.jpg){kind=logo}
Treat people as if they are who they can be and you help them to become who they’re capable of being.
—Johann von Goethe
DEE-DEE STOUT
As someone with an addiction history, I appreciate where you are in your own change process: as a family, as a drug user, and as a person who wants to change their health behaviors. Change happens in many ways; there's no single right way to change! Most important is the relationship & trust you build with the professional you're working with and secondly, your belief that you can be successful. I know that each person is fully capable of making their own decisions and - sometimes with some help and often without - can also find ways to make healthier choices in a way that fits their lifestyle, culture, goals, values, and more. As Drs. Scott Miller and Barry Duncan state in their book, “The Heroic Client”, We should be humbled in the presence of our clients for they are the heroes of their lives. I thoroughly agree.
​
Dee-Dee Stout holds a Master’s degree in Health Counseling from San Francisco State University, a program that she designed herself to meet her educational needs. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Human Sexuality from the same University.
​
Dee-Dee was a California Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Level II (CADC-II) for 20 years, finally deciding that her devotion to what works - harm reduction - outweighed any need for the certification and so gave it up. She continues to be an active member of the international Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT; for more, see www.motivationalinterview.org). Dee-Dee also has extensive training in the field of substance use disorders and behavior change, studying with such experts as Drs. William Miller & Steve Rollnick (Motivational Interviewing), Drs. Scott D. Miller & Barry Duncan (The Heroic Client: Becoming Client-Centered and Outcome-Oriented; The Heart and Soul of Change; PCOMS & FIT on outcome-informed work), Jane Peller, LCSW & John Walter, LCSW (Recreating Brief Therapy), Dr. Patt Denning (Practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy), and the late Dr. G. Alan Marlatt (Harm Reduction; Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention), and many others. Recently Dee-Dee has added Brainspotting (certification to be complete Summer 2021) to her repertoire of tools to help with anxiety, trauma, and other mental & physical health challenges.
Dee-Dee is currently Adjunct Faculty at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, and was a longtime member of the faculty at City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and California State University, Monterey Bay where she developed hybrid classes in “Drugs, Society and Public Policy” as well as “Substance Use Disorders.” She has also developed curriculum for the Northern California Training Academy at UC Davis as well as for both UC Berkeley and CSU East Bay Extensions in their respective CCAPP certificate programs.
Dee-Dee has worked in numerous treatment settings: therapeutic community (TC), social model, and medical-model settings in a variety of treatment levels for those with substance use disorders/other mental health challenges – both for individual clients and for their family/concerned significant others. Her past accomplishments in treatment include developing exercise programs; forming a relapse prevention treatment program for a large HMO; starting a family program for a residential social-model treatment program in the East Bay, and bringing trauma-informed treatment to female prisoners and other moms.
​
Dee-Dee has conducted some 900 presentations and trainings to date – most particularly on Motivational Interviewing - including such subjects as: Anger Management, Families of Substance Users and Abusers, the Stages of Change, Human Sexuality, Nutrition, and more. She is a frequent Bay Area speaker and trainer and has presented at numerous conferences including the International EAP Conference in Vancouver, several Harm Reduction Conferences, the annual Federal Bureau of Prisons Conference, and State of California Department of HealthCare Services Conferences. She has spoken to groups as diverse as EAGALA (equine-assisted therapy) to Cornell University (MI) to the Annual Voice Conference (through UCSF Department of Otolaryngology) in San Francisco. She was even filmed by the Emmy-award winning Showtime series “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!” and is often interviewed for comments for radio and in press on treatment. She can also be seen in the groundbreaking film “The Business of Recovery.” (https://www.thebusinessofrecovery.com/)
​
Dee-Dee has spent time volunteering with the Department of Public Health/Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS) and the Volunteer Legal Services Program (VLSP) in San Francisco as well as with various organizations promoting human rights, including queer rights and drug user’s rights. Previously, she worked in such areas as marketing & advertising, radio, and taught Suzuki piano for a decade. Most recently she wrote a blog for Families for Sensible Drug Policy (www.FSDP.org) called “Family Matters/Families Matter” which covered a wide range of issues regarding families, substance use, and drug policy. Her current clinical focus is working with individuals and their friends & families in a respectful, loving, & harm reducing way and to abolish the standard “tough love” treatment of drug users which Dee-Dee sees too often irreparably harms the rest of the family, too.
​
​
