemployment and drug addiction. Research on the therapeutic workplace intervention has provided a unique and rare opportunity to collect data and conduct fine-grained analyses of the training and work performance of participants. Results from a series of studies document that chronically unemployed drug users display behaviors that likely limit their success in conventional businesses. This article reviews a systematic line of research showing that targeted and intensive contingency management interventions and training programs have been effective in promoting consistent attendance and high rates of productivity and establishing job skills for employment.

Keywords:

• chronic unemployment
• contingency management interventions
• job skills
• therapeutic workplace

Notes

^†The reader is reminded that drug users, of whatever types and manner of use, represent a heterogeneous population including employed individuals from all SEC levels, some of whom may be involved in and therapeutically engaged in a variety of psychologically based treatment. All too often the term drug user evokes an image of a stereotyped street drug user who, at best, represents only one type. Editor's note.

^‡Treatment can be briefly and usefully defined as a planned, goal-directed change process, which is bounded (culture, place, time, etc.) and can be categorized into professional-based, tradition-based, mutual help–based (AA, NA, etc.) and self-help (“natural recovery”) models. There are no unique models or techniques used with substance users—of whatever types—that aren't also used with non-substance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideology of “harm reduction,” there is now a new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence driven models. Editor's note.