| Summary: | The obective of this study is to demonstrate that the self-empowerment process methodology is an essential targeted motivational work for the improvement of the client’s adherence – and therefore its therapeutic efficacy - during treatment of behavioral addictions (e.g. compulsive mechanisms such as food in eating disorder and play in pathological gambling).
Eating disorders and gambling are characterized, on a psychopathological level, by compulsive behavior in addiction to a condition of affective-relational ambivalence, induced by intrapsychic conflicts. Both situations lead the affected person to live in an internal torment between two opposite alternatives. In this situation, the patients feel entrapped in a cage, obsessed on a fixed thought of eating or playing, and they often are unable to go out alone or, in case they decide to want to be helped and supported, they struggle to undertake treatment because they are afraid of the change or do not feel any intrinsic motivation. The hypothesis of the study considers motivational work as a useful and functional approach for compulsive addictions. It does not aim to change the patient or teach how to change, howerer, through a self-empowerment methodology, allows the person to accept their condition, becomes more aware of inconsistencies of his behaviour, and thus undertakes a functional treatment for well-being and health. The theoretical framework is based on Prochaska, Norcross and Di Clemente's transtheoretical model of change, according to which the motivational process of change occurs in six phases and change is seen as a wheel that has to be covered several times before success can be achieved. The goal of the work on motivation for treatment and empowerment will be an increase in patient compliance and a greater probability of success of the therapy.
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