Dennis Donovan, PhD was selected by the Center of Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) to chair a consensus panel which will develop a new Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) on "Relapse Prevention and Recovery Support." The panel includes leading researchers and clinicians from around the country.
The group met in Bethesda this month to review and document existing models and supporting research on relapse and relapse prevention, and the role of community support in the treatment and recovery processes. Panelists role-played vignettes of client, counselor, and community support personnel interactions, and developed clinical decision trees and "master clinician" notes that provide the rationale for specific interventions demonstrated in these vignettes. Each vignette had specific clinician goals that were tied to specific learning objectives and counselor competencies found in the CSAT Technical Assistance Publication (TAP) 21: Addiction Counseling Competencies: The Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes of Professional Practice. The session-by-session interactions in each vignette were videotaped and will be developed into a chapter for the TIP in which the specific techniques will be demonstrated and the master clinician notes and decision trees inserted.
A second consensus panel meeting in December 2007 will consist of community-based treatment program administrators. This meeting will focus on issues of implementation and integration of relapse prevention interventions and community recovery support services into treatment programs.
Dr. Donovan is a professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute at the University of Washington.
