Sexual Health in Recovery A Professional Counselor's Manual by Douglas Braun-Harvey

p.Substance abuse treatment professionals often fail to adequately treat clients because they are unable or unwilling to address relevant sexual issues that negatively impact recovery. For many substance abusers, treatment failure is inextricably linked with sexual behavior. This groundbreaking volume is the first to address sexual issues in drug and alcohol treatment. It explains the origins of sex/drug-linked behaviors, and offers a wealth of treatment techniques, exercises, and assessment tools counselors can use to help clients understand and change these behaviors in recovery.Based on a curriculum that was successfully implemented and evaluated at Stepping Stone, a drug and alcohol treatment program in San Diego, Sexual Health in Recovery offers counselors a chance to understand and integrate basic sexual health principles into their work. Addiction treatment professionals and their clients will then be able to comfortably and safely address sexual issues that may impede recovery-and thus have a greater chance at successful treatment. Key Topics:

• Assessing a client's sex/drug-linked relapse risk
• Improving counselor confidence in talking about sexual issues
• Dealing with out-of-control sexual behavior
• Understanding how a client's sexual attitudes and values may help or impede recovery
• Discussing a client's sexual past when it impacts recovery
• Encouraging client's sexual health while in recovery
• Helping clients set expectations for sexual relationships while in recovery
• Overcoming counselor ambivalence about addressing sexual issues in treatment