“Why People Gotta be so Judgy?”: The Importance of Agency-Wide, Non-judgmental Approach to Client Care

ABSTRACT

This research study explores the influence of staff behavior on treatment outcomes among individuals struggling with co-morbidities of substance use disorders (SUD), mental health issues, and trauma. Separately or collectively, these dynamics can create arduous behaviors by clients, invoking negative judgments from staff. In this mixed methods study, participants from SUD treatment facilities (n = 47) provided qualitative themes concerning perceived negative judgments by staff. Often the complexity of co-occurring clinical presentations is insufficiently understood by staff. By committing to training, supervision, meaningful appreciation of staff, and agency-wide dedication to a non-judgmental approach, substantial improvements toward complex client matters can be achieved, resulting in positive treatment outcomes. Additionally, a non-judgmental approach to clients can simultaneously produce improvements in the work environment experienced by staff. Implications for agency administrators, staff, and peer support personnel is also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• substance use disorders
• trauma
• non-judgmental approach
• staff

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It should be noted that dichotomous nominal level variables can and often are correlated with continuous variables (Gradstein, 1986; Ritchey, 2008) and that the Pearson correlation technique is robust to any violation of assumptions (Havlicek & Peterson, 1976). That said, point-biserial correlations, Spearman rho correlations, Kendall tau-b correlations, independent sample t-tests and Chi-Square crosstabulations (as appropriate) were also used to analyze the data. Results of these analyses were consistent with Pearson correlation results and are available upon request from the authors.