There has been a dramatic shift in the understanding and treatment of addictions and behavioral issues in the past few decades. This has culminated in a wider acceptance that challenges such as these can be linked to neuro-biological dysfunction – rather than purely to lifestyle choices, or external pressures.
This is especially crucial to the role of mental health counselors and their options for supporting sustained recovery among their patients.
The transformational nature of this improved insight cannot be overestimated. Instead of expecting patients to simply make better decisions and manage their behavior as a result of traditional therapies, better understanding of brain chemistry has caused a rethink in how addiction and chronic mental health issues are addressed.
If neurobiology is involved, then more work needs to be done to readjust and improve biological responses and signals in the brain, to bring about sustainable recovery.
What is pharmacotherapy?
Appreciation of addiction as a disease or a mental illness has led to far more research into the use of medically relevant substances as a treatment option. This is pharmacotherapy. The term ‘pharmacotherapy’ also refers to replacing a problematic and harmful substance to which someone is addicted with an alternative that manages risk and supports them toward recovery.
According to the American Psychological Association, “There is some evidence that combining psychotherapy and medications may be more effective than either treatment alone.”
Medications can also be used to treat the symptoms of addiction, such as the physical effects of withdrawal and cravings that can become early recovery obstacles.
Mental health counselors and balance
One of the linchpins of blending pharmacotherapy with other interventions is often a mental health counselor. These professionals help to individualize and monitor psychosocial and medical programs that effect real change in a patient’s prognosis.
Clearly, no one patient is the same as the next. Addiction and behavioral issues can be complex, and the individual’s lived experience, environment, and family medical history can be tied into causes and recovery roadblocks.
Unraveling the psychosocial aspects of addiction and other serious mental health issues can involve mental health counselors having lengthy relationships with patients. This will include finding therapies that enable their patient to gain better mental and emotional balance and to make changes to their lifestyle or general environment.
For instance, it could be that gaining a job and a secure place to live removes people who are dependent on drugs from the sort of temptations and triggers that make recovery so much harder.
Talking therapies and other forms of mental health support can also go a long way to providing patients with new understanding about their challenges, and better ways to manage their responses and issues.
Support from peers and sponsors can also be a vital part of the recovery process from addictions and other behavioral or mental health conditions. This can include both group and one-to-one support.
In liaison with other medical professionals, in particular psychiatrists and addiction recovery specialists, mental health counselors can also facilitate and monitor the use of relevant medications.
For example, in treating someone with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the care team may use antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications to enable the patient to better engage with cognitive behavioral therapy.
The relevant skills of mental health counselors
There are many reasons why patients require mental health counselors to manage their treatment programs. These include having someone to ensure that the medications being used are not creating a raft of new side-effects or issues that the patient needs to deal with. An example of this would be a patient becoming too dependent on methadone, a drug designed to gradually release them from heroin addiction.
Another example is a patient having someone monitoring them who knows the signs and symptoms of Xanax addiction. This is prescribed to treat anxiety disorders, anxiety caused by depression, panic attacks and phobias, for example.
For this reason, mental health counselors are trained to constantly assess the effects of both the drugs used in pharmacotherapy and all the additional treatment options. This requires up-to-date learning during qualification and continuous professional development.
Counselors must also apply their ability to be empathetic and supportive, to keep patients committed to medical treatments that require consistency and care. There may even be times when the mental health counselor needs to act as the patient’s advocate with their physician or psychologist if they have strong objections to the use of pharmacotherapy to treat their addiction or behavioral challenges.
In fact, there may be more involved in studying for an online Master’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling than many people imagine. Studying to become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor at American International College ensures that you become competent and confident in the theory, research, and clinical skills needed to provide meaningful mental health support. This includes exploring such topics as assessment, psychopathology, and ethics.
Counselors study ethics so that they will always have the best interests of their patients as their top priority, including being ready to step in if the treatment program presents its own set of risks, and a more measured, longer-term strategy is required.
An example of this would be a counselor ensuring that any medications used are not limiting the patient’s abilities to make the necessary adjustments to their lives, and are simply delaying or masking real steps forward. Psychotherapy helps to build coping strategies and skills, and any medications that interfere with this process may need to be urgently reviewed.
Also, the mental health counselor will be alert to any indications that medical intervention is not serving a clear enough purpose. Medication efficacy can differ from individual to individual, so the counselor will take responsibility for guaranteeing genuine benefit from this form of intervention.
Mental health counselors champion recovery
The role of mental health counselors in pharmacotherapy is to recommend, support, monitor, and adjust the use of medicines, according to a highly personalized treatment and support program for their patients.
This includes ensuring that pharmacotherapy is used as part of treatment that “enables people to counteract addiction’s disruptive effects on their brain and behavior and regain control of their lives”, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
