Casestudy: Amy

Unit 6 Project: Case Study - Amy

Stefanie Smith

Kaplan University

Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment

PS375-1

Professor Stacie Flynn

June 19, 2012

Unit 6 Project: Case Study - Amy

Amy is a highly intelligent woman with a college degree. She is married to an attorney and she is the mother of three children, ages 7 and twins who are 5 years of age.

When Amy got married, she had the vision of a “perfect” life; with a husband who loves her and would be with her and children who adored her.

As a child, Amy endured a lot of pain due to her mother’s alcoholism and the death of her father when she was 10 years of age. She was left with the un-daunting task of having to care for, not only her mother’s needs, but also her own since her mother was always too drunk to do anything for them.

Amy says that she feels worthless and insecure. She feels so disappointed that she started drinking to numb the reality of her life and now her drinking is getting in the way of her ability to care for her family and her home.

I believe that the best way to intervene on Amy’s behalf would be to find the best assessment and comprehensive treatment plan that takes a continuity of care approach. This way, Amy will eventually realize what the core problems are in her genetic background and also explain why she feels the need to drink in order to feel numb.

The first step that I would choose in helping Amy with her alcohol abuse is motivational interviewing. Developed by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, this type of intervention, “is a process for assessing a client’s readiness to change, and it uses procedures based on this readiness to enhance the probability of change” (Fisher & Harrison, 2009). This method recognizes that the client may not be ready to hear that they indeed have an AOD abuse problem and chances are likely that using a direct attack regarding the client’s AOD use would not be beneficial.

Next in my assessment, I will discuss which of the...