Intervention (counseling)

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An intervention is an orchestrated attempt by one, or often many, people (usually family and friends) to get someone to seek professional help with an addiction or some kind of traumatic event or crisis.

Interventions have been used to address serious personal problems, including, but not limited to, compulsive gambling, compulsive eating and other eating disorders, self-mutilation, "workaholism", tobacco smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse, and various types of poor personal health care. Interventions have also been conducted due to personal habits not generally considered harmful, such as video game addiction, excessive television viewing, and excessive computer use.

Interventions are either direct, typically involving a confrontative meeting with the alcohol or other drug dependent person (the most typical type of intervention) or indirect, involving work with a co-dependent family to encourage them to be more effective in helping the addicted individual. In the same sense, direct interventions tend to be a form of short-term therapy aimed at getting the addicted person into inpatient rehabilitation, whereas indirect interventions are more of a long-term therapy, directed at changing the family system, and therefore promoting healing of addiction.

[edit] Controversy

The need for direct interventions is generally decided by a concerned group of family, friends, and counselor(s), rather than the addict himself. Often the addict will not agree that he or she needs the type of help that is proposed during the intervention, usually thought by those performing the intervention to be a result of denial. One of the primary arguments against interventions is the amount of deception required on the part of the family and counselors. Typically, the addict is tricked into being present at the intervention by friends and family members.

Prior to the intervention itself, the family meets with a counselor (or interventionist). Families prepare speeches in which they share their negative experiences associated with the target's particular addiction-based lifestyle, to convey to the target the amount of pain his or her addiction has caused others. Also during the intervention rehearsal meeting, each group member is strongly urged to create a list of activities (by the addict) that they will no longer tolerate, finance, or participate in if the addict doesn't agree to check into a rehabilitation center for treatment. These usually involve very serious losses to the addict if he refuses. These items may be as simple as no longer loaning money to the addict, but can be far more alarming. It is common for groups to threaten the addict with permanent rejection (banishment) from the family. Wives often threaten to leave their husbands during this phase of the intervention, and vice versa. If the addict happens to have any outstanding arrest warrants or other unresolved criminal issues, the threat is usually made that he or she will be turned in to the authorities. Every possible loss that the family can think of is presented to the addict, who then must decide whether to check into the prescribed rehabilitation center, or deal with the promised losses by family and friends.

These heavy-handed threats are another reason the practice is not universally accepted in the psychological field. Addicts generally choose to go to the treatment center rather than lose touch with their families, but the practice is recent enough that it has yet to be supported by controlled, long-term studies^{[citation needed]}, hence it is still unknown how interventionist methods fare when compared to other methods of aiding in addiction recovery. In the uncommon event that the individual rejects the program, life becomes very difficult for both the addict and the family. If the family chooses to go through with the threats it has made, personal relationships with the addict end abruptly, and rarely recover completely.

Another point of contention in the psychological community is that interventions force someone under the influence of mind-altering substance to make a major, typically life-changing decision. The addict, who has impaired judgement at the outset, is asked to make a choice that will likely affect the rest of his or her life. Long-term studies have yet to be performed on the ultimate ramifications for individuals who choose not to submit to treatment, or for the families involved^{[citation needed]}. Reports of the outcome of direct intervention therapies are poor, with most addicts appearing to submit on the surface, but ultimately returning to their particular addiction^{[citation needed]}.