therapeutic community, evaluation, theoretical foundation, drug addiction treatment, educational intervention
Abstract
The Therapeutic Community (TC) as a multicomponent programme for the treatment of drug addicts, covering two main areas: the psychotherapeutic intervention and educational action. Any evaluation of the TC results must take into account the behavioural changes that the residents have experienced as a consequence of the combined forces of both perspectives. We propose a common theoretical framework from the concept of value, understood as the choice of a certain behaviour by an individual (inside value) as well as the social evaluation that gives it a positive character (outside value). The effect of treatment, the objective of evaluation, should be seen in both the behavioural change of the individual (psychotherapeutic objective), and his position in a given social order (educational objective). The measure of educational change may be estimated throughout the concept of behavioural intention, as defined by Fishbein and Ajzen.
