Addiction treatment has changed significantly in the last few years; it now concentrates on what is most important to the patient. Personalized care allows counselors to individualize not just how they deliver treatment but also to tailor even the fundamental science of addiction recovery to each patient's certain circumstances. Every person who seeks help for a substance use disorder is unique, and individualized addiction treatments consider that.
The path to recovery from addiction isn’t linear, and every person who takes it has their own set of reasons, circumstances, and psychology that drive them toward it. Biologically speaking, studies have shown that addictive disease is in our genes—you’re more likely to become addicted if your parents are (or were). Psychologically, we know now that people who have certain mental health disorders are at greater risk of becoming addicted.
But at the end of the day, there’s no better way to understand the dynamics of addiction than just watching people's lives play out. A good treatment plan will address all these factors. Family members can be an integral part of this wooing process—as much as we might flinch when told to involve loved ones in our medical business.
When it comes to treating addiction, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Each individual's experience with the disease is unique and requires a tailored treatment plan. That's why individualized addiction treatment—existent since the 1970s—has three key components: comprehensive assessment, a personalized treatment plan, and close monitoring and adjustment of the treatment to ensure its effectiveness.
The most important part of this triad might be the evaluation itself—understanding who this person is and what has led them to where they are now—a task that calls on mental health care providers to look toward many different areas to understand "why." And despite our collective understanding being much better than it was 40 years ago, we are still far from having a clear picture.
The treatment plan is tailored to each person and often incorporates a blend of therapies. These may include cognitive-behavioral therapy, which helps an individual identify and change thought patterns that can lead to addictive behaviors; medication-assisted treatment, which can help with cravings and withdrawal symptoms; motivational interviewing, which can urge someone to take control of their life and seek recovery; or holistic approaches like yoga or meditation that address a person's physical health, ongoing mental health needs, and social functioning.
The path toward recovery from addiction is neither simple nor straightforward. Indeed, for the majority of individuals struggling with an addiction, especially those whose abuse has reached the intense levels we know as a substance use disorder (SUD), the road to wellness will not be linear. Nonetheless, many elements can and should be integrated into treatment to allow greater flexibility in serving diverse populations in play when helping someone recover from an entertainment industry addiction. Provider variables such as the extent of counseling; by whom this counseling is conducted; and even how much time one devotes to "checking in" all have been identified lately as facing either adequate funding or inadequate funding – a problem that affects not only the recovered individual but also their family and mental health care providers.
One crucial facet of personalized addiction treatment is individualized drug counseling. This type of counseling deals head-on with the issues connected to drug usage and provides uniquely tailored approaches for overcoming those problems, either on one's own or in conjunction with group sessions. Those in individualized drug counseling might work through a series of steps to overcome their problems. They will first be diagnosed so that treatment personnel can understand exactly what they're facing and why—more often than not, individuals have some mix of psychological and physiological components making them prone to using drugs. Then they will be counseled—that's just a fancy way of saying someone helps another person sort out their thinking and feelings about a big life problem—itinerary-style if you will.
Individualized drug counseling exists for a reason. It's not like other forms of therapy that can be applied across the board to everyone who has a certain problem.
Drug use and abuse are too varied and individualized to lend themselves well to an across-the-board approach.
Drug use and abuse are too varied and individualized to lend themselves well to an across-the-board approach.
We humans and our problems are too varied for sealed-to-everyone-who-has-that-problem doctors to issue one-size-fits-all diagnoses or treatments, in my opinion. Yet we try to apply therapies more or less uniformly, even though we know that when it comes to mental health problems (which is what using drugs often is), individuals have both similar and dissimilar underlying dynamics—and left-up-to-the-patient (and their counselors) elements of the agenda.
The current paradigm of individualized addiction treatment marks a significant move forward in the field of addiction care. Instead of one-size-fits-all solutions, providers now understand that it is far more effective to address each person's unique problems associated with their drug addiction.
One key part of this new approach is what we call "individualized drug counseling." This kind of counseling stands out from run-of-the-mill approaches because our counselors act as "biographers." They help the addicted person reach back into their past and link up all those things—good and bad—that have happened to them with how they got where they are today, using drugs.
Comments