Residential Drug Treatment Centers

Here are some pointers for selecting the best
Residential Treatment Program: No single treatment is appropriate for all individuals. Matching treatment settings, interventions, and services to each patient's problems and needs is critical.

Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug use. Treatment must address the individual's drug use and associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.

Treatment needs to be flexible and provide ongoing assessments of patient needs, which may change during the course of treatment.

Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical for treatment effectiveness. The time correlates directly with the individual's needs. For most patients, the threshold of significant improvement is reached at about 3 months in treatment.

Individual and/or group counseling and other behavioral therapies are critical components of effective treatment for addiction. In therapy, patients address motivation, build skills to resist drug use, replace drug-using activities with constructive and rewarding non drug-using activities, and improve problem-solving abilities.

Addicted or drug-abusing individuals with coexisting mental disorders should have both disorders treated in an integrated way. Because these disorders often occur in the same individual, patients presenting for one condition should be assessed and treated for the other.

Detoxification is only the first stage of addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long-term drug use. Medical detoxification manages the acute physical symptoms of withdrawal. For some individuals, it is a precursor to effective drug addiction treatment.

The best rehab programs provide a combination of therapies and other services to meet the needs of the individual.