Inpatient Drug Rehab: What Works Best in Treatment

When it comes to inpatient drug rehab and addiction treatment, most people don’t seem to think about everything that needs to be treated in a rehab program. One of the biggest challenges in helping drug or alcohol addicts recover is ensuring that they adhere to the discharge plan established as part of the treatment process.

Many mental health professionals or addiction counselors feel that addicts should have access to, and participate in, follow-up care, counseling, and support after their release from inpatient rehabilitation programs. Which is true to some extent, however, if the rehabilitation and recovery program is complete and a full discharge plan has been implemented, follow-up “treatment” should not be an issue for the most part.

Long-term rehabilitation programs that manage physical addiction, mental and emotional problems, and provide life skills training that enables the addict to overcome obstacles in life that would cause a relapse. This is not the case in the disease-based treatment modality, as the problem is never really overcome in theory, it is continuously “treated”, therefore it always exists for the addict. If a problem continues to exist and can never be resolved, of course it will just be managed and will require ongoing attention or treatment.

Using an approach that allows someone to improve conditions to the extent that any problems can be permanently resolved would negate the need for ongoing follow-up care. However, continuing to improve conditions can be part of the therapeutic process as nothing stays the same. It is continually improving or decreasing, with continued therapeutic methods being taken to improve someone’s living conditions would be a very positive step.

Millions of dollars have been spent studying the most positive approaches to treatment, follow-up care, and addiction in general. Unfortunately, most of this has focused on a treatment modality whose philosophy is based on having a disease that can never be overcome. The mantra used with this approach preaches that “relapse is part of recovery,” which would in fact require ongoing treatment, since addiction can never really be overcome.

There are high-ranking Medical Schools that have Behavioral Pharmacology Research Units, like Johns Hopkins University, that study which programs are most successful to help encourage people coming out of inpatient treatment centers to enroll in aftercare that will support your recovery. It should be noted that these studies are often funded by pharmaceutical companies, which would of course promote the drugs as part of the recovery process. Prescribing medications to deal with life’s problems on a daily basis further suppresses anyone’s ability to face these problems head-on and manage them effectively.

There are currently 320 stimulus-funded research grants totaling nearly $157.4 million that Johns Hopkins has earned since Congress passed the American Recovery and Revitalization Act of 2009 (known informally by the acronym ARRA), awarding the Institutes National Health and National Science Foundation $12.4 billion in additional money to underwrite research grants by September 2010.

It would be fortunate for many if this funding and research were concentrated on programs that offer an end to a means, or full recovery in treatment. Inpatient Drug Rehab Programs that offer rehabilitation methods to manage physical addiction, underlying emotional and mental issues, and teach life skills provide a much greater chance of success in permanent recovery from substance abuse and addiction. Drug programs like this one enhance the addict’s skills and make them better able to overcome obstacles and lessen disabilities such as drug or alcohol dependency.