week 3 discussion post.docx - What questions would you...

 What questions would you reflect upon when assessing and treating an individual with
co-occurring disorders?
 Review your case study client and identify what co-occurring disorders may be at play.
Support your response in one to two sentences.
When assessing clients with co-occurring disorders it is very prevalent that the counselor address
and treat all diagnosis. According to the video by Films Media group in 2006, if a counselor
treats just the substance disorder and not the other problems that could co-occur with the client
such as anxiety, conduct disorder and so on, then the chance of relapsing is good. If a counselor
wants to break the pattern of drug use, they have to identify all co-occurring things that feed and
bounce off each other and address them at the same time in treatment (Films Media group,
2006). The only way to identify all the problems that co-exist is to have a good assessment for
the client to do. This assessment and interview will allow the counselor to cover some much-
needed groundwork and gather information that is needed that may not be upfront from the
client. According to the textbook Substance Use Disorders and Addictions, page 45, states that
much information will be clinically irrelevant, but you do not always know that prior to inquiring
which brings about the fact that information that may seem irrelevant at first could be critical
later in the counseling relationship (Morgen, 2017). When assessing an individual with co-
occurring disorders, the questions I would reflect upon would be about the client’s family history
in relations to addictions. According to the textbook, family history provides meaningful
elements such as any indication of genetic predisposition and an idea of how substance abuse has
entered the family system and the resulting consequence of that (Morgen, 2017). I would ask
questions about the clients living arrangements and how they have impacted/influenced their
drug use. I would also ask questions to reflect on their social life and the kind of environments
that they spend most of their time. This would allow me to understand if they are around the
drugs or around other drug users as well. I feel that questions about each of these areas will allow
me to better understand an underlying factor to their drug use as well as see if there is any other
presenting issues that are pushing them towards using.
The client I chose for my case study is Nick. Nick is a 17-year-old male who lives in a rough