Cannabis abuse treatment: A challenging aspect of an outpatient individual drug abuse therapeutic program

Abstract

The Counselling Center offers an outpatient drug counselling individual psychotherapeutic program. Specifically for cannabis users, the program allows the adjustment of the treatment intervention to the specific demands of this group, whereas treatment for other drug abuse does not always recognize or effectively treat cannabis abuse.In , Greece, the great majority of the detoxification therapeutic programs addresses to heroin users and includes therapeutic communities and maintenance programs.A primary problem is the difficulty to motivate users to seek treatment, because although they have already developed dependence to cannabis use, they often fail to make the association between their use and its symptoms. So they seek treatment after decompensation of academic, social and occupational performance or after involvement with the legal system.Because of the high frequency of comorbidity among cannabis–dependant individuals, the users often seek treatment from a mental health service, where their abuse is ignored, and this results in rapid relapse while their dependence is still present.Treating cannabis abuse without diagnosing and treating the underling disorder or symptomatology is not effective. Thus, treatment programs for cannabis dependence should include a dual diagnosis component in order to treat the user as a whole.The establishment of such drug abuse programs offering treatment to people whose primary drug abuse is cannabis (or who are primarily addicted to cannabis) seems to be a necessity. Those addicts constitute a rapidly increasing population with particularities in recognition and in treatment of their dependence, something that is associated with physical and psychosocial consequences.