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Supportive psychotherapy

   Because of the fact that supportive psychotherapy has been traditionally seen as the treatment for those not suitable for expressive therapy, supportive treatment has been generally reserved to patients for whom expressive techniques are expected to fail or who are difficult to treat, like heroin and cocaine-addicted individuals.

   Supportive psychotherapy draws on the supportive aspects of the therapist-patient relationship to maintain effective coping with patients whose level of psychological functioning is precarious, representing a  form of drug treatment in which the doctor attempts to make the patient able to better handle his / her problems, rather than treat the cause of those problems. This form of treatment uses direct measures to improve withdrawal symptoms and maintain, restore or rebuild self-esteem, adaptive skills and psychological ego function.

   Based on the clinical experiences, supportive psychotherapy often leads to improvement in adaptive and interpersonal function, such as modification in patterning of defenses, thought and affect organization, anxiety tolerance and ego strength, especially in patients on methadone maintenance drug treatment who had experienced psychiatric problems. Also  the supportive-expressive psychotherapy, when added to drug counseling, improves outcomes for opiate addicts in methadone drug treatment with moderately severe psychiatric problems.

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