Week Four Discussion & Knowledge Exchange Forum: The Future and Beyond….

Comment IconWelcome to Week Four of the 6th Annual Addiction Day: Advancing Recovery within Addiction & Mental Health Website Discussion & Knowledge Exchange forum

This week’s discussion and knowledge exchange focuses on Recovery: The Future…and Beyond! By participating, your opinion will be incorporated into the conference’s plenary panel discussion. There are two ways to participate:

  • The first is through an anonymous survey, located within this post.
  • The second is by adding a reply to the bottom of this post! Let us know your views on the topic and add to the interactive discussion in the comments section!

Click the “Read More” button below to participate! The discussion topic, brief literature scan, anonymous survey, and the comments section are available within.

We would like to give special acknowledgement to the 6th Annual Addiction Day Presenters who have contributed to advancements relevant to this week’s discussion topic:

Lisa Marsch

Recovery: The Future…and Beyond!

“Technology, such as the Internet and mobile devices, offers tremendous promise in the assessment, treatment, and Recovery management of psychiatric and substance use disorders. Empirically supported, technology-based therapeutic tools offer considerable potential to create entirely new models of behavioural healthcare both within and outside of formal systems of care, while greatly increasing the quality and reach of care and reducing costs”.

(Marsh & Ben-Zeev, 2012, p.259).

We would love for you to share your thoughts and opinions!

Brief Literature Scan:

(Please note this is not an exhaustive, nor preferred list of publications. Rather, it is simply introductory literature to generate discussion. Please feel free to reference publications/resources/webprofiles of your choice in the website discussion & knowledge exchange forum).

  1. Marsch & Ben-Zeev. (2012). Technology Based Assessments and Interventions Targeting Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders: Innovations and Opportunities. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15504263.2012.723308
  2. McTavish, Chih, Shah & Gustafson. (2012). How Patients Recovering from Alcoholism use a Smartphone Intervention. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15504263.2012.723312
  3. Gustafson, Shaw, Isham, Baker, Boyle & Levy. (2011). Explicating an Evidence-Based, Theoretically Informed, Mobile Technology-Based System to Improve Outcomes fro People in Recovery for alcohol Dependence. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3179272/
  4. Bickel, Christensen & Marsch. (2011). A Review of Computer Based Interventions used in the Assessment, Treatment, and Research of Drug Addiction. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092368/
  5. University of Wisconsin. Innovations for Recovery. http://www.innovationsforrecovery.com/Home/Home.aspx

Anonymous Opinion Survey

To participate in our survey please click the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SYMCC9F

Website Discussion & Knowledge Exchange Forum

We would love to hear your thoughts/reflections/suggestions regarding this week’s topic of discussion: Recovery: The Future…and Beyond!

To leave a response, add your comment at the bottom of this page. Please be aware that comments will be manually approved to help filter out spam, and there may be a short delay before they appear on the page.

We ask that all responses posted on the 6th Annual Addiction Day website are respectful of others and adhere to appropriate communication etiquette. We will be doing our outmost to filter out any spam or unwanted posts that arrive to our site.

5 comments

  1. edward kemp says:

    I asked a group of friends the other day how they measured recovery from their addiction. The most succinct and probably the best reply was from a woman who said “when I’m happy and not drinking”.
    Not very technical but it says a lot.

  2. Allison Johnson says:

    One of the frustrations I experience with “evidence-based practice” is what appears to me to be an overemphasis on formal, quantitative research and peer review. As Alexandre said in an earlier post, people have been actively recovering from addiction and mental illness for decades in spite of the dearth of research evidence to support recovery, and yet we hesitate in the field to closely examine something that seems to just work. The sociologists and social anthropologists out there know the appropriate terminology, but tacit knowledge derives from evidence gained through experience and holds much more sway over our behaviour than we sometimes feel comfortable crediting. We see people using technology, even blame it for many of our societal problems, yet hesitate to leverage it because the “evidence” isn’t in. Actually it is, just not necessarily in the format of peer-reviewed articles in research journals. I am not downplaying the critical importance, even primacy, of research by any means, but I am saying it is only part of the evidence we need to attend to in order to serve our patients/clients effectively. How can we efficiently and effectively use our felt and tacit knowledge, in collaboration with our clients/patients, to gather data on “unsupported” interventions that simply make sense given a specific context? What scrutiny and oversight is necessary to ensure that these interventions are used as safely and ethically as possible, in the absence of empirical support? How do we reconcile the worlds of formal research evidence and what we, as professionals, “just know” or regard as “common sense”?

    • Daniel Scott says:

      Hi Allison,

      There is a fundamental therapy problem that is best described by the old saying, ” Those who only have a hammer see every problem as a nail”.

      • Allison Johnson says:

        Agreed, Daniel. We need a full toolbox that includes a hammer or two, but not only that!

  3. Martin says:

    Many people are tech savvy, reliant and/or over reliant on technology for their community interaction. Many people as well are reliant on technology as their validation, contacts/motivation for substance use. Using technology for or as an aide for recovery would have to be carefully planned, agreed upon with the individual. To be most effective the technology would need to be linked in a closed forum to allow private exchange, follow up and dialogue with the client/group and health practitioner. A closed forum would allow for groups to engage, research to occur, positive peer based and/or professional interaction, also constructive surveillance to enhance, ensure and monitor best practices for the person(s) in recovery. For effective relpase planning it would be proactive for clients not to have an open web forum where former or current associates that could/would interfere and/or offer potential substance use opportunities and/or a return to former use and substance use contacts. A closed, supervised forum would afford the client in recovery to access new supportive associates and supports for recovery. Of course this type of support would be more successful if the person accessed an in person support program/service to make significant changes prior to follow up with a web/technology based support tool regarding maintenance of their recovery. Technology would prove effective for basic intake and preliminary assessment criteria prior to face to face treatment as well before reverting to the technology for follow up. we already use this in our addictions intake process. A caution is a treatment technology session could make available to the client the ability to present as sober while being intoxicated or under the influence. While an in person/face to face session makes the participant more accountable for their presentation/sobriety (experience with addictions counselling clients).

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