Research Paper on a Cognitive Approach for a Specific Issue or Population. Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy
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Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) can be defined as a cognitive approach therapeutic in nature that helps people explore their thoughts and recognize they may cause self-destruction or harm. Human actions or behaviors are strongly associated with views; therefore, dialectical behavior therapy aims to influence negative thoughts to transform them into positive ones, consequently leading to a change in a specific behavior (Mercado & Hinojosa, 2017). The Latinos, also known as the Hispanic community, are the biggest ethnic group rapidly growing in the US. Latinos' drinking patterns have shown that the group has a large number of alcohol abusers who need help to recover from this addiction. Dialectical behavior therapy helps individuals recover from alcohol addiction or any other clinical issue by assisting addicted individuals in learning various skills such as emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and mindfulness. The approach focuses primarily on influencing the addict's behavior and surroundings to recover quickly. This study analyzes previous studies concerning the effectiveness of Dialectical behavior therapy for alcohol recovering addicts. The Hispanic community has many alcohol addicts who can promptly recover through the dialectical therapy approach.
There are several dialectical behavior therapy techniques that clinical social workers can implement to effectively alter the behavior of alcohol addicts in the recovery process. These techniques are used depending on the client's problems, the particular client involved, and the client's capability to utilize any of them. The first technique consists of the incorporation of core mindfulness. The mindfulness concept is the ability of an individual to give their full attention to the things happening without being judgmental and living at that moment. This helps individuals recover objectively interpret and review current events and is essential in assisting them in suspending their biases and expectations and living freely. The second technique is distress tolerance, which is a skill that allows an individual to adopt and accept their current life situation and their self. This will enable individuals to cope with intense emotions with a positive outlook. The last technique is emotional regulation, which involves personal identification, reducing an individual's vulnerability to indulging in reactive behavior such as alcohol abuse, mindfulness increasing, recognizing hindrances to behavior change, stress management application, and taking opposite actions (Maffei, Cavicchioli, Movalli, Cavallaro & Fossati, 2018). Emotional regulation helps an individual effectively navigate strong emotions, thus minimizing emotional vulnerability.
Problem Statement
Alcohol-related problems and alcoholism among Latinos have become a severe problem that keeps increasing despite the ethnic and country variations, among other variables. Alcohol addiction affects many Latinos due to various reasons that contribute to their increased drinking behavior (Castañeda et al., 2019). Increased alcohol abuse can be mainly attributed to Latinos drinking as a recreational and social activity. According to the WHO, high alcohol prevalence is also a worldwide issue contributing to several deaths. This shows the need to implement dialectical behavior therapy to help alcohol addicts recover and avoid negative impacts associated with excessive alcohol drinking.
Research Questions
This study's research questions are: Is dialectical behavior therapy effective in helping Latino alcohol addicts recover fully? Can DBT be applicable and useful if implemented by people from diverse cultures other than Latinos?
Previous Research Analysis/ Literature Review
A previous study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the emotional regulation technique as part of DBT to assist people with alcohol addiction. The study was conducted in Italy, Milan, in an "Alcohol Dependence Treatment Unit (Maffei, Cavicchioli, Movalli, Cavallaro & Fossati, 2018)." The study involved administering the Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (DERS) and monitoring alcohol content involuntary participants by conducting urine toxicology. The subjects chosen for the study were 244 in which 38.9% were females and 61.1% males. The participants' ages ranged from 21-71, all of whom had been diagnosed with an alcohol addiction problem. Among the 244 people, the number of participants that completed the study was 157. There was no presence of a control group for this study.
Symptoms measurement was done by comparing consequent days of participants' alcohol abstinence and measuring alcohol content through urine screening toxicology. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale was used to determine the difficulties the participants had regarding different emotional regulation aspects. The program recorded that 73.2% of the participants who completed the study have succeeded in abstaining from taking alcohol, proving that DBT was a practical approach for helping alcohol addicts. The emotional regulation and alcohol-associated behavior of these participants had significantly improved due to the DBT approach (Maffei, Cavicchioli, Movalli, Cavallaro & Fossati, 2018). The study recommended that future follow-up research be conducted to determine emotional regulation stability on individuals who had shown improvement after DBT.
Another study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of DBT on males in five different junior high schools who were prone to substance abuse such as alcohol or narcotic drugs. The study involved a quasi-experiment that utilized a pretest-posttest design and had a control group (Rostami, Arefi & Khademi, 2019). The study took place in Tonekabon, Iran, and involved 60 male students from the 10th-grade in the 2015-2016 academic year. A random sampling method was used to select the students who participated in the study. They were divided into control and experimental groups. The participants from the experimental group had to attend 12 DBT sessions that lasted for one hour. Data was collected through questionnaires distributed to the addiction-prone Iranian students. Data analysis was done using SPSS v.22 and pretest-posttest with follow-up processes with a p<0.05 significant level. DBT was found to be effective on adolescent males in junior high school prone to substance abuse. DBT significantly influenced their risk behaviors, self-centeredness, self-view, norms deviation, and associati...