A persistent contradiction in treatment providers’ views on addiction

Addiction Treatment Providers' Engagements with the Brain Disease Model of Addiction

“…As she detailed, in Sweden, key stakeholders within addiction treatment have resisted a wholly biomedical understanding of alcohol and other drug problems, with social models of addiction historically engrained within treatment settings. Taking a US perspective, Schmidt (2018) argued that moralized formulations of the disease concept were present in Benjamin Rush's original formulation of alcoholism as a 'disease of the will' (Levine, 1985;Schmidt, 1995), and continue to pose problems for clients because they have never fully dropped away (e.g., leading to stigma which deters people from accessing treatment). Schmidt argued this was problematic because addiction treatment stakes its legitimacy on evidence-based medical science rather than ideological systems of belief which remain pervasive within treatment.…”

Implications of treatment providers’ varying conceptions of the disease model of addiction: A response

“…Schmidt [12] also draws attention to conflicts between different models of addiction. She notes that we found that treatment providers appear to endorse disease and other models simultaneously and strategically deploy different models for their presumed therapeutic benefits.…”

“…In addressing Storbjörk's [3] and Schmidt's [12] concerns, we see no reason why different treatments based on social and biomedical models cannot co-exist, particularly given that medical and social factors are so intertwined for people experiencing AOD problems. Treatment clients may benefit from both social interventions (e.g.…”