Counseling

Relapse Prevention Counseling (RPC) is for people who have tried to recover from chemical dependency or the use of other self-defeating behaviors and have not been able to do so. Some may have actually relapsed. Others are still in recovery but are experiencing problems that are causing them to believe that they might relapse in the future.

Relapse Prevention Counseling uses seven counseling processes to teach clients to identify and manage relapse warning signs, which are the high risk situations that can lead to relapse. The seven processes include Warning Sign Identification, Warning Sign Analysis, Situation Mapping, Thought Management, Feeling Management, Behavior and Situation Management, and Recovery Management. RPC involves individual sessions with a counselor and supplemental group sessions when appropriate.

Therapy

Relapse Prevention Therapy (RPT) is a brief, targeted and strategic therapeutic approach designed to help relapse-prone individuals understand the actual process of relapse. This 15-step approach helps people identify and manage the warning signs that have in the past led them from stable recovery to active use. Clients can learn to manage the irrational thoughts, unmanageable emotions, self-destructive urges and self-defeating behaviors that drive those warning signs.

Brief means that the goals need to be reached in a limited number of sessions, usually twenty or less. Targeted means that therapy addresses a central core problem. Strategic means that there are clearly defined tasks that are used to reach clearly defined goals.

These procedures are important for two reasons. First, RPT can help people get well faster. When dealing wit a potentially fatal problem like relapse, the difference in the speed of recovery might mean the difference between life and death. Second, most managed care organizations and public agencies that are paying for health care services now require brief, targeted, strategic approaches. More and more people are finding that they cannot get insurance to cover traditional open-ended treatment.