The Therapeutic Community: Research and Practice

The Therapeutic Community: Research and Practice brings together the diverse lens of these communities, illuminating and challenging current practice models and research. The book seeks to demonstrate the working collaboration between research-based and practice-based research, as well as filling the gaps for professions in behavioral health, neurobiology, corrections and workforce development. Each chapter explores how both environment and modality work together to change the quality of an individual's life. The reader is provided with a foundation and introduction to the language of 'Democratic' and 'Concept-based' TCs.

This book presents case studies, protocols, fidelity measures and emerging research to help readers incorporate applications into their own practice.

• Provides a foundation, including historical perspective to present day therapeutic communities
• Presents case studies, protocols and fidelity measures, including emerging research to help guide application towards a more unified practice
• Addresses future implications, including modifications and/or adaptations for expanding treatment settings and populations

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Feb 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9780323972369

Book preview

Chapter 1: Introduction

Carole Harvey     The Ohio State University College of Social Work, Columbus, OH, United States

Abstract

This work examines the dimensions, and from diverse research and practice perspectives, of the therapeutic community (TC) modality. It explores how both the environment and modality work together to improve the quality of an individual's life. Whether you have recently heard of TCs, are someone or love someone who has the lived experience of being in a TC, you are a seasoned TC practitioner, or you are immersed in TC-related research, we invite you to our community.

Keywords

Community psychiatry; Effort syndrome; Mental health; Psychosocial treatment; Substance use disorders; TC modality; TC-related research; Therapeutic community

Positive relationship, affection and affirmation, is what feeds all this, not power

Naya Arbiter, personal communication, June 2003.

This work examines the dimensions, and from diverse research and practice perspectives, of the therapeutic community (TC) modality. It explores how both the environment and modality work together to improve the quality of an individual's life. Whether you have recently heard of TCs, have lived in a TC, love someone who has the lived experience of being in a TC, you are a seasoned TC practitioner, or you are immersed in TC-related research, we invite you to our community.

Historically, Dr. Maxwell Jones is considered one of the first to recognize the humanizing elements of a social milieu that he referred to as community psychiatry (DeLeon, 2000; Kooyman, 2001; Raporport, 1960; Toch, 1980). He introduced and observed the therapeutic influence of a shared experience among soldiers with effort syndrome within a European military hospital. Similarly, it was the concept of multiple leadership that Jones (1968) considered vital to therapeutic community practice, the idea that patients could assume responsibilities within the group and practice new roles.

Although one of the first TCs in the United States began with dramatically different leadership and with a focus on substance use disorders, the therapeutic power of a group was no less apparent in Synanon in California in 1958. Yablonsky (1967) recorded the words of Chuck Dederich, Synanon's founder, when he described group influence on individual behavior change:

I had set up a Wednesday night ‘free association’ discussion group… I could detect considerable lying and self-deception in the group [and] I began to attack viciously. The group would join in, and we would let the air out of pompously inflated egos, including my own. The group process seemed to carve [the person confronted] down to a sense of reality and this was felt to be therapeutically beneficial… As a result, people seemed to grow before my eyes (p.