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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0051

A goodbye letter to addiction: the missing piece in substance use disorder treatment

GOODBYE ADDICTION THERAPY LETTER: THE MISSING PIECE IN SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER TREATMENT

The grief accompanying the end of a relationship with a substance is insufficiently addressed in substance use disorder treatment. A goodbye letter written by the patient to the substance is proposed as a way to fill this gap.

The poster aims to introduce the Goodbye Addiction Therapy Letter (AGLT), a method addressing an underrecognized aspect of substance use disorder treatment: grieving the end of a relationship that once served a purpose. The poster presents a conceptual clinical method proposal without empirical data. In this method, the patient writes a four-part letter to the substance or addictive behavior: how we met, how it helped, what it cost, and why goodbye. The letter incorporates a grief map comprising denial, anger, bargaining, depressed mood, acceptance, and meaning, along with a boundary-setting statement. The author states that the method helps patients formulate how the substance entered their lives and what function it served, facilitates observing cravings and viewing bargaining as a state of mind rather than a command, and allows the letter to be stored digitally, scheduled for delivery as an email at a later date, and updated as recovery progresses. The method is proposed as an adjunct to individual, group, inpatient, and outpatient treatment, to be used after withdrawal, acute risk, and trauma activation have first been stabilized. Safety, acceptability, treatment engagement, stigma, and response to relapse are listed as evaluation criteria. The importance of co-designing cultural adaptations with communities, including Indigenous communities in Australia, is emphasized. The poster provides no quantitative data on the method’s effectiveness.

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