In South Africa today, the numbers of drug-dependent adolescents are increasing at alarming rates. These adolescents require rehabilitation. The numbers of institutions that offer drug rehabilitation services are also growing exponentially. However, the programs followed by the institutions are wide ranging in nature and are not controlled by government or a professional body. Although these institutions claim individual successes, their success rates – especially in regard of adolescents – is highly subjective and suspect. The discipline of educational psychology is uniquely capable of setting objective criteria to which all programs for drug-dependent adolescents should comply. Educational psychology emphasizes two important aspects of human development: The educational and the psychological. Moreover, it gives considerable weight to the adolescent’s participation in her own development. The uncontrolled use of dependence-forming substances by adolescents negatively influences every level of their physical, emotional, cognitive, psychological and social development. To facilitate their growth to responsible adulthood, specialized treatment is required to address specific adolescent developmental tasks and needs. It has become imperative that the programs offered to adolescents in South Africa be analysed and examined critically in order to determine whether they comply with the dictates of a responsible educational-psychological approach. It is against this background that a research study was undertaken to investigate the current position of drug rehabilitation programs for adolescents offered by centres and clinics in South Africa. The aim of this study was to determine and describe educational-psychological criteria to evaluate the suitability of current programs that are offered to drug dependent adolescents in this country. A theoretical framework was developed by an extensive literary research. This framework formed the foundation of an empirical study. The initial stage of the empirical study – the identification of drug rehabilitation centres and clinics that offer in-patient treatment for adolescents – was hampered by the lack of government involvement in the registration and monitoring of such centres and clinics and the programs they offer. No database containing information on drug use, drug misuse and drug dependence, as well as places and methods of rehabilitation, exists. Identified institutions were contacted and requested to participate in this research. Several refused. The centres and clinics that were willing to assist and offered unique programs, were visited. In several instances one centre was visited and described as representative of several centres or clinics that offer programs based on a similar approach. Documentation regarding drug rehabilitation programs were perused. Interviews with adolescents – whose parents had given permission for their participation – and with available parents and staff were recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions were qualitatively analysed. Educational-psychological criteria that address the specific development needs of adolescents were identified. This research found that although some programs address some minor educationalpsychological aspects of the adolescent’s substance problem, not one of the in-patient programs addressed the problem holistically by emphasizing the development and needs of these adolescents. The effect of these programs on the educationalpsychological development of adolescents moving towards responsible adulthood, must be questioned. The educational-psychological criteria – as set out in this research study – should be applied to in-patient drug rehabilitation programs for adolescents in South Africa to increase the quality and success of the said programs. Through such an approach, adolescents are valued as individuals who have to complete general developmental tasks successfully to arrive at a responsible and meaningful adulthood. / Prof. J.C. Kok

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo geral cartografar a experiência de usuários de crack no município de Recife. Este estudo foi desenvolvid o nos CAPSad e Instituto RAID. Os entrevistados foram usuários de crack do sexo masculino e feminino, com idade a partir dos 18 anos, que estavam em tratamento em decorrência desta substância nas instituições acima citadas durante a coleta de dados. Em cada CAPSad, foi entrevistado um usuário de crack indicado pela equipe técnica que tivesse uma boa organização nas ideias para descrever a sua experiência com o crack, e que se disponibilizou a contribuir com a pesquisa através de entrevista semi-estruturadas. No Instituto RAID foram entrevistados seis usuários escolhidos pelos mesmos critérios. A pesquisa desenvolvida foi qualitativa de inspiração fenomenológica pautada no pensamento de Husserl e no método proposto por A. Giorgi. Este método inclui, basicamente, os seguintes passos: O sentido do todo, a partir da leitura do depoimento do sujeito; Discriminação do depoimento em Unidades de Significados; Compreensão psicológica de cada Unidade de Significado; Síntese de cada depoimento expressa como estrutura da experiência; e a Composição de uma síntese geral que apresenta a essência do fenômeno para todos os sujeitos investigados. A identificação dessas Unidades de Significado nas experiências dos usuários apontou aspectos diversos sobre o tema tais como: A experiência de ser dependente do crack; o que levou os usuários a consumirem essa substância; qual o significado do crack na vida desses usuários; quais as sensações vividas no consumo desta droga; o prazer da morte pela pedra; a culpa sentida por ceder à compulsão; as perdas diante da pedra; a família como fator importante na busca por um tratamento; o crack e a violência; as dificuldades e sucessos no tratamento; o estigma do usuário de crack e o descontrole vivenciado por alguns usuários. Diante da complexidade das questões trazidas nas experiências dos usuários entrevistados, grandes desafios estão postos para as equipes que trabalham no tratamento dos usuários de crack. Torna-se fundamental uma reflexão contínua sobre essa prática / This research had as its main aim to portrait crack-cocaine users experience in the city of Recife. Subjects were crack-cocaine users, males and females, from 18 years old, undertaking treatment at drug addiction health services in Recife (CAPSad and Instituto RAID) during data collection. One subject from each CAPSad (06 in a whole) was interviewed and 06 subjects from Instituto RAID were interviewed. All designated by the health professional teams and with organized thoughts to describe their crack-cocaine use experiences, as well as with willingness to respond to a semi-structured interview. The research was qualitative with phenomenological background inspired by Husserls theory and Giorgis method. Basically, this method includes these steps: 1) reading the entire description of one subject in order to get a sense of the whole; 2) reading through the data a second time and marking those places in the description where a transition in meaning occurred from a psychological perspective (the meanings between transitions are called meaning units); 3) reading all of the meaning units and interrogating them from what they reveal about the phenomenon of interest, in this case, the crack-cocaine use experience, in order to grasp the relevance of the subjects own words for the phenomenon of using crack-cocaine in as direct a manner as possible (this step is called the transformation of the subjects lived experience into direct psychological expression); 4) presenting a situated or general structure of the experience (synthesis of each report expressed as structure of experience); and, 5) comprehending the general synthesis which represents the essence of the phenomenon to all subjects investigated. The identification of crack-cocaine users experience in meaning units pointed out to several themes such as: the experience of being a crack-cocaine user; what took them to use this drug; the meaning of crack-cocaine in their lives; crack-cocaine use sensations; crack-cocaine death pleasure; compulsion guiltiness; losses related to the drug; family as an important factor to seek treatment; crack-cocaine and violence; treatment challenges; crack-cocaine use stigma; and, loss of control experienced by users. These complex issues expressed by research subjects set great challenges to health professional teams treating crack-cocaine users and draw attention to the need of permanent reflection of their practices

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:08:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_renata_barreto.pdf: 1209055 bytes, checksum: 2ee6794692af99ee898228274042d265 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-01 / This research had as its main aim to portrait crack-cocaine users experience in the city of Recife. Subjects were crack-cocaine users, males and females, from 18 years old, undertaking treatment at drug addiction health services in Recife ( CAPSad and Instituto RAID ) during data collection. One subject from each CAPSad (06 in a whole) was interviewed and 06 subjects from Instituto RAID were interviewed. All designated by the health professional teams and with organized thoughts to describe their crack-cocaine use experiences, as well as with willingness to respond to a semi-structured interview. The research was qualitative with phenomenological background inspired by Husserl s theory and Giorgi s method. Basically, this method includes these steps: 1) reading the entire description of one subject in order to get a sense of the whole; 2) reading through the data a second time and marking those places in the description where a transition in meaning occurred from a psychological perspective (the meanings between transitions are called meaning units ); 3) reading all of the meaning units and interrogating them from what they reveal about the phenomenon of interest, in this case, the crack-cocaine use experience, in order to grasp the relevance of the subject s own words for the phenomenon of using crack-cocaine in as direct a manner as possible (this step is called the transformation of the subject s lived experience into direct psychological expression); 4) presenting a situated or general structure of the experience (synthesis of each report expressed as structure of experience); and, 5) comprehending the general synthesis which represents the essence of the phenomenon to all subjects investigated. The identification of crack-cocaine users experience in meaning units pointed out to several themes such as: the experience of being a crack-cocaine user; what took them to use this drug; the meaning of crack-cocaine in their lives; crack-cocaine use sensations; crack-cocaine death pleasure; compulsion guiltiness; losses related to the drug; family as an important factor to seek treatment; crack-cocaine and violence; treatment challenges; crack-cocaine use stigma; and, loss of control experienced by users. These complex issues expressed by research subjects set great challenges to health professional teams treating crack-cocaine users and draw attention to the need of permanent reflection of their practices / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo geral cartografar a experiência de usuários de crack no município de Recife. Este estudo foi desenvolvid o nos CAPSad e Instituto RAID. Os entrevistados foram usuários de crack do sexo masculino e feminino, com idade a partir dos 18 anos, que estavam em tratamento em decorrência desta substância nas instituições acima citadas durante a coleta de dados. Em cada CAPSad, foi entrevistado um usuário de crack indicado pela equipe técnica que tivesse uma boa organização nas ideias para descrever a sua experiência com o crack, e que se disponibilizou a contribuir com a pesquisa através de entrevista semi-estruturadas. No Instituto RAID foram entrevistados seis usuários escolhidos pelos mesmos critérios. A pesquisa desenvolvida foi qualitativa de inspiração fenomenológica pautada no pensamento de Husserl e no método proposto por A. Giorgi. Este método inclui, basicamente, os seguintes passos: O sentido do todo, a partir da leitura do depoimento do sujeito; Discriminação do depoimento em Unidades de Significados; Compreensão psicológica de cada Unidade de Significado; Síntese de cada depoimento expressa como estrutura da experiência; e a Composição de uma síntese geral que apresenta a essência do fenômeno para todos os sujeitos investigados. A identificação dessas Unidades de Significado nas experiências dos usuários apontou aspectos diversos sobre o tema tais como: A experiência de ser dependente do crack; o que levou os usuários a consumirem essa substância; qual o significado do crack na vida desses usuários; quais as sensações vividas no consumo desta droga; o prazer da morte pela pedra; a culpa sentida por ceder à compulsão; as perdas diante da pedra; a família como fator importante na busca por um tratamento; o crack e a violência; as dificuldades e sucessos no tratamento; o estigma do usuário de crack e o descontrole vivenciado por alguns usuários. Diante da complexidade das questões trazidas nas experiências dos usuários entrevistados, grandes desafios estão postos para as equipes que trabalham no tratamento dos usuários de crack. Torna-se fundamental uma reflexão contínua sobre essa prática