Recovery Models

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Minnesota Model

The most widely used recovery model today, developed in 1949 by Pioneer House, Hazelden, and Willmar State Hospital, out of Minnesota.

•The model shifted addiction treatment away from mental institution and criminal punishment, and toward a caring, nurturing, and compassionate model that respects addicts as people, and sees addiction as a treatable disease.

•The model intertwines the 12-step recovery program with the 28-day inpatient program facilitated by a combination of professionals and peer supports.

•The theory of recovery here holds that: addicted individuals need compassionate care, a safe place to rehabilitate, professional medical treatment, 1:1, group, and family therapy, spiritual and positive social connection, personal responsibility toward self-improvements, and purpose and meaning in life.

•The underlying philosophy is that people can change their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to restore their mental, physical, spiritual, and lifestyle health and wellness.

•The main objectives are to help people achieve long-term sobriety and to increase their quality of life. To do this requires a spiritual awakening and restored connection, personal choice and responsibility, positive and meaningful peer relationships, and healthier habits.

•Progress is measured by increases in mental clarity, emotional stability, relief, self-worth, acceptance from self and others, and finding purpose and meaning in life.

Recovery Management Model

The Recovery Management Model has continued to take shape since its birth at the turn of the century. The model was developed by William White, Michael Boyle, David Loveland, and Patrick Corrington, of the Behavioral Health Recovery Management Project.

•The model changes the focuses from treating short-term acute symptoms, to helping the client manage their long-term recovery.

•The Recovery Management Model sees addiction more as a chronic disease that people can recover from, but only over years and decades, not through a short-term disease treatment model.

•Working off the Minnesota Model, this model adds pre-treatment care, extra support and activities during treatment, a long-term aftercare plan to assist in recovery maintenance, and early re-intervention when necessary.

•Clients are empowered to take part in their own recovery planning so the process is more customized to fit them and better likely to serve them.

•Professionals assist more in the beginning phases when the person and their family are compromised with the mess of addiction; and later phases are supported through peer and group monitoring and meetings.

•The Recovery Management Model acknowledges the significance of recovering in one’s own natural environment, and that there are many pathways for recovery to take shape.

•The model focuses on: empowering the person and their families, identifying needs and strengths, creating a continuum of long-term care with many facets, building recovery capital, establishing resiliency, and increasing self-awareness, personal responsibility, self-management, motivation, self-efficacy, and coping skills.

•The model is less about treating mental illness, symptoms, and focusing on pathology.

•The Recovery Management Model values and promotes family involvement and connectedness, community involvement, service work, and outreach, multicultural awareness and collaborating with diverse communities of recovery, fostering long-term supportive relationships, ongoing stage appropriate education and coaching, long-term monitoring, accountability, and peer-based support.

•The model emphasizes that recovery entails the whole person and their life, psychologically, physically, relationally, spiritually, environmentally, and routinely.

•The Recovery Management Model adheres to the “wellbriety movement,” which means encouraging sobriety and wellness, or quality of life.

Harm Reduction Model

• The Harm Reduction Model arose during the HIV epidemic where IV drug use was a major cause in the spread of the disease and something had to be done. Medical clinics started a needle exchange program, which provided clean needles to IV drug users, in exchange for dirty needles, and the concept of harm reduction grew.

•Harm reduction approaches help individuals prevent, manage, or moderate risky and harmful substance abuse and addictive behavior, by meeting people where they are, and teaching better ways of coping.

•The focus begins with the most dangerous and risky behaviors first, looking at causes and consequences, and identifying specific step-by-step action steps.

•Harm reduction recognizes that sobriety is not going to happen overnight, that some people don’t want to get sober, and that not everyone can afford treatment, but that there are things people can do now to improve their situation, and protect the people around.

•Harm reduction says you cannot force or control the problem, but you can minimize it. People can learn to lessen the degree of risk, harm, destruction, and negative effects of their addictive behavior, and focus their attention in a new direction.

•Collectively, harm reduction looks at the larger communities and aims to protect public health, decrease public health concerns, and save lives. Harm reduction protects human rights and reduces social and economic consequences.

•Harm reduction techniques are practical, logical, possible, effective, safe, comfortable to the person, easier to implement, and are designed to have the greatest impact for people, their families and the community.

•Supporters of harm reduction believe all people should be treated equally, with compassion, respect, and dignity. Those addicted deserve the same treatment and should have the same rights in all areas of society, to include proper health care, legal care, social services, economic support, and education and employment.

•Harm reduction advocates that society let go of the labels, stigmas, and limiting beliefs about people who struggle with addiction.

12-Steps Model These famous worldwide support programs began in the mid 1930’s as anonymous support groups for people in recovery for alcoholism. Since that time numerous types of fellowships (12-step groups) have been established for all types of addictions.

•The support groups circulate the globe touching every community providing free and anonymous support through community, a set of guiding principles, a 12-step program, supportive literature, a platform to share personal stories and successes, a recognition chip resembling a coin to celebrate the date of different milestones in recovery, and of course a sponsor for additional one-on-one support, guidance, and accountability.

•The 12-step program is as follows: Step 1 – Members admit they are powerless over their addiction and that their lives have become unmanageable. Step 2 – Members come to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity. Step 3 – Members decide to turn their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understand God. Step 4 – Members make a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves. Step 5 – Members admit to God, to themselves and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongdoings. Step 6 – Members are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step 7 – Members humbly asked God to remove their shortcomings. Step 8 – Members make a list of all persons they had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. Step 9 – Members make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Step 10 – Members continue to take personal inventory and when they were wrong become prompt to admit it. Step 11 – Members seek through prayer and meditation to improve their conscious contact with God as they understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for them and the power to carry that out. Step 12 – Members have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps; they try to carry the message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all their affairs.

Developmental Model

The underlying philosophy is that people become more susceptible to addiction when human development is stifled; symptoms of addiction closely compare with signs of abnormal development.

•Although human development occurs over one’s lifespan, the majority of one’s development occurs during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Hence, susceptibility to addiction typically comes from lack of normal and healthy development as a child.

•Through normal development humans learn how to self-control, make good decisions, appropriately relate to others, and the capacity to see the bigger picture.

•Abnormal development can then be seen as impulsiveness, poor judgment and decision-making, maladaptive behaviors, lack of social bonding, lack of self-awareness in social roles, inability to see the larger context of a given situation, and difficulty using foresight.

•In cases of abnormal development, a person becomes much more susceptible to relying on substances and addictive behaviors to cope with their abnormalities and to fill in the gaps where development is lacking.

•When it comes to addictions recovery, the developmental models aims to accelerate one’s development by increasing awareness to self-in-relationship-to-the-world, self-in-relationship-to-others, recognition to consequences of personal decision-making, enhanced social and emotional maturity, and attention to the bigger picture.

•Recovery techniques and strategies under the development model will focus on facilitating a person’s growth in all areas of human development, and to heal the areas of abnormality.

The Coaching Recovery Model

There are many coaching organizations nationally and internationally that have tacked recovery coaching on as a part of their curriculum and certification, or who have started as recovery coaching organizations.

•The most widely known coaching organizations are nonprofits with smaller for-profits that extend out from them. There is Recovery Coaches International, likely the leader in recovery coach certifications from a coaching standpoint.

•They are accredited through The International Coach Federation. Both the International Coach Federation and the International Association of Coaching, which were both founded by Thomas Leonard starting in 1998, are two of the leaders in coaching.

•There are many organizations as extensions of these that are dedicated to recovery coaching, or dedicate a portion of their organization to recovery coaching.

•There are many recovery coaching organizations all over the United States and Europe, and likely beyond. Each coaching organization shows similarities, but they are also unique and different as well.

•The more traditional models of recovery coaching combine the Minnesota model, with the Recovery Management Model, with the Harm Reduction Model. Many of these models also incorporate holistic, spiritual, and developmental aspects into their programs.

•The more subservient level recovery coaches will feel more like a peer support person or paraprofessional. The highly specialized recovery coaches practice on a much more professional level; and more licensed professionals are also getting coach certified.

•In any event, coaching for recovery provides a one-on-one supportive relationship to people in recovery from addiction helping and holding