Inpatient Treatment Programs For Substance Abuse

Do You Need an Inpatient Program?

Inpatient programs can last from 30 to 90 days depending on the treatment plan developed for your recovery. Inpatient is often recommended for those who experience the following:

• Withdrawal symptoms that are detrimental to one’s health
• When physical dependency for the drug overpowers the user
• Severe medical or psychiatric difficulties
• Severe psychosocial impairments
• Failure in outpatient treatment
• Court ordered to inpatient care

The main objective for inpatient treatment is to decrease the likeliness of relapse during the most difficult times of recovery and make sure that the recovery process is as tolerable as possible to increase the success of the program. There are different types of inpatient programs like therapy-based programs, 12-step programs, and multimodality programs. Depending on whether the inpatient program is ‘locked down’ there are other benefits to inpatient programs:

• Decrease connection to illegal activities
• Increase efficiency in work or school settings
• Improve social, family, and psychological interactions
• Improve overall health of user

Inpatient Treatment Effectiveness

Inpatient treatment focuses on decreasing the likeliness of relapse during the period of recovery. Abstinence is the most effective way to determine how effective inpatient actually is. Abstinence is most commonly defined as refraining from using all drugs over a long period of time. Measuring the treatment facility’s effectiveness focuses on consistent drug-free lifestyle with supporting evidence of enriched psychological functioning and social interaction.

Inpatient and Residential Settings

Longer-term residential treatment can last as long as six to twelve months and is relatively uncommon as treatment is often based on insurance. Shorter term residential treatment is much more common, and typically has a focus on detoxification (also known as medically managed withdrawal) as well as providing initial intensive treatment, and preparation for a return to community-based settings.

The typical residential setting for an inpatient is a fully furnished room that is shared by another user. Having a roommate or buddy system is important as it decreases smuggling drugs or running away from the facility. Having another person in the room can alert the medical staff if a problem occurs and the users can lean on each other during moments of weakness.

Three meals are served regularly and chores are assigned to each person to encourage proper health and responsibility. Learning to manage daily stressors like making toast, social interactions, and stubbing your toes in a healthy manner is extremely important.

Depending on the facility, inpatient treatment can have luxurious elements like fitness centers, swimming pools, televisions in each suite, and or special diet meals.

Inpatient Individual and Group Counseling

O One of the key elements about inpatient is the extent of counseling involved in the recovery process. Many users who have addictions have underlining problems that made the user more susceptible to becoming an addict. For example, someone who is effected by a traumatic experience when they were younger are more likely to abuse a drug to kill the pain of the memory.

Inpatient focuses on the patient as a whole and not just the addiction, the person who is suffering from underlining problems will be more likely to relapse if help for that problem is not addressed. Individual and group counseling will help the professionals determine all the users’ problems with psychoanalysis strategies.

Individual counseling focuses an properly evaluating all the problems the user is experiencing and then focuses on stopping substance abuse, building skills and exploring talents, developing and maintaining a recovery plan, and social, family, and professional/educational interaction skills.

Group counseling involves small groups, 5 to 15 peers, sharing their experiences, goals, social acceptable behaviors, and establishing a strong support system in early recovery. These groups are of similar ages and backgrounds and can be same sex or different depending on the type of inpatient facility. Sometimes, the sexes are separated so every person can focus on healing without attraction influencing their triggers or temptations. Inpatient programs often have roommate sleeping arrangements to ensure that the positive effects of the buddy system is used. Below is a list of common therapies used in an inpatient treatment program:

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy educates users in treatment to recognize and stop negative patterns of thinking and behavior. Identifying stressors, situations, and feelings that lead to substance abuse will help them develop proper coping mechanisms that refrain from drug use.
• Contingency Management focuses to on positive reinforcement in preventing substance abuse.
• Motivational Enhancement Therapy helps people find and maintain motivation while engage in treatment. It is often used early in the process to engage people in treatment and get them focused on the positive effects of sobriety.
• 12-Step facilitation therapy is a spiritual enlightenment in the quest for sober living. The 12 Steps are commonly practiced by Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT)

D Depending on the addiction, using medication to treat substance use disorders is often referred to as Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT). Using medication in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies increases the success of the inpatient program as the medication used helps curb cravings for their drug and decreases the debilitating effects of the withdrawals during the detoxification process by:

1. Occupying receptors in the brain associated with using that drug (agonists or partial agonists)
2. Blocking the rewarding sensation that comes with using a substance (antagonists), or
3. Inducing negative feelings when a substance is taken like nausea or headaches.

Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) has been primarily used for the treatment of opioid and alcohol addictions because of the terrible withdrawals associated with these types of addictions.