(1) What is your essential question and answers? What is your best answer and why?
Essential Question: How can a drug rehab counselor best help a teen with a history of substance abuse?
1st answer: Implement behavioral therapies
2nd answer: Create a personalized treatment plan based around the clients situation
3rd answer: Implement medication assisted treatment
My best answer is my 2nd answer, to create a personalized treatment plan based around the clients situation. The reason I chose this as my best answer is because although my 1st and 3rd answers are effective, they are too general and are not able to help the patient to the best of its ability. Implementing behavioral therapies is only one of many steps required in order to allow the patient to recover and isnt able to sustain itself on its own. For my third answer, medication is only used to treat opioid addiction, but those addicted to opioid only cover a small percentage of the addict population. Creating a personalized treatment plan ensures that the patient is receiving all the care that they need in order to treat every aspect in their life so that they're able to fully recover and remain sober.
(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
I noticed my answers came as my research progressed and became more in depth. After doing tons of foundation research, I noticed that behavioral therapies were the most commonly mentioned, from a bunch of different sources. Every site that I went to said the same thing, that behavioral therapies are effective in the treatment of substance abuse. Every piece of research that I had on that only kept reassuring my answer, so that's why I picked my first answer.
As for my second answer, this came after my first independent component. My first independent component was very research based, and i spent those 30 hours doing research, watching documentaries, reading books from the library and reading stories from addicts themselves who shared how they were able to get over their addiction. There was one specific article by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called "Principles of Effective Treatment," where I was first introduced to this answer. After I completed my first independent component and had done hours from mentorship, I concluded this answer made a lot of sense and should definitely be included. My mentor has to follow certain guidelines when counseling, but she also told me that following those guidelines don't work for everyone, and often times the treatment has to be adjusted and altered to better fix their situation. Numerous articles of research also reinforced the idea, and that's how I chose my second answer.
For my third answer, this one came from strictly research, but was later backed up by my second component, which was attending NA meetings. I was hesitant on picking this as my third answer because it seemed very controversial, but after reading numerous articles and hearing multiple people talk about their positive experience with this treatment, I figured it could definitely be an option.
(3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
I'm not going to lie and say pursuing this topic was a breeze, because it definitely wasn't. My topic originally wasn't substance abuse counseling, it was counseling at risk youth. But after an EQ meeting, the teachers decided it was too general and I needed to narrow it down, so I chose substance abuse. However, my mentor worked with teens struggling with substance abuse, but didn't study substance abuse specifically. So i had to go on a hunt and find a different mentor after my topic change. I visited and called numerous sites in Pomona, but none of them ever got back to me, even after I tried contacting them again. This went on for about a month, until I eventually just gave up. I continued doing mentorship with my current mentor, but asked her if anyone else could help me. Luckily, she said she knew people that worked with her, and they were able to mentor me and give me the information I needed.
(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
I would say
Website:
National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Book:
Substance Abuse: Information for School Counselors, etc.
Person:
My mentor, Isabel Godoy.
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