QVOF

Drug Addiction Treatment Programs: Searching for What Works

The high cost for most addiction treatment services raises the affordability bar above the level of that which lower middle and middle class working people can afford. It is time for the assumptions and tenets of chemical dependency treatment choices to be critically evaluated. Objective measures such as outcomes and recidivism rates are the parameters of value for any program. These features define their effectiveness.

There has been a revolution in the treatment of chemical addictions over the past several years. Principally, this has come about because of the newer medications that have come to the fore, and have passed the tests for safety and effectiveness.

Older approaches of addiction care, such as in-patient treatment models have justified their services and very high costs by claiming that in-patient care is the gold standard for addiction treatment.

One popular in-patient treatment program advertises: We believe that in order for a drug dependent person to achieve long term recovery, they must invest the time necessary to be safely and properly detoxed from the drugs they are abusing.

Promoters of in-patient care note that the best road to overcoming addictions is through their programs, and that outpatient services are doomed to failure. That simply isn’t so. The fact is that a very small number of persons from the addiction community would benefit from this level of long term, very costly, institutional care.

The Office of National Drug Policy in discussing a variety of drug treatment methods has written about Long-term Residential Treatment:

1Compared with patients in other forms of drug treatment, the typical Therapeutic Community resident has more severe problems, with more co-occurring mental health problems and more criminal involvement. Research shows that Therapeutic Communities can be modified to treat individuals with special needs, including adolescents, women, those with severe mental disorders, and individuals in the criminal justice system.

Besides this small subset of challenged people the vast sea of the chemically dependent can be and should be treated in an outpatient setting. There is clear evidence that treating the addiction and ancillary problems such as depression will be the most important step in that person’s return to normalcy. Most of such individuals will go on to resume work or to find new jobs. Most of these people will begin to mend

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