Back to basics: fundamental cognitive therapy skills for keeping drug-dependent individuals in treatment

Cognitive therapists who treat drug-dependent patients are likely to lose at least 50 percent of their patients to dropout. This chapter has presented a cognitive model for conceptualizing missed sessions and dropout, along with strategies for reducing the likelihood of missed sessions and dropout. The following should serve to highlight these strategies. 1. Therapists are encouraged to offer warm, empathetic, collaborative relationships in which drug-dependent patients can feel accepted, understood, and validated. 2. Therapists are encouraged to develop comprehensive, accurate case conceptualizations, with attention paid to the potential for missed sessions and dropout. Case conceptualizations should ultimately guide cognitive and behavioral techniques. 3. Therapists are encouraged to structure sessions and elicit feedback regarding their patient's thoughts and beliefs about therapy and the therapist. This feedback is facilitated by such questions as, "What do you like most about therapy?" "What do you like least?" "What has changed in your life as a result of therapy?" "How do you view our relationship?" 4. Therapists are encouraged to socialize patients in a timely, appropriate manner. 5. Similar to the process of socialization, therapists are encouraged to use cognitive and behavioral techniques in a timely, appropriate manner. It is unrealistic to think that the problems of missed sessions and dropout from drug treatment will ever be fully resolved. Nonetheless, the authors believe that the conceptual models and fundamental strategies presented in this chapter represent a significant step in addressing these problems.