There are a number of harmful acts and characteristic behaviors that can be involved in the cult environment. These include, brainwashing, financial exploitation, extreme and powerful mind control over members, extreme deception used on members and/or nonmembers, extreme withdrawal from or overindulgence in corporeal pleasures, animal & human sacrifices, lack of empathy for members and/or nonmembers, sex crimes, unquestioned belief in the members’ morality, deceptive and sometimes harsh indoctrination (Watkins, 2016). In the video, Trapped: Life Inside a Cult—How to Spot a Cult, we hear directly from cult survivors about how the above behaviors and acts that kept them trapped in the cult. In almost all of the cults discussed in the video, the common theme is the overall use of these tactics to maintain …show more content…
Specific disorders can affect people at the same time as they battle with substance abuse. These disorders generally have a mental health component that causes additional anxiety and stress that may impact their ability to find lasting recovery from addiction. 75-80% of the population is addicted and half of those have a co-occurring disorder (Watkins, 2015). This is a large portion of the population. Kenneth Minkoff found that, “Within the context of the empathic, hopeful, continuous, integrated relationship, case management/care (based on level of impairment) and empathic detachment/confrontation (based on strengths and contingencies are appropriately balanced at each point in time. A balance of both of these is key to the parallels of treatment with co-occurring disorders” (Watkins,