Sand in the gears: motivation of clients under judicial coercion into substance abuse treatment
The justice system is becoming increasingly involved in the referral process of criminalized individuals to drug treatment programs. This practice has important implications for clinical interventions, as these people are usually considered poorly motivated to change, and present specific needs that are not easily satisfied through conventional intervention approaches. Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the readiness to change of coerced treatment participants through a review of articles published over the last ten years. The analysis demonstrates that the coercion generated by the justice system can function as a source of external motivation, in the sense of bringing and retaining individuals into treatment. Moreover, engagement and behavior change are rather related to the development of internal motivation. Some studies associate the internal motivation of an addict with the experience of negative consequences related to the use of psychotropic substances. Therefore, individuals who experience the most problems would be more willing to change and thus more likely to achieve positive results in treatment. This is called «hitting the bottom theory». This «theory» is only partially supported, because if the seriousness of the problems seem related to motivation to change in early treatment, it is not always associated with positive treatment outcomes. We conclude that the «external» and «internal» dimensions of motivation come into intimate relationship in the context of coerced treatment, and the process of developing internal motivation through external pressure requires much more research.