Dr. Karen Dodge
It is the pioneering work of Dr. Karen Dodge that informs the core of our approach at Orchid.
As we have pointed out elsewhere, Dr. Dodge's findings have led her to stress the importance of promoting what she calls "relational growth", which is a treatment modality that fosters personal growth through the encouragement of a high degree of interdependence and trust among females during the treatment process.
Dr. Dodge developed her female oriented treatment approach as she completed her doctorate in social work at Florida International University in the late 1990's. She began her work in addiction treatment over a decade earlier as a substance abuse counselor, and it is through this early practical experience that Dr. Dodge began to understand the urgent need for treatment modalities that were more focused on the needs of women.
As Dr. Dodge began her research into female substance abuse, she found that her intuitions as a counselor proved to be correct, namely that empirical studies on females significantly lagged behind those on males, and that what studies there were identified certain addiction consequences that correlate much more highly to female substance abusers.
Among these correlates were low self-esteem, lack of traditional job skills, depression and, by far the most important, lack of a social support network. Her work, based on the above research, explores how all of these characteristics interact to affect treatment outcomes for women in chemical dependency treatment, but especially the social support network aspect.
Dr. Dodge's relational growth modality refers to the process whereby healing occurs as women are encouraged to closely rely on one another in treatment, building community, and, most importantly, trust. We at Orchid agree with Dr. Dodge about the effectiveness of this approach and believe that the interrelations built between women in treatment can form a nucleus around which recovery can be more effectively sought.
While adult daughters of alcoholics have received much help in ACOA, Dr. Dodge believes the fundamental concept of co-dependency used by this particular 12-Step group is problematic, because, when applied to females, the term "Co-dependent" has come to imply that dependency is entirely a negative quality. This view of co-dependence has become, it seems, commonplace throughout the recovery community.
At Orchid, we believe that the issue of dependency, especially when it comes to women in treatment, should be viewed more as a continuum, along which there is "normal", or healthy, dependence at one end, and pathological, or unhealthy, co-dependence at the other.
At Orchid, we believe that fostering relational growth, or growth base on a healthy inter-dependence, is the bedrock upon which a woman's treatment should be place. For more information about our approach to treatment, please call us at .
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