Community reinforcement approach

Community Reinforcement Approach ( called community- oriented addiction therapy in Germany ) is the name for a behavioral treatment concept for addiction disorders , the core element of which is positive reinforcement from the social environment, whereby the positive reinforcers of addictive substance consumption are reduced and those of drug abstinence are expanded.

The Community Reinforcement Approach was developed in 1973 by Nathan Azrin and George Hunt in the USA. The best-known protagonists of the method are currently (as of 2011) Robert J. Meyers and Jane Ellen Smith from the University of New Mexico and, in Germany, Martin Reker ( Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Bethel).

The basis of a CRA treatment is the behavior analysis of consumption and abstinence processes of the patient. Based on this, an abstinence account is created, whereby disulfiram is also used. During the abstinence phases brought about in this way, behaviors that promote abstinence are stabilized in the familiar living environment.

literature

• Robert J. Meyers and Jane Ellen Smith: CRA-Manual for the treatment of alcohol addiction: treating more successfully through positive reinforcement in the social area (translated and revised by Wolfgang Lange, Martin Reker and Katharina Spitzberg), 4th edition, Bonn: Psychiatrie-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-88414-528-9 .

Web links

• Wolfgang Lange, Martin Reker, Martin Driessen: Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) - overview of an integrative concept for the treatment of addiction disorders (PDF; 138 kB) , accessed on September 23, 2015
• Martin Reker: The Community Reinforcement Approach. Reward as a guiding principle of addict treatment , lecture manuscript. PDF, accessed on September 23, 2015.