Dan Feerst published America's first EAP blog* in 2008.* This blog offer EAP training program and resources to boost EAP utilization, reduce behavioral risk, and improve the effectiveness of employee assistance programs (EAPs) America's oldest and #1 EAP Blog by world's most widely read published EAP content author, Daniel A. Feerst, MSW, LISW-CP. (*EAPA, Journal of Employee Assistance)
Showing posts with label reasonable suspicion training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reasonable suspicion training. Show all posts
I almost missed it (actually I did, but found it soon enough). The National Institute on Drug Abuse has updated its report on inhalant abuse. You can it here along with recent research on the subject.
NIH Pub Number: 10-3818 Published: May
1999 Revised: Sept 2012 Author: National
Institute on Drug Abuse
All materials appearing in the Research Reports series are in the
public domain and may be reproduced without permission from NIDA. Citation of
the source is appreciated.
Table of Contents What are inhalants? What is the scope of inhalant abuse? How are inhalants used? How do inhalants produce their effects? How can inhalant abuse be recognized? What are the short- and long-term effects of inhalant use? What are the other medical consequences of inhalant abuse? What are the unique risks associated with nitrite abuse? Where can I get more scientific information on inhalant abuse? Glossary References
As you become an expert on alcohol in the workplace, you will need to become an expert with assessment and helping an employee-client, who may be diagnosable as alcoholic. Invariably you will bump into your employee-client's "model of denial". This is a critical juncture in your assessment interview. All alcoholics have a model of denial. This is a construct that assists the alcoholic in preventing self-diagnosis.
It is a myth that denial is absolute in alcoholics. Denial is a defense mechanism and it is therefore employed to do battle against self-diagnosis. Non-alcoholic drinkers deny alcoholism of course, but they do not use denial in the classic psychodynamic sense of the term. It is logical and realistic to view all alcoholics as having--if not the ability to self-diagnose their illness--at a minimum, a fuzzy idea about the nature of their problems and whether drinking is in some way linked to them or associated with them. This is all that is needed to help alcoholic employees examine their "denial construct".
So where to begin? At an appropriate point in your assessment interview, you should define denial in the following way to make an impact and help the employee move toward self-diagnosis--your goal.
Here is the definition that I finally arrived at using after testing a few other presentations to help employees move past denial. I don't simply rattle this off the tip of my tongue, however. I piece it out in my discussion with the employee until he or she finally gets it all. I like this definition because it seriously erodes or creates useful anxiety in the employee-client, enough at least to further the interview to the next step. That next step might be a MAST (Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test) done verbally, or some other next step in the interview and assessment process.
So alcohol and workplace intervention is enabled by the following presentation by the EA professional:
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Are you familiar with the term denial and how it works with regard to alcoholism? Here's what I have observed in many people over the years. When considering the definition of alcoholism above, many people focus on the symptoms that they do not have more than the ones they do have. Unlike cancer, where any symptom would cause alarm, symptoms of alcoholism often get ignored if other symptoms can be shown to not exist. This process is called “comparing out” of the definition, and it is a natural part of denial.
Here’s a better way to understand denial. Alcoholics usually maintain a definition of alcoholism that serves to exclude them. Alcoholics usually focus on symptoms of addiction that they do not have and use this information to avoid their self-diagnosis. Alcoholics then change their definition over time to exclude symptoms that they begin to experience.
