Understanding The Importance of Intervention Within the EAP Community
In regards to Drug and Alcohol EAP,
Intervention Services often gets contacted by affected friends and
family members about loved ones who are addicted and in living in highly
distressed situations. Sometimes, these are the “Enablers” themselves
who do not know what to do or who to turn to for help. In the cases
where the addict/alcoholic is not the direct contact, intervention is
one of the most important aspects in the process of recovery. There are
many misconceptions by family, friends and persons within the EAP
community. There is also a lack of knowledge about interventions and
how they can benefit all parties involved. The purposes of this article
are to identify the importance of Drug and Alcohol EAP Interventions and
when it is necessary or should be considered.
Identifying When an EAP Intervention is Necessary
When is an intervention necessary?
Families often come to the EAP community looking for help for a loved
one, be it someone that is working for the company or a family member
of. Clinically, the first response is “lets find them a treatment and
get them admitted as soon as possible.” This often leads to the family
trying to do an intervention in some form or another. Family
intervention rarely if ever works with the desired outcome. In fact, the
percentage of successful family interventions is lower than 10%.
This is an opportune time to look into
referring an intervention out to the proper authorities. With a 90%
placement rate, intervention is by far the most successful way to get
and addict or alcoholic into treatment. For the EAP community the
implications of getting someone into treatment are tremendous. The
benefit comes in productivity. If an employee is worried about a family
member, there would be a constant worry about that family member and
their productivity levels would decline. Once the intervention is done
and they are placed with a 90% certainty, the employee’s mind is set at
ease and can once again raise their productivity level.
On the other side, it is the employee
themselves that has the issue. Family members can call the EAP looking
for help. The usual outcome is to keep an eye on that employee to see if
they are having an issue. The next step is to say “go to treatment or
else.” At this point the employee is of course going to say “yes”
because they do not want to lose their job. The conundrum is that the
employee is now going into treatment for someone else and not for the
most important person, themselves. Statistics show that when a person
goes into treatment for someone else or another problem, that they do
not achieve long term sobriety. It is well know by the EAP community
that going into treatment for oneself is one of the most important
aspects of recovery. When that employee returns with a solid root in
recovery they can once again become a productive member of the
organization.
If you are an EAP program or a family
member looking to perform and intervention using EAP within your
company, please contact us.
What is an intervention and how does it benefit the family, employer, and alcoholic to achieve long term sobriety?
There are three main intervention models.
The Johnson model has been in practice the longest. This as most EAP’s
know is a confrontational model to point out all the negative
consequences the addiction has caused under the assumption that this
will break their denial and get them into treatment. On the other side
is the Invitational model. This consists of educating the family and
the addict at the same time. The philosophy behind this is that if the
addict cannot get individuals one on one then they cannot manipulate
them and the disease cannot win. The problem with this method is getting
the addict to actually show up. The third model is the systemic model.
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For an EAP, Interventions can be effective methods to help an employee
An intervention is a
process used to get educate the family and help them make the necessary
changes to understand how addiction not only affects the
alcoholic/addict but the family as a whole. Its purpose is not to just
get the alcoholic/addict into treatment but to transform the thought
process of the family. They need to understand their role in the
addiction. There is often feelings of guilt and remorse on the family’s
part. “What did I do to make my loved one this way?” “Why cant I help my
loved one?” The truth of the matter is that often times the family is
just as sick if not more so than the addict themselves. This is why
intervention is important. The education process of the intervention
targets the family member. They need to understand the manipulation
that is brought about by the addict/alcoholic. They also need to
understand their part in the enabling process.
If you are an EAP
provider and are looking to help integrate intervention services as a
part of your employment assistance programs, Intervention Services has
been helping employers with EAP interventions for over 10 years.