A Compassionate Path to Healing for Families of Substance Users
The traditional approach of controlling and manipulating substance users by their families is ineffective. A new perspective emphasizes acceptance, validation, and training in skills like conscious attention.
Attempts by families to help adolescents or adults with problems of use, abuse, or dependence on psychoactive substances, aimed at control, do not work; in most cases, the patient will return to consumption.
A change of perspective is required towards the implementation of acceptance, validation, and training in skills such as conscious attention, which allows family members to understand that at first they act to calm themselves, and by doing so, they can provide more effective help, said the academic from the Faculty of Psychology (FP) of UNAM, Luis Ángel Pérez Romero.
