Rowdy Yates

University of Stirling · School of Applied Social Science

Aims and Background Recovery capital refers to the resources people can call upon to initiate and sustain alcohol and drug problem resolution. Measuring this phenomenon could help an individual better understand their strengths as well as gauge the impact of any interventions designed to improve recovery capital and / or reduce addiction severity....

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reflect upon what the global therapeutic community (TC) movement has learnt from coronavirus and to consider how TCs will continue to adapt and evolve in a post-pandemic climate. Design/methodology/approach This is a viewpoint paper based on the authors’ participation in an international learning ev...

Purpose As the clamour within the drug treatment field in the UK – and throughout much of Europe – increases, leading agencies are arguing for a review of the current legislation and a change in focus away from criminal justice and towards a more public health understanding of addiction. Therapeutic communities have found themselves united with man...

Purpose Eric Broekaert passed away shortly after the XVIth European Working group on Drug-Oriented Research (EWODOR)-conference in Rome on 28 September 2016. He was one of the great TC pioneers in Europe, who founded the first TC for addictions in Belgium (De Kiem) and co-founded the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities and EWODOR. He was...

Integrated and/or multidisciplinary working has become a central guiding principle of addiction treatment throughout the Western world. Indeed, the notion has become virtually synonymous with good practice in intervening in a complex disorder like addiction. There has been surprisingly little analysis or evaluation of the efficacy of this approach....

Purpose Therapeutic communities (and many other residential services) have been effectively marginalised in recent years with the increasing popularity of community-based outpatient responses to a variety of social issues including addiction, learning difficulties, mental health issues, etc. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology...

Thus this preoccupation with outcomes (normally measured in reductions in drug consumption or offending, neither of which are or should be the primary focus of a TC programme) has undermined the capacity to undertake research which can examine the actual process. Put simply, we know from 50 years of outcome studies in the field that TCs positively...

An understanding of addiction as a complex disorder involving biological/physiological, psychological, sociocultural, and socioeconomic elements is well established as a foundation for good practice in treatment interventions. More recently, we have begun to view recovery from this disorder as being reliant upon a realignment of all these elements...

This was a largely exploratory attempt to consider the relationship, if such a relationship exists, between dyslexia and drug dependence. Dyslexia is popularly considered to be a disability which affects the individual's ability to read and write. However, there is a considerable body of evidence indicating that dyslexia is far more than a literacy...

Although Synanon has been extensively studied, attention has seldom been paid to the question of how the many ex-members who left Synanon before or at its dissolution ‘survived’ their community and indoctrination, and how they now evaluate their involvement. This article explores how ex-members react to their previous affiliation to Synanon, the cr...

Harm reduction and recovery are not mutually exclusive concepts, and it is perfectly possible to build a recovery orientation into or onto an existing harm-reduction-oriented treatment structure. This short article chronicles the work of the North West Recovery Forum in England in bringing together treatment providers and purchasers, community acti...

The therapeutic community (TC) in the United Kingdom was built out of a merging of the democratic TC tradition pioneered by Maxwell Jones and others immediately after the Second World War and after the American drug-free TC originating in the Synanon experiment in the late 1950s. This latter tradition traces its roots back through the mutual-aid fe...

In both Scotland and England, the current drug strategies (HM Government, 2008; Scottish Government, 2008) have demonstrated a clear commitment to an integrated recovery-oriented model of treatment for drug problems, which represents a significant change in focus toward a more person-centered and individualized philosophy for the delivery of drug t...

This paper explores the economic evidence base for residential rehabilitation in general and therapeutic communities (TCs) in particular, and describes in detail a small-scale, selffunded survey undertaken by member organisations within the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association (ATCA) in order to better understand the lives and lifestyle...

This paper describes a brief literature search and analysis of cost-related studies which compared the total costs (expenditure and benefits) of residential and non-residential treatments for addiction. Despite the widespread assumption in the field that community-based treatments 'must' be cheaper, the number of studies actually located was surpri...

This paper reports the findings of a small study undertaken in Scotland and England. A small sample of 50 drug treatment service users was interviewed using the Maudsley Addiction Profile (MAP) and Lucid Adult Dyslexia Screening (LADS). Half of the sample was resident in a therapeutic community (TC), whilst the other half were attending a community...

It is the goal of this study to investigate the first development of the drug-free therapeutic community (TC) in Europe. The paper aims at systemizing information, scattered all over Europe and is the first stage in an ongoing study to record the development of the European TC movement and its influences. After a study of the grey (hidden) literatu...

The correction-based therapeutic community (TC) is one of the most described treatment modalities for (substance abusing) incarcerated offenders. The origins and development of the therapeutic community have been traced back to two independent traditions: the American hierarchical concept-based TC and the British democratic Maxwell Jones-type TC. B...

The introduction of concept-based therapeutic communities, based upon the model pioneered by Charles Dederich with the Synanon community in California, was a significant development in the evolution of drug treatment provision in the UK. For a short period in the 1970s, these communities enjoyed unparalleled influence in the development and directi...

Following the establishment of the so-called “New British System” (based on the recommendations of the Rolleston Committee in 1926), numbers of recorded opiate and cocaine addicts fell significantly in the early 1930s and remained stable and at a relatively low level for the next two decades. It was in the latter part of the 1950s that reports of a...

This article focuses on self-reported child neglect and abuse in residential drug treatment drawing on data from clients in Scotland collected 1996-1999. It notes the lack of adoption of regular screening using validated tools of childhood trauma in men and women. The authors’ findings suggest that the prevalence of childhood abuse histories are hi...

This article draws together an effectiveness review of community responses to drug concerns and supplementary interviews with key informants. Despite accessing nearly 300 publications relating to initiatives, there is a paucity of published evaluative evidence. The literature does provide a greater amount of information about initiatives that are d...

DTTOs) were introduced through provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, with two Scottish pilot schemes established in Glasgow and Fife. This research was commissioned to examine the operation of the pilots and to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing drug misuse and related offending. Main findings s A DTTO was considered to be a high tar...

The history of British policy and legislation on addiction is an extraordinary tangle of compromise between conflicting opinions and interests. Berridge (1974) has shown how the way in which legislation was formulated in the early years of this century was essentially a result of the rivalry between the Home Office and the then newly established Mi...

Arrest Referral (AR) is one of a range of recent policy initiatives intended to disrupt the link between substance misuse and offending by improving uptake of services among arrestees whose offending is linked to drug or alcohol use. The development of AR was given new impetus in Scotland by the announcement, in 2003, of Scottish Executive funding...

Scotland's first Drug Court was established in Glasgow Sheriff Court in October 2001 and a second pilot Drug Court was introduced in Fife in August 2002, sitting in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy Sheriff Courts. Both Drug Courts were aimed at offenders aged 21 years or older of both sexes, in respect of whom there was an established relationship between...