Innovative Approaches to Predicting and Preventing Addiction Relapse

Abstract

The high rates of substance abuse relapse after participating in treatment programs forces human services professionals to reconsider prevailing addiction theories and treatment approaches. This article first discusses two theoretical orientations: (a) the more traditional and prevalent “disease model,” which emphasizes common, long-standing lifestyle and family background factors which affect addiction development and recovery and (b) the more recent “adaptive perspective,” which emphasizes individual differences in day-to-day stress, cognitive appraisal, and coping processes during recovery. Building on the more innovative adaptive perspective, there is a presentation of research findings that supports the development of a working theoretical model with key variables and causal pathways that affect addiction relapse. The theoretical model incorporates individual-level (behavioral, emotional, cognitive) variables as well as more environmental-level (social involvement, access to community resources) variables. Finally, this paper describes two posttreat-ment, follow-up maintenance programs and their hypothesized effects in the theoretical model's individual-level and environmental-level causal pathways.

Key Words:

• Alcoholism
• relapse prevention