Research Report

Social service and addiction treatment: rehabilitation or harm reduction?

AIM

This paper aims to depict and analyze how professionals in Swedish social services legitimize two ideologically controversial help interventions, methadone maintenance and coercive treatment. Should addiction treatment primarily rehabilitate clients, or should it be a short-term measure for harm reduction? This question has been less and less discussed in Sweden during the past few years, as it has been accepted that all help should be based on science, not ideology – irrespective of it being aimed at harm reduction or rehabilitation. However, there is a lack of research regarding how crucial players in addiction treatment relate to this development, especially when applied on socially vulnerable clients.

MATERIAL & METHOD

The empirical material consists of 33 qualitative interviews with social workers from Stockholm and its surrounding area. The interviews are analyzed through discourse analysis.

RESULT

When describing their work, the respondents’ discourse assumed and advocated progress in client case management.

CONCLUSION

By emphasizing concepts such as lifestyle change, client motivation, psychosocial support and aftercare the social workers could construct the two forms of treatment as less ideologically extreme, but also as undoubtedly aligned with the political goal of rehabilitation.