Skipping Steps in Treatment

When someone goes straight from a residential level of care to an outpatient level of care, often that patient falls flat on their face.  To go from the highest level of supervision and structure to the lowest level of supervision and structure provides too much opportunity for someone just coming out of treatment to backslide.  Another word for backslide is relapse.

Far too often families will contact me for a second, third, or seventh attempt at treatment.  After gathering all the information from their previous treatment attempts, I learn about the short residential stays and immediate recommendations (or lack thereof) to step-down to sober living.  In looking more closely, a lot of the treatment programs they participated in were focused on the addition and treated the mental health like it was an afterthought.  Unfortunately, this is all-to-common even for programs that identify themselves as “dual-diagnosis.”  Families need a Therapeutic Placement Consultant more than they ever realized!

To ensure that, this time in hiring a Consultant that it really “sticks,” we make sure that we don’t skip steps through the continuum.  Residential to extended care, and extended care to sober living.  No matter how stellar your young adult is coming across as changed in treatment, they need to go through each of these steps.  Period. With extended care being the often skipped step, it is also the most critical in ensure lasting change!

If your adult child is currently in a residential treatment program and they are pushing for sober living, you can blow the whistle.  Going straight to sober living is a set-up for failure.  This is not an exercise in sobriety, but it is a lifestyle change that we often refer to as “recovery.”  If finances are a concern, it is more important than even to make sure you are not skipping steps during the first stint in treatment.

For questions or comments contact Joanna.