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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Substance Use Disorders and Behavioral Addictions
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1460985

Nothing about us without us! How users configure clinical treatment in Italian residential communities. Ethnography of therapeutic engagement

Provisionally accepted
Antonio Iudici Antonio Iudici 1,2*Tobia Berardelli Tobia Berardelli 2Davide Fenini Davide Fenini 3Jessica Neri Jessica Neri 3Emiliano Subissi Emiliano Subissi 3
  • 1 University of Padua, Padua, Italy
  • 2 Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, School of Human and Social Sciences and Cultural Heritage, University of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
  • 3 Istituto di Psicoterapia Interazionista Psicopraxis, Padova, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The effectiveness of the interventions in the Therapeutic communities (TC) depends not only on the quality of the specialized knowledge and methodologies adopted, but also on the meanings consumers give to them. Building the therapeutic alliance is a key element in reducing high drop-out rates and predicting more favorable outcomes. This research investigated the discourses practiced by 45 people with substance use disorders who had been accessing a therapeutic community for less than 15 days, with the aim of delving into the meanings given to treatment and pathway goals in the service, to analyze what theories are used to explain consumption and therapeutic change. The study made use of Discourse analysis (DA) and Positional theory with a protocol of written open-ended questions.The results show how participants configure the community pathway adopting a passive role, underestimating the need to co-participate in treatment design and bringing in poorly formalized goals. The collected texts provide a better understanding of the perspective of community users, emphasizing the need to share spaces of co-design from the very beginning in order to promote empowering, reasoning about the implications of the various discourses produced by consumers to explain their autobiography and to envision paths of change.

    Keywords: Drug Users, Drug Community, Health, Treatment, qualitative research

    Received: 07 Jul 2024; Accepted: 31 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Iudici, Berardelli, Fenini, Neri and Subissi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Antonio Iudici, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.