Increasing Efficacy and Eliminating Burnout in Sex Offender Treatment (From Impact: Working With Sexual Abusers, P 89-96, 1997, Stacey Bird Edmunds, ed. - See NCJ-166774)

• NCJ Number: 166781
• Author(s): J Giovannoni
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 8 pages
• Sale Source: Safer Society Press
• Publication Type: Report (Technical Assistance)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Principles that mental health professionals can use to increase their effectiveness and reduce their stress as they relate to the sex offenders they treat and interact with probation and parole officers are presented, based on the author's experience treating more than 1,000 sex offenders since 1984 and experiencing and dealing with occupational stress.

Abstract

Therapists should first consider several issues, including what each client teaches about sex offense causes, what treatment is effective, what specific interventions work for specific clients, how to contribute to community safety while maintaining a therapeutic relationship, how best to serve the person trying to change maladaptive behavior, and how to help change the client's thinking to make it possible to experience love rather than fear based on a need for power and control. Clients may mirror fears that some therapists feel; the author had to redefine clients who were murderers as separate from their behavior. Other helpful approaches the author has used are make the choice to see the world with loving eyes, work closely with probation and parole officers, educate these correctional personnel about the offender, ensure community safety by having offenders waive confidentiality to permit communication with family and others, reconsider traditional concepts of separation between the therapist and criminal justice personnel, and to encompass spirituality in the work. 2 references