Search results

Therapeutic communities (and many other residential services) have been effectively marginalised in recent years with the increasing popularity of community-based outpatient responses to a variety of social issues including addiction, learning difficulties, mental health issues, etc. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This has inevitably led to a low profile and has resulted in a lack of knowledge about therapeutic communities and how the methodology differs significantly from other approaches.

This situation is beginning to change in a number of fields and it is important that the therapeutic community movement adapts its methodology to the needs of their respective client groups and clarifies its approach (and the efficacy of that approach) to funders and service commissioners.

This paper is a personal contribution.

As the clamour within the drug treatment field in the UK – and throughout much of Europe – increases, leading agencies are arguing for a review of the current legislation and a change in focus away from criminal justice and towards a more public health understanding of addiction. Therapeutic communities have found themselves united with many drug users-led campaigns to argue for a wholesale restructuring of the legislative, policy and funding arrangements which recognises the role of recovery-oriented interventions within the mix. Given these on-going debates, it is perhaps useful to understand how the current arrangements were established [1].

In 1850s, the sale of opium – like alcohol – was largely unregulated. It was widely used, in a variety of preparations, by all classes for medical and non-medical purposes. A pennyworth of opium was as likely (perhaps more likely) as a pound of potatoes to find its way into the weekly shopping basket.

By the 1920s, the Fu Manchu novels of Sax Rohmer – with their tales of innocent English virgins being seduced into crime and sexual perversion by an evil Chinese genius who lurked within the opium dens of Edwardian Britain – had redefined opium as a drug of the outside, the deadly, an agent in the enslavement of innocence.

This dramatic change was largely brought about by the introduction of an array of new medications and a move away from traditional “herbal” remedies. This change was accelerated by the experiences of the First World War and underpinned by the print media and laid the foundations of the legislation and policy of the present day.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reflect upon what the global therapeutic community (TC) movement has learnt from coronavirus and to consider how TCs will continue to adapt and evolve in a post-pandemic climate.

This is a viewpoint paper based on the authors’ participation in an international learning event whereby speakers from TCs from around the world spoke about how they adapted their services to overcome adversity.

The findings are usefully thought out as shelter, creativity, reintegration and employment, technology and roots. Based on the material discussed in the learning event, it would seem that the global TC movement has engaged in a process of looking to the past to move forward by drawing upon founding principles and prescriptions of the TC tradition, rooted in humanistic and indeed humanitarian responses to staff, client and sociocultural needs.

According to the author, this paper is one of the first attempts to capture how TCs from across the globe have responded to the threat of coronavirus.

Eric Broekaert passed away shortly after the XVIth European Working group on Drug-Oriented Research (EWODOR)-conference in Rome on 28 September 2016. He was one of the great TC pioneers in Europe, who founded the first TC for addictions in Belgium (De Kiem) and co-founded the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities and EWODOR. He was a respected Professor of “Orthopedagogics” at Ghent University and a Member of the Editorial Collective of Therapeutic Communities: the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. The paper aims to discuss the overview of the career of Eric Broekaert.

In this obituary, the authors provide an overview of his career, major achievements and theoretical, methodological and integrative ideas, clustered around four typologies: university professor and scholar; manager and source of inspiration; TC pioneer and believer, and integrative thinker.

Besides his obvious merits as a TC researcher and advocate, one of his major theoretical contributions has been the introduction of the holistic, integrative approach and the idea that diverse types of interventions, as well as methodological approaches can alternatively go together.

He regarded TCs as the ultimate integration of various educational and therapeutic approaches to promote growth and quality of life among severely disadvantaged populations, such as drug addicts and children and adults with emotional and behavioural disorders.