Joint Treatment of Drug Addicts and Other Psychiatric Patients

The authors describe the advantages and disadvantages of including drug addicts in a therapeutic community program with patients who have a primary psychiatric diagnosis arni with alcoholics. The three types of patients initially tended to focus on thefr own kinds of symptoms in group therapy, and to disdain one another, but soon caine to recognize that they have much in common. When the therapy groups included two addicts for every three nonaddicts, the groups were lively and progrersive. However, as addicts began to outnumber other patients in the program, therapeutic and administrative problems arose.