Recovery Research Institute Enhancing Recovery Through Science

When occupying such a position, clinicians bring family members to their truth without guilt and second guessing. Embracing these concepts, clinicians and clients move from educating to relating, from control-based reacting to confident and centered interpersonal connection and healing. We hope you will get involved, sign up for our free monthly Recovery Bulletin, and contribute to our understanding of addiction recovery through science. A licensed clinical psychologist (PSY31987) Dr. Lecy earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) in San Francisco. Words such as drug “abuse” and “abuser” increase stigmatized attitudes and act as a barrier to individuals seeking treatment.

The Recovery Research Institute is a leading nonprofit research institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital, dedicated to the advancement of addiction treatment and recovery. Dr. Perlmutter’s approach has helped hundreds of clinicians hone their therapeutic skills and create effective family programs and practices. Interventions to address substance use disorder vary widely in format and style, but often share a common desire of seeing family therapy recovery research institute a loved one enter into addiction treatment. Education and training can empower family members in their own lives, and help them support treatment and recovery engagement in a loved one. It is important that trusted and accurate information be available and accessible for this purpose.

We provide training and consultation for clinicians seeking to:

The professional therapists at the Family Recovery Institute (FRI) provide healing and hope for individuals, couples, and families struggling with mental health and/or substance use disorders. We are a multi-disciplinary clinic located in San Rafael, CA (part of Marin County) in the San Francisco Bay Area. We meet family members individually, as couples, and as groups of parents of children of any age. Our goal is to examine together, and thereby shift, the family system toward wellness, stability, sustainability, and health.

Dylan Kersh, MFT, Director of Training

Loved ones, such as family members and friends, often need to seek out support services as well. Our work shows family members and therapists how to create shifts in the family toward wellness and freedom from despair, chaos, pain and loss. New ways of talking, thinking, and participating in the family arrangement can be practiced and implemented right away. If even one family member reads and attempts our approach the cycles of relapse, loss, pain and disease can be interrupted.

• Employing strategies to positively solve conflicts, build familial harmony, and strengthen relationships can help facilitate long-term recovery.
• The emotional reactions and experiences of affected family members will often vary widely, and also change over time.
• Please peruse our website to learn more about our treatment model and the approaches we employ, the workshops we offer, our founder and clinical team, and the training services we provide to clinicians working with wounded families at any level of care.
• He has pioneered and validated a theory of family system woundedness with a corresponding recovery model he calls Stress-Induced Impaired Coping.

It involves loved ones holding a meeting to lovingly but firmly communicate with the individual about their substance use, in an attempt to improve the situation and compel their loved one to seek treatment. The intervention uses the contingencies provided by closely affected loved-ones to address issues of denial, express the impact of the substance use on them and others, encourage treatment seeking, and outline consequences in the absence of treatment seeking. Loved ones are strongly advised to seek the assistance of a mental health professional to facilitate an intervention of this kind.

• We hope you will get involved, sign up for our free monthly Recovery Bulletin, and contribute to our understanding of addiction recovery through science.
• In controlled studies conducted primarily with parents and spouses of adults with substance use disorder, CRAFT has consistently produced higher rates of treatment entry for the person of concern (the loved one suffering from addiction).
• At the Recovery Research Institute, we know that stable and long-term recovery from alcohol and other drug use disorders is possible.
• Maintains recoveryanswers.org as a trusted source for addiction science with hundreds of consumable articles and useful resources.
• More than 35 states in the U.S. have civil commitment laws in place, that allow family members or healthcare providers to petition the court, to involuntarily send an individual with severe substance use disorder to inpatient addiction treatment to prevent serious harm.

Dylan oversees the development of the Institute’s training program, recruiting both AMFTs and pre-licensed doctoral-level interns, trainees, and post-docs. He then began his therapist career at FamilyWorks in San Rafael, California working with individuals, teens, families, and couples from diverse backgrounds. In 2015 he opened West America After Care, in Mill Valley, an after-school program providing tutoring and enrichment activities to students in grades K-8. His subsequent work at Mind Therapy Clinic in Corte Madera honed his work with individuals struggling with both severe mental illness and addiction. He further deepened his skills around substance abuse and addiction at A New Path Marin then as Program Director for Shine a Light Addiction Specialists in San Rafael where he developed a strengths-based coaching program to help clients define and build their lives. He has also worked at the Muir Wood Adolescent Outpatient Program and the Foundations Recovery Network Outpatient Program in San Francisco.

Social support is important for recovery, but what aspects matter most?

If they do focus on the family, they discuss ways the family can cope with, manage or otherwise get rid of the illness (or the person with it). Employing Dr. Perlmutter’s ground-breaking model of “Stress-Induced Impaired Coping (SIIC),” The Institute guides family members toward understanding their system, their position in it, and the steps necessary to help everyone get well. Clinicians and professionals employ the Institute’s model of Stress-Induced Impaired Coping and its proven recovery method. Another key element guides clinicians to examine the family story, show members how to put in words the setup they’re in with each other, and identify ways to make “small shifts” in individual, experiential and family therapy.

Transforming parenting, partnering, and treatment for wounded families

Regardless of voluntary or involuntary treatment attendance, substance use disorder necessitates a system of care that acknowledges the complexity and long-term chronic, relapsing nature of the disorder. Without adequate self-care, personal resources can run low leading to mental and emotional turmoil, resentment, hostility, exhaustion, and eventually burnout. Systematically linking family members of someone suffering from a substance use disorder to family-focused mutual help organizations has been found to reduces stress and perceived problems. Through individual consultation, group case conference, and clinician workshops The Institute provides tools for clinicians to demonstrate to their client families the difference between “unconscious enabling” (the most destructive form) and clear-minded decision-making.

Stigma is a known barrier to treatment seeking, and can stop family members from seeking outside support, or individual treatment for themselves, or their loved ones. Family Therapy is a collection of therapeutic approaches that rely on a systems prospective; the belief that changes in one part of a system can and will catalyze change in other parts of the system, by either creating problems or contributing to solutions. Family members can be integral to the recovery process in their support for the patient, but also in their enforcement of consequences for addictive behavior. At the same time, loved ones will also have their own aspirations and issues that need to be addressed. A sustainable clinical posture, or psychological position, from which to consider and respond to the requests and actions of clients is promoted.

At least 25% of the population belongs to a family affected by an addiction disorder in a first-degree relative. According to the Federal Reserve’s annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households, one in 5 Americans now know someone personally who has suffered from opioid addiction, and at least 25% of the population belongs to a family affected by a substance use disorder in a first-degree relative. The data also suggest that up to 90% of individuals with active addiction live at home with a family or significant other. Family Therapy is a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on family‐level assessment to address the interdependent nature of familial relations and transform these complex relational patterns to promote long-term recovery. To increase efforts to advise state and federal governments about empirically-informed national alcohol and other drug strategy.To train the next generation of scientists in addiction research. Maintains recoveryanswers.org as a trusted source for addiction science with hundreds of consumable articles and useful resources.

Digital Recovery Support: Online and Mobile Resources

Addiction can have a significant emotional toll on not only the individual suffering, but the entire family unit. The emotional reactions and experiences of affected family members will often vary widely, and also change over time. Commonly reported emotions from affected family members include feelings of abandonment, anxiety, fear, anger, concern, embarrassment or guilt.

Addiction is often referred to as a “family disease” to highlight the impact that substance use disorder can have, and the interrelated nature of, substance use within family units. Family members are often in a position to assist in diagnosis or problem identification, and can play an important role in encouraging substance use treatment and recovery. Historically, substance use disorders have been viewed as an individual problem (a moral or character flaw of the individual) and thus have been treated individually and in isolation. However, research from the last three decades has worked to identify the important role partners and families play in the origin and maintenance of addictive behavior. Addiction is now conceptualized as existing within part of larger family system, thus treating the couple or family as a whole. Being a first generation Latin American informs the way he works with issues around race and culture and positions him to better understand the experiences of children of immigrants.

Despite mixed evidence, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that individuals involuntarily coerced into addiction treatment stay in treatment longer and have similar outcomes compared to peers without legal involvement. Little research exists on the long-term outcomes of individuals who have been involuntarily committed. While there is a larger body of research available on the effectiveness of coerced or compulsory treatment in criminal justice populations, findings have been inconsistent. Two systematic literature reviews conducted on the topic found that research on mandated treatment has been fraught with methodological problems. Sign up for the Recovery Research Institute Recovery Bulletin to get the latest research in addiction treatment and recovery.