Delivering effective drug rehabilitation services

The prevalence of drug use continues to reach into parts of our society and the growth in drug dependency represented by record numbers of patients seeking help and drug rehabilitation services for their addictions continues to grow unabated. The increased incidence of dual diagnosis patients presenting parallel conditions, usually alcohol dependency and mental issues also continues to present challenges to the treatment of patients. Moreover, patients are increasingly found in sections of the population that previously would have been unheard of and do not naturally strike casual observers as likely, such as the elderly becoming dependent upon prescription medication.

All of these and other factors place challenges on addiction treatment professionals and demand ever improved drug rehabilitation services to be available for the effective treatment of patients.

The use of community based drug rehabilitation services closer to centers of high incidence of drug use can have a dramatic impact upon drug dependency rates. If drug rehabilitation services are not available within a fairly immediate locality, then the window of opportunity when a drug dependent person actually seeks help may be lost. An absence of effective outreach and drug rehabilitation facilities can be catastrophic and result in the loss of affected individuals to addiction permanently with the subsequent personal, social and economic impact that may have.

Investing in delivering drug rehabilitation services is not lost money and the moral argument that drug dependency is a matter of personal choice and responsibility not requiring public intervention does not hold water. Experience and research have demonstrated the impact that low cost high impact local drug rehabilitation services can have on an area in terms of human improvement in quality of life and the economic rejuvenation of an area that has a lower incidence of drug dependency compared to high dependency rates. The return on this investment cannot be calculated absolutely but it is clear that there is a many fold return on the investment.

The federal government has recognized the importance of delivering effective drug rehabilitation services to drug dependent criminals. There is an extremely high correlation between drug dependency and violent crime. Fuelling a drug habit costs a great deal of money, and this is normally acquired by the hustle and aggressive anti-social mentality of street crime. Breaking the cycle of drug addiction is a first step in reducing rates of recidivism and in particular it is especially effective in reducing the incidence of violent crime.

The justice system is also increasingly recognizing that mandated attendance at drug rehabilitation is providing as high a level of success as those drug rehabilitation services that are voluntary. Improving local and State drug rehabilitation services to handle increased mandated treatment by the courts is well under way as the financial benefits of treating a drug dependency condition rather than simply punishing the behaviors that result from it makes financial sense.

In simple economic terms, the value of lost productivity due to drug dependency costs the US economy billions of dollars annually. Progressive company and employee drug rehabilitation services enhance employee productivity rather than simply shunting an employee out of the corporate door and making the drug dependency another employer’s issue. The use of employee rehabilitation for alcohol dependency has been around for quite a number of years and the principles involved with alcohol abuse apply equally to other addictive conditions as well. Modern drug dependency intervention allows employees to lead normal productive lives and the cost of recruiting and retraining staff, especially key personnel is prohibitively high.

It has been almost implicitly recognized that drug rehabilitation services should work alongside alcohol abuse facilities. Delivering effective drug rehabilitation services very often means developing this symbiotic relationship further and combining drug rehab resources with those of alcohol dependency facilities. This results in a great cross over of skill sets among professional and support staff together with a greater range of specialists being available to be brought to bear upon an individual patients needs. Sharing physical resources and avoiding duplication of job roles, particularly in administration also leads to financial savings from the non-operational aspect of he budget allowing more funds to be dedicated to delivering effective drug rehabilitation services to more patients.

The rise in the incidence of young patients presenting substance abuse conditions has also shockingly risen especially in the last ten years. Adolescents and children do not generally respond well to treatment in adult or mixed facilities and they also present unique requirements that cannot be easily accommodated by traditional residential facilities that also treat adult patients. In order to deliver effective drug rehabilitation services to younger patients often requires that the facility is exclusively for the treatment of adolescents or children of that age range. This allows the delivery of specialist services such as child or adolescent psychologists as well as the provision of non-treatment services such as continuing education while treatment itself progresses.

In the current climate, it appears that much work needs to be done to address the increasing incidence of prescription medication dependency. The elderly represent 13% of the US population but account for a third of all prescriptions and this in itself is probably why so many elderly patients are presenting drug dependency conditions. These patients tend not to be from a “traditional” incidence category but the rate of affliction is staggering and it cannot be said that there is an effective delivery of drug rehabilitation services to these patients at this point. It is disheartening in the extreme when the incidence of death by overdose of two of the leading prescription pain killers on the US market have both overtaken the level of fatalities due to cocaine and heroine use combined.

At a time of budget constraints and a burgeoning patient population, improving the effectiveness of drug rehabilitation services is an absolute priority. Improving treatment regimes and the rapid availability of drug rehabilitation services to sufferers who have entered a period when they are looking to regain control of their lives is essential to producing a greater number of positive outcomes from treatment for millions of addicted individuals.