Addiction Treatment; What are the Right Elements?

It is extremely important for those struggling with addiction to get the right help right away. Early intervention with the right medical and mental assessments and treatment can make a dramatic difference between recovery and continued addiction. When reviewing clinical outcome studies data relating to all mental health diseases it is evident that making the right diagnosis and establish the right modalities of treatment inclusive of pharmacological therapy with the appropriate dose coupled with the right mental health counseling will yield the best results. Also numerous mental health studies show that treating patients with counseling alone will yield a certain level of success. When treating with pharmacological therapy alone a certain level of success is achieved. But when combining these two treatment modalities there is a synergistic outcome that is greater in combination than either treatment modality used alone can achieve. Also when including alternative therapies for addiction treatment (i.e. acupuncture, physical exercise etc.) all these elements combined can help increase a positive clinical outcome. One final note on some interesting data that is very revealing when dealing with success rates with patients with any mental health disease in which addiction treatment would obviously be included. That all the right components of diagnosis and treatment must be made and implemented within the first six weeks of treatment and if this is not accomplished the addiction treatment plan is doomed to fail.

Addiction treatment needs to be based on each individual’s needs. Even though the disease of addiction usually presents with many of the same commonalities from person to person, the causes for the disease of addiction are many and varied and based on the individual’s needs so should the addiction treatment.