Substance abusers are among the most heavily stigmatized groups in society. Addiction counselors are not immune to these same stigmatizing cognitive processes, even though they are dedicated to the treatment of addictive disorders. Reducing stigmatizing thoughts may be particularly important in treatment providers because there is evidence that these processes contribute to provider burnout. There are few well-developed methods for the alleviation of stigma, however, and those that do exist seem largely inapplicable to treatment providers. The present study evaluates two methods for the reduction of stigmatizing thoughts, multicultural training and acceptance and commitment training, alone and in combination, and compares these to a control condition. Providers will be randomly assigned to the four conditions (N = 75 / cell) and will be trained in two-day workshops. Pre, post, and three month follow-up measures will be taken on the occurrence of stigmatizing attitudes toward recipients of care, the believability of these thoughts when they occur, job burnout, stress and general health, job satisfaction, multicultural knowledge, process measures of emotional acceptance and cognitive defusion, absenteeism, job turnover, and several demographic and organizational factors potentially related to burnout. Stigma is expected to predict job burnout. It is expected that both treatments will have initially positive effects on stigma and burnout, but that the acceptance and commitment training will maintain these gains and do so because of changes in emotional acceptance and cognitive defusion. Because this trial is underpowered to fully test the combined condition, preliminary post hoc analyses will be conducted to see if the trends indicate that it is superior to the individual conditions in stigma and burnout and equivalent to multicultural training in multicultural knowledge, attitudes, and skills.
| Vilardaga, Roger; Luoma, Jason B; Hayes, Steven C et al. (2011) Burnout among the addiction counseling workforce: the differential roles of mindfulness and values-based processes and work-site factors. J Subst Abuse Treat 40:323-35 |
| Vilardaga, Roger; Hayes, Steven C; Levin, Michael E et al. (2009) Creating a strategy for progress: a contextual behavioral science approach. Behav Anal 32:105-33 |
| Biglan, Anthony; Hayes, Steven C; Pistorello, Jacqueline (2008) Acceptance and commitment: implications for prevention science. Prev Sci 9:139-52 |
