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Treatment Center Options

Whether you are battling an eating disorder, detoxifying after abusing drugs or alcohol, or coping with a mental illness, treatment centers are the place to find support and guidance. But it is important to evaluate the different types of treatment centers and choose the one that will best meet your individual needs. Living arrangements, price and therapeutic methodology should all factor into this decision.

  1. Residential Versus Outpatient

    • Conquering an addiction or illness requires a huge time commitment and a temporary escape from distractions. A residential, or inpatient, facility gives you the chance to focus solely on recuperating without having to worry about day-to-day minutiae. Because you live at the treatment facility, there is little concern about transportation, grocery shopping, stress from work and so on. Patients in a residential treatment facility are usually monitored by the staff at all hours, so any indication of relapse or mental instability is dealt with immediately. Patients at residential facilities tend to follow a very rigid schedule that involves multiple counseling sessions throughout the day.

      If you have prior commitments that cannot be broken, such as attending school or acting as the sole caretaker for a child, outpatient facilities allow you to attend counseling sessions during the day and then go home after the meetings. If the center is not close to your house, this can be a huge time commitment because you must travel to the facility and then return home on a regular basis. Also, you might be subject to the same stress factors experienced prior to treatment, so completing an outpatient program can take a lot of willpower. However, the benefit is that an outpatient program can teach you how to deal with your addiction or illness in the real world rather than how to cope only in an isolated situation.

    The Price of Treatment

    • According to a fact sheet published by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, residential facilities expenses include daily room and board, multiple counseling sessions and round-the-clock staffing. These numbers can add up very quickly, and the facility passes these costs along to the patient. An economical treatment program like the one at the 10 Acre Ranch Detox & Recovery Center in Riverside, California, costs $4500 per month; spending 30 days at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage costs $26,000. Some insurance companies help to pay the cost of a residential treatment facility, but often have limits on how much they will pay and for how long.

      Outpatient treatment requires much less of a financial commitment because the patient lives at home, eats her own food, and usually attends fewer counseling sessions. For example, an outpatient program at that same Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage costs just $5000 for eight weeks of treatment. For a patient who is receiving little or no assistance from an insurance company and who is not at risk of causing personal injury, outpatient treatment is a much more affordable option.

    Method of Treatment

    • For each addiction or illness, treatment comes in a number of different forms. For example, a patient addicted to opiates may find the Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) to be the most effective option. Based on a fact sheet released by the Office of National Drug Control Policy in April 2000, one-fifth of the nation's heroin addicts are involved in MMT. Other opiate addicts have used a controversial form of rapid detoxification known as the Waismann Method, and still others have found relief from their addiction with the help of a behavioral therapy called contingency management. It's important to evaluate each program because if all your needs are not met through the treatment regimen you choose, you are at risk of a relapse.

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