This is a very interesting post about the show Intervention..

Intervene This

The Emmy-award winning A&E reality show Intervention begins each episode with ominous music -- and an even scarier message -- "Millions of Americans struggle with addiction, most need help to stop." How did A&E decide most people can't eliminate an addiction without help (like, for instance, the large majority of smokers do)? According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's NESARC study, about three quarters of alcoholics recover without professional help. A little over 10 percent of people with substance dependencies ever receive any specialty addiction services, yet according to the study, most people mature out of their alcohol addictions on their own over time.

So why do we as a society continue to promote the idea that we need to employ confrontational strategies against people with addiction problems? We don't do this in other areas of healthcare. Although the mental health field has its own dark history of coercion, would the mental health professionals who frequent HuffPost's pages consider for a minute using with mentally ill people the confrontational strategies that are considered de rigueur on Intervention? For example, would they (would you) bombard with abuse a person living with schizophrenia who refused their medication?

The logic behind this inhumane -- and counterproductive -- approach is expressed by one of my fellow bloggers at Psychology Today, Sarah Allen Benton, author of the The High Functioning Alcoholic. Benton recommended such interventions in her post, "The Challenges of Dealing with an Alcoholic Loved One," because she reckons that adding to people's misery hastens their recovery (actually, only their getting treatment):

Read the full release here

What we have to understand is that not all people have the strong will to change and recover and   there are certain things that the professionals need to determine whats causing the alcoholism in order to make the recovery faster..