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Showing posts from December, 2014

Web Based Interventions Effective in Treatment of Substance Abuse

A new study in the American Journal Of Psychiatry (Volume 171, Issue 6, June 2014) shows that incorporating the web-based educational intervention in the treatment of drug abuse can not only help people stop using drugs, but can also keep them in treatment longer. TES is a web-based version of the Community Reinforcement Approach plus Contingency Management, a packaged approach with demonstrated efficacy.  The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the NIH, funded this study. TES consists of 62 interactive modules that teach patients how to achieve and maintain abstinence from drug use and includes prize-based motivational incentives to encourage adherence to treatment.  Patients given TES were less likely to drop out of treatment than those in the control group.  Also, the web-based intervention helped patients stay abstinent from drug use, even those who were not abstinent at the beginning of the study.  With such findings, web-based interventions like TES are promis

National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction Reveals Hidden Pitfalls of Criminal Convictions

National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction Reveals Hidden Pitfalls of Criminal Convictions:   Persons convicted of crime are subject to a wide variety of legal and regulatory sanctions and restrictions in addition to the sentence imposed by the court. These so- called “collateral consequences” of conviction have been ebacted without coordiantion between state and federal codes. My DUI clients only become aware of all of the penalties and disabilities triggered by conviction of a particular offense when they apply for a professional license such as mortgage officer or broker (see California restrictions iusing this inventory).  Through the National Inventory, each jurisdiction’s collateral consequences will be made accessible to the public through a website that can be searched and sorted by categories and keywords.   The website makes it possible for criminal and civil lawyers to determine which collateral consequences are triggered by particular cate