Paul Brasler – Treat Substance Use Disorders via Telehealth: Essential Skills for Assessment, Treatment & Recovery Support at a Distance

Description

Handouts

Outline

Telehealth & Substance Use Disorders: What You Need to Know

• Basics of telehealth: The do’s & don’ts
• When telehealth is not appropriate
• Virtual privacy concerns
• What to tell your clients before starting
• Informed consent: Why it’s different for telehealth

The Science Behind Substance Use Disorders

• Biopsychosocial aspects of substance abuse
• The role of trauma & attachment
• Compromised immune systems
• Using while isolated: The most dangerous substances
  • Alcohol
  • Heroin
  • Fentanyl
  • Meth

Telehealth Screening & Assessment: How Do You Know if a Client is Using?

• Assessment when you can’t see or smell
• Distance drug screening: Reduce potential harm
• How to ask sensitive intake questions
• Screening tools you can use at a distance

Remote Treatment Planning & Delivery

• Client-reported withdrawal screenings
• Making level of care decisions remotely
• Withdrawal management alone is not treatment
• Withdrawal management protocols & support through telehealth
• Inpatient or outpatient treatment?
• Medication-assisted treatment

Motivational Interviewing

• Stages of change
• Key strategies of motivational interviewing
• Relapse prevention strategies
• What to do when clients relapse

Distance Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions

• Apply the A-B-C model to substance abuse
• Recognize triggers to use via telehealth
• Foster coping skills
• Deconstruct negative schemas

Strategies for Group Telehealth

• Tailor interventions for virtual groups
• Barriers to treatment
• Getting people to talk
• Referring to virtual 12-step groups

More Strategies to Improve Client Engagement & Get Treatment Buy-In

• Showing empathy without nonverbal cues
• Case management: Link the client to resources
• Medication-assisted treatment

Special Clinical Situations

• Pregnancy: Stigma & other challenges
• Parents of young children
• Vicarious trauma with a high-stress population
• Limitations of the research & potential risks

Faculty

Paul Brasler, MA, LCSW Related seminars and products: 10

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Paul Brasler, MA, LCSW, has worked in the social work field for the past 22 years. He is the head of behavioral health for Daily Planet Health Services, a Federally Qualified Health Center that provides comprehensive and integrated healthcare and mental health services (including medication-assisted opioid treatment). Paul is also president of Providence Consulting & Education L.L.C., through which he provides clinical supervision and professional education services.

Paul has extensive experience in working with people with substance use disorders. After finishing school, Paul went to work at an adolescent residential treatment program, where he developed a treatment track for adolescents with substance use disorders. In 2003, he became a senior clinician in the Chesterfield County Juvenile Drug Court and provided individual, family, adolescent group and multifamily group therapies. After working at the drug court for seven years, Paul moved on to conduct psychiatric and substance misuse evaluations in emergency departments in the Greater Richmond, Virginia area. Paul has also served as adjunct faculty in the school of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he developed a graduate course in substance abuse treatment.

Paul has been a PESI presenter since 2016, and he has presented classes on mental health emergencies and high-risk clients across the country. He recently released his first book, High-Risk Clients: Evidence-Based Assessment & Clinical Tools to Recognize and Effectively Respond to Mental Health Crises (PESI Publishing 2019).

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Paul Brasler is in private practice. He receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.

Non-financial: Paul Brasler has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.