Enhancing awareness on the consequences of amphetamine use: Gestalt group counseling for drug abuse patients

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effect of Gestalt group counseling on enhancing awareness of the effect of amphetamine abuse, using a two-factor experimental design with repeated measures on one factor. The sample consisted of people receiving drug treatment in non-strict control at a drug treatment center who met the inclusion criteria and had the lowest self-report awareness score. A simple random sampling method divided the subjects into an experimental group of 8 people and a control group of 8 people. The experimental group received the Gestalt-based group counseling program, which included 12 sessions of 90 minutes each over 12 weeks. The control group was treated according to the usual treatment program. The instruments used to collect data were the awareness of the effect of amphetamine questionnaire abuse. The evaluation was divided into 3 phases: the pre-experimental phase, the post-experimental and the follow-up period. Statistical data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, frequency distribution, and repeated-measure analysis of variance: one between-subjects variable and one-within-variable, as well as analyzing content from the interview data.
The results showed that (1) there was a statistically significant interaction between the experimental method and the experimental. The awareness scores of the experimental and control groups were significantly different at the .05 level when the duration of the experiment and the treatment groups were different. (2) The experimental group had a statistically significant higher awareness score than the control group at the .05 level. In conclusion, the results of this research provide empirical support for the effectiveness of a Gestalt-based group counseling program in enhancing awareness of the effect of amphetamine abuse among people receiving drug treatment, and it may be utilized as a treatment approach for amphetamine abuse.