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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Behavior Therapy for Drug Addiction Among Children

Behavior therapies plays an important role in treating the young addicts. These behavioral therapies are provided in tandem with other therapies, such as, medication. Following are the behavioral therapies used for treating the drug addiction among the children:

Cognitive Therapy:
Cognitive therapy focuses on recognizing risk factors and developing coping skills in the child addicts. As, the reason and changed thought patterns are used in this therapy to deal with problematic situations and to cope with the ups and downs of recovery, this therapy is considered as the behavioral therapy at root. In this therapy, the alteration of the thought process is the most important thing.

Family Therapy:
Support from the family is needed to treat the young addicts. Support structure of a strong and nurturing home life is needed for the recovery process. Family therapy should always be used along with cognitive techniques.

Incentives:
It is important to use incentives to continue recovery process as the young children can see the tangible benefits of their recovery and struggles. These help to keep the children on track in the recovery process. Building a reward system through family therapy is often an excellent way to get started building incentives into the recovery process.

Motivational Techniques:
Behavioral therapies along with treating the drug addiction must provide motivation, the desire to change in the children. In this process, the children are informed about the harms caused by the drug abusing. Apart from that, pictures of young alcoholics and their diseased livers and yellowing skin are also shown to alter their patterns of behavior.

Treating drug addiction in children is very difficult, as any amount of mishandling will have very serious consequences on their emotional well being.

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