Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tab dump

Sorry for all the recent tab dumps. Enjoying summer with my kids, work is busy and having a hard time keeping up with the blog.
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3 comments:

PMFAddictionTreatmentCenter said...

Thought maybe I'd respond to the methodone article you posted. thanks for that post.
those are some interesting facts Pulse came up with. they seem to be accurate..distubing but accurate.

Anonymous said...

The spirituality article assessment questions do not assess a person's spirituality, they assess a person's Christianity. I know of no other disease where it would be ethical for a clinician to prescribe praying for recovery.

Jason Schwartz said...

@anonymous - Fair point that its focus is Christian and posting it was probably a poor choice.

I'm not Christian myself, but most of my clients are and spirituality is being considered and utilized in all areas of behavioral health and medicine. (Google spirituality, cancer, treatment. You don't just get fringe stuff.) In fact, accreditation bodies often REQUIRE that a spiritual assessment be done at that it be considered a potential resource. If the fear is evangelizing, I'm just as concerned as you. Any professional that uses this as an opportunity to do so would probably be violating their professional ethical code and, at Dawn Farm, it would be a disciplinary matter.

In spite of all I've said, dealing with spirituality is something that most clinicians, whatever their area of practice, are pretty uncomfortable with and do a pretty lousy job with. In spite of my status as a nonbeliever, I think it's an important dimension and can be very helpful as long as it's done in a CLIENT-centered manner rather than in a manner that is organized around the worker's spiritual beliefs. For that reason, I understand and respect your reaction to a professional article on the subject that it explicitly Christian.