What is the CEDRO Hotline Program (Lugar de Escucha)?

This Program provides personal, telephone and on-line assistance, psychological counseling, motivation sessions, psychological evaluation and psychological and psychiatric diagnosis, to drug addiction cases, non-traditional addictions (gambling and others), and other risk behaviors.

Within this context, induction and motivation activities are intended for the patient to assume a leading role in dealing with his/her health problems and to start changing his/her attitude towards drugs and external help. The person is treated as an outpatient, and a network formed by a number of government and non-government organizations has been established to refer the client to the hospital if necessary.

The Hotline program ("Lugar de Escucha") is formed by a team of mental health professionals specialized in traditional and non-traditional addictive behaviors, providing personal or telephone assistance. The team includes psychotherapist psychologists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and volunteers within a humanistic framework focused on a cognitive-behavioral approach.

Based on the knowledge of the dynamics of addiction, we have determined three approaches to providing this service:

Personal guidance and psychological counseling

The service is provided on a personal (face to face) and voluntary basis. This approach is known as motivational sessions.

Telephone guidance and psychological counseling

An excellent method to establish the first contact between the client and the specialist through the CEDRO hotlines (51 1) 4456665 and (51 1) 4475837. The approach consists in listening closely to the clients problems and suggesting possible solutions to his drug abuse and drug addiction problems. One of the alternatives is to make an appointment with the client.

On-line guidance and psychological counseling

Undoubtedly an important number of teenagers, adolescents and youngsters have access to computers and the Internet, regardless of their social strata and gender and whether they use drugs or not,

This has been verified throughout the latter years, as despite the other available methods of requesting counseling, CEDRO started receiving e-mails, chat and simultaneous communication requests for help to deal with addictive behaviours through the Internet.

On the other hand, another aspect that contributed to the establishment of the On-line counseling method, was the experience in other countries such as France, United States of America, Germany, Italy, etc., where this guidance and counseling method has proven to be an immediate help alternative rather than a therapeutic process.

OTHER SPECIALTIES:

1. A specific program known as "Gathering Group" has been designed for teenage and adolescents drug users with experimental and social use patterns (non-addicts).

2. Drug-dependency interventions associated to intoxication, overdose and suicide attempt crises.

3. Feminine addiction. Based on the research on women addictions from a gender identification perspective, therapists address this problem considering specificity and gender.

4. Quit smoking groups (Personal and on-line)

5. Compulsive gambling (Personal and on-line methods)

6. Counseling and assistance on similar issues.

7. Micro-commercialization of drugs in Lima and Callao. The database for the systematization of the areas of consumption and sale of cocaine-derived drugs has been designed based on the information contained in the clinical history of the people seeking help. The data validation method used consists in finding 50 coincidences per area before the information is proven valid and registered in the Lima & Callao map. Said map shows the areas of Lima and Callao where drugs are sold and consumed by the people seeking help from the Hotline Program (Lugar de Escucha). Drug prices are updated according to the information provided by 10 consumers of each of the drugs in the north, south, east and west cones of Lima & Callao
(10 per cone). As a result, a general average of the current price of all drugs is estimated .

8. Non-traditional addictions: To provide information relative to other new types of social addictions (not requiring the use of substances) such as compulsive gambling, sex, work, Internet, sports, etc.