The Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) is a behavioral treatment for adults with substance use disorders.
CRA seeks to increase the family, social, and educational/vocational reinforces to support recovery. According to the individual’s needs and self-assessment of happiness in multiple life areas, clinicians choose from a variety of CRA procedures that improve social skills, coping with day-to-day stressors, couples relationship skills, and increasing participation in positive social and recreational activities with the goal of improving life satisfaction and eliminating alcohol and substance use problems.
Practicing new skills during sessions is a critical component of the skills training used in CRA. Every session ends with a mutually-agreed-upon homework assignment to practice skills learned during sessions. Likewise, each session begins with a review of the homework assignment from the previous session. The goal of CRA is to make life in recovery more rewarding than using alcohol and other drugs.
An initial training workshop is designed for clinical staff who plan to implement CRA with adults and/or provide clinical supervision to clinicians implementing CRA, as well as those in support and administrative roles for programs implementing CRA. The training uses demonstrations to model how CRA is used with adults, and trainees have an opportunity to practice procedures and receive feedback from the training team.