2-2 Case Study PSY 200

docx

School

Southern New Hampshire University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

200

Subject

Nursing

Date

Apr 29, 2024

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by MasterClover6845

CASE STUDY 3 Katie’s Substance Addiction MARCH 16, 2024 SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY Barbara Ruiz

Case study 3 identifies a woman named “Katie” who is 35 years old and a mother of 2 young children. I do not see any mention of race or profession, only that she is a “rising professional.” This client presents with a substance addiction to pain medication, as well as Soma, which is a muscle relaxant. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, opioids can make people feel very relaxed and “high,” which is why they are sometimes used for non-medical reasons. This can be dangerous because opioids can be highly addictive, and overdoses and deaths are common. Ways in which people misuse prescription opioids are by taking the medication in a way or dose that is other than prescribed, taking someone else’s prescription medication, and taking the medication for the effect it causes, which is to get high. Use can be achieved by swallowing the medication, crushing it, or opening capsules to inject it or snort it ( Prescription opioids Drugfacts 2023). Katie’s use of pain medication originated with a valid prescription she received from a physician to treat her lower back pain that was a result of a motor vehicle accident she sustained when she was in her 20s. At first, she used her pain medication as prescribed. After discovering how her pain medication made her feel, throughout the next several years she began to visit physicians for various ailments, often leaving the office with a pain medication prescription in hand. As her addiction grew, she continued doctor shopping, as well as began asking family, friends, and co- workers for their pain medication if she realized they had any. She developed a cycle of continuously seeking out ways to make herself feel better and change the way she felt. She eventually learned how to purchase pain medication on the internet, and would often buy them online and have them delivered to her home. The actions that she took had a serious impact on her family and friends. The frequent purchasing of expensive pain medication over the internet

caused Katie and her husband, Lewis, to have significant financial distress on the family budget. When confronted by Lewis, she initially lied about the medication she was purchasing on the internet in an attempt to hide her addiction. Concerned, he reached out to her parents, who also became concerned and they decided to participate in a visit so they could find out if they could help in any way. When Katie, Lewis, and Katie’s parents sat down to discuss what was happening, she finally admitted to her addiction and the activities she was performing to support her habit. Her family desired for her to enter a treatment program and she decided to do so. Katie had many signs of addiction and drug abuse, while others were not mentioned in her case. Typical signs that an individual has a problem with drugs, prescription or illicit, are taking a drug after it is no longer needed for a health problem or pain, needing more of a substance to get the same effects, or taking more before feeling an effect, feeling strange when the drug wears off such as getting shaky, depressed, sick to your stomach, sweating, appetite loss, feeling confused, having seizures, or having headaches, being unable to stop using the drug even if you want to, using regardless of negative consequences such as financial distress or problems within the family construct, spending a lot of time thinking about how good the drug makes you feel while using, spending a lot of time thinking about how you will get more of the drug, having a difficult time setting limits on use, losing interest in things you once enjoyed, having trouble doing normal activities of daily living like working, driving dangerously when using the drug, borrowing, stealing, or secretly using money to pay for the drug, hiding drug use or having the drug, having trouble getting along with co-workers, friends, or family members and having them comment on or complain about how you act or how much you have changed, sleeping too much or too little compared to how you used to, eating a lot more or a lot less than you did before, inexplicably gaining or losing a substantial amount of weight, going to more than one doctor to

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

get prescriptions for the same drug or problem, looking in other people’s medicine cabinets or asking others for drugs to take (DerSarkissian, 2023). Three years after Katie appeared to benefit from her treatment program, although she did not receive any aftercare or attend meetings because she felt like they reminded her of a low point in her life, and her husband not attending any family-oriented programs regarding her addiction or recovery, her pain medication seeking behavior returned and she relapsed. Stressors included having their second child, Lewis being involved in an accident at work and sustaining a torn Achilles tendon which caused him to have to be off work and ambulate with crutches, while also becoming the stay-at-home parent to their 2 young children, and being in the middle of a major home improvement project that he was doing alone. While at home, he received a package that was delivered addressed to Katie, and suspecting it was pain medication he opened it to have his suspicions confirmed as it contained a bottle of 100 Vicodin pain pills. He was devastated and did not want to go through the same situation again, vowing that he was going to divorce Katie if the problem was not resolved. Katie’s father was again contacted and notified, and he was concerned that she might get worse, ending up in divorce, losing her children, and possibly losing her job. An intervention was undertaken with a professional, Katie, and Lewis, with her father speaking on the phone before the meeting so he could share his concerns. During the meeting, she cried and claimed that she had not taken pain medication for over 1 week, resisted the idea and declined to go to a treatment center either short-term or long-term, expressed that she could handle her addiction on her own and improve, and eventually her husband gave in to an alternative plan that consisted of her attending counseling sessions once a week, remaining abstinent, and if she used any further then she would agree to attend a full course of treatment in

the program she attended before. She did keep her first session a few days after the meeting, in which she claimed to have remained abstinent, was not experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and continued to decline to go into treatment. One week later, Katie and Lewis attended a session as a couple where things such as finances and caretaking of their children were discussed; however, very little of her substance abuse was mentioned. She did not attend her second individual session for unknown reasons and the couple was unable to be contacted since. During the brief therapy that was performed, nothing was resolved and her prognosis is poor. It is unknown if Katie ever re-sought treatment or whether she relapsed again. As stated at the end of the case study, pain medications and other prescription drug abuse is an epidemic in our country. More people are addicted to these drugs every day. They are easy to obtain and difficult to separate from. Help is available. ( Case Study 3 2012)

References Case Study 3 . Intervention Solutions. (2012). https://web.archive.org/web/20190218031631/http://www.interventionsolutions.com/ Case_Studies_3.asp DerSarkissian, C. (2023, September 14). Signs of drug addiction . WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/signs-of-drug-addiction U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023a, May 25). Prescription opioids Drugfacts . National Institutes of Health. https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/prescription-opioids

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

2-2 Case Study PSY 200

Related Documents