and clearly didn’t believe in recovery, so we decided
we’d set up our own little support group.’
Does he feel that the value of therapeutic
communities has been properly recognised, or is
there still a way to go? ‘No, there’s a very long way to
go, and unfortunately I think the track we set out on
was the wrong one. One of the major mistakes
therapeutic communities made was to accept that
they were about drug treatment. That effectively
made them part of the health service, measured by
those kind of randomised control trials that are very,
very difficult to implement in such a complex
intervention.’
What such communities are really about is
people learning to live and behave in a different way,
he believes, and helping each other to do that in a
structured environment. ‘In some respects we’ve
hamstrung ourselves into being simply about drug
treatment, and I don’t think the approach is simply
about that. I think it’s much broader.’
Is it too late to reverse that now? ‘I think so,’ he
says. ‘One of the problems therapeutic communities
and other residential agencies have faced over the
last 20 or 30 years is the hijacking of some of the
radical psychiatry notions about closing down big
psychiatric institutions and moving people into the
community. Right-wing governments – like Margaret
Thatcher’s – hijacked that notion because they saw
an opportunity to save huge amounts on health
costs, not because they thought people could be
cured in the community but because they thought,
“We can close down this massive loony bin and sell it
to Tesco”.’
That bred a notion of ‘residential bad, community
good’ that still exists, he argues. ‘But I think we’re
beginning to move out of that and recognise that it’s
not really about residential and non-residential, it’s
about treatment dosage. Some people will need a
higher level of treatment intensity, a bigger dose,
and the most effective way of delivering that is
probably in a residential setting.’
So how does he feel about his imminent
retirement? ‘I think it’s time, really, although I’m
going to retain some of my responsibilities. Looking
back, the major milestone for me was being made
Phoenix Futures’ first – and only – honorary
graduate. That was far more important to me than
my MBE or other appointments over the years.’
His retirement will also give him the time to
indulge his other passion, music, especially with his
band Running wi’ Scissors. ‘I love playing music, but I
kind of came out of it for a number of years and
didn’t play at all, because for me my involvement in
it was associated with my involvement in drugs. I
was frightened to play music, I suppose.’
The value of music and other creative activities in
people’s recovery is something else that remains
hugely under-appreciated, he says. ‘Music and drama
and dance are often seen simply as ways of filling
residents’ time – something they can do in the
evenings. I think it’s much more important than that.
We know from studies that playing music fires off
synapses in the brain that don’t otherwise fire, so it
has a profound effect on people’s thinking and self-
esteem. That’s a really interesting area to explore.’
16 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| November 2015
Profile
Read the full interview online
Drug sector
veteran Rowdy
Yates talks
to
David Gilliver
about the value
of therapeutic
communities, and
the therapeutic
value of music
AcAdemic
notes
could look at residential rehab much more closely
and favourably than we do,’ he says. ‘We’ve had 20
years of thinking that residential treatment is
profoundly expensive and therefore a last resort.’
Much of the research comparing residential and
non-residential models ‘doesn’t compare like with
like’, he argues. ‘They’ll include the accommodation
costs in the residential side of the equation, for
example, but not in the non-residential side. I can
understand why they do that, but the truth is that
the majority of people receiving long-term
methadone maintenance are probably also receiving
housing benefit, so their accommodation is still
costing the state.’
He came into the field in the late 1960s via his
own heroin use and a belief that if people wanted
effective support they’d need to create it themselves.
‘A group of us ex-heroin addicts had been attending
Alcoholics Anonymous, which at that time was
about the only game in town. Drug dependency
units, as they were known, were prescribing heroin
‘IT’S KIND OF SCHIZOPHRENIC FOR ME BECAUSE ONE
DAY I’M AN ESTEEMED ACADEMIC DOING MY
PRESENTATION AND THE FOLLOWING DAY I’M UP ON
STAGE PLAYING,’
says Rowdy Yates of last month’s
annual conference at the San Patrignano community
in Italy.
A passionate commitment to both therapeutic
communities and music has defined his 46 years in
the field, and although he resigns his post as senior
research fellow at the University of Stirling at the
end of this year, he’s staying on as president of the
European Federation of Therapeutic Communities
(EFTC) until 2017. And the community of San
Patrignano (
DDN
, March 2014, page 8) is a shining
example of what the sector can achieve, he believes.
‘It’s great,’ he says. ‘I mean, you’re talking about
1,500 people – it’s the biggest rehab in the world,
really, and there’s a very strong, therapeutic
community emphasis on self-help, self-governance.’
Is it a model that we could perhaps look at a little
more closely in this country? ‘My view is that we
