Medication-Assisted Treatment: Overcoming Individual Resistance Among Members in Groups Whose Membership Consists of Both Users and Nonusers of MAT: A Clinical Review

Abstract

The last two decades have seen a variety of medication-assisted therapies (MATs) become available for the treatment of both opioid and alcohol dependency. The choice to accept or decline MAT is an individual patient choice tempered by a variety of variables. Nevertheless, group therapy has been the mainstay of treatment for the substance abuse population, and often when relapse occurs, clients are either reintroduced to MAT or offered MAT as an adjunct to the recovery process. In this setting, patients are subsequently placed into a therapy group that consists of both members on MAT and those who are not on MAT. This becomes a natural line of demarcation within the group pitting patients who are on MAT against those who are not. This attitude can cause conflict between members in a therapy group and presents a unique form of individual resistance in the group therapy setting. After a brief review of MAT and the concept of resistance in group therapy, the authors offer interventions for overcoming this unique form of resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• medication-assisted therapy
• heterogeneous group membership
• resistance
• individual resistance behaviors
• overcoming resistance