Why Rimrock?
How To Select A Treatment Center
The National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal agency responsible for nearly all of the research on drug abuse, recently published the following principles which were developed and reflect what the research to date demonstrates about drug treatment. These program elements represent the state of the art treatment essentials, as we currently understand them. If you are researching an addiction treatment program for yourself, or trying to assist a loved one in accessing an addiction treatment program, you may want to ask very specific questions about these elements and whether their programs incorporate these principles to help you make the best choice possible. How Rimrock Foundation incorporates these principles of effective addiction treatment has been inserted in colored text for your convenience.
NIDA’s Thirteen Principles of Effective Drug Addiction Treatment
More than two decades of scientific research have yielded a set of fundamental principles that characterize effective drug abuse treatment. These 13 principles, which are detailed in NIDA’s new research-based guide, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-based Guide, are: No single treatment is appropriate for all individuals. Matching treatment settings, interventions, and services to each patient’s problems and needs is critical.
Individualized treatment is assured at Rimrock Foundation and patient treatment plans reflect this individualization. Because we treat the whole person, each patient’s treatment plan reflects the special issues that need to be addressed and which are unique to that individual.
Treatment needs to be readily available. Treatment applicants can be lost if treatment is not immediately available or readily accessible.
We do not believe in waiting lists at Rimrock Foundation particularly for our substance/chemical addicted patients.
Effective addiction treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug use. Addiction treatment must address the individual’s drug use and associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.
At Rimrock Foundation, we believe addiction is rarely caused by one factor alone—rather, addiction is usually the result of the interaction of multiple issues/problems combined with the use of a psychoactive substance. Thus, the multiple causes/issues must all be addressed during the treatment stay.
Addiction treatment needs to be flexible and to provide ongoing assessments of patient needs, which may change during the course of addiction treatment.
Every five days, our team of professionals meet to review each inpatients progress and to revise/update the treatment plan to assure it is meeting the needs of the patient.
Remaining in addiction treatment for an adequate period of time is critical for addiction treatment effectiveness. The time depends on an individual’s needs. For most patients, the threshold of significant improvement is reached at about 3 months in addiction treatment. Additional addiction treatment can produce further progress. Programs should include strategies to prevent patients from leaving addiction treatment prematurely.
In today’s managed care environment, there is great pressure to reduce lengths of stay and in some cases, to deny patients access to the level of care they need. At Rimrock Foundation, we believe we are the patient’s advocate and that our job is to assert the patient’s needs to managed care entities. We employ utilization review staff who do nothing but communicate with third party payers to secure the benefits and stays to which the patient is entitled. We also believe that whether the patient is an inpatient or is in our intensive outpatient program, he/she should have a minimum of three months of aftercare and relapse prevention. To this end, we contract with providers outside our community to provide this service to patients returning to their home community.
Individual and/or group counseling and other behavioral therapies are critical components of effective treatment for addiction. In therapy, patients address motivation, build skills to resist drug use, replace drug-using activities with constructive and rewarding nondrug-using activities, and improve problem-solving abilities. Behavioral therapy also facilitates interpersonal relationships.
We believe that group therapy is the primary modality most effective for addiction treatment! So strong is our belief in this modality, we commit over twelve hours each week in our inpatient program to this modality. Individual therapy is provided a minimum of once a week and other therapeutic modalities include cognitive behavioral therapy, refusal skill training and many other adjunctive behavioral therapies. We are, in every respect, a therapy-intensive program.
Medications are an important element of addiction treatment for many patients, especially when combined with counseling and other behavioral therapies. Methadone and levo-alpha-acetylmethadol (LAAM) help persons addicted to opiates stabilize their lives and reduce their drug use. Naltrexone is effective for some opiate addicts and some patients with co-occurring alcohol dependence. Nicotine patches or gum, or an oral medication, such as bupropion, can help persons addicted to nicotine.
We agree and to this end, we have two physicians who are addictionologists and one of whom is also a psychiatrist with many years of experience in addiction treatment. Many patients can benefit from new anti-craving medication interventions such as Naltrexone.
Addicted or drug-abusing individuals with coexisting mental disorders should have both disorders treated in an integrated way. Because these disorders often occur in the same individual, patients presenting for one condition should be assessed and treated for the other.
At Rimrock, this principle means that co-occurring diagnoses will be treated concurrently. A high percentage of patients with substance addiction also have a mood disorder such as depression, anxiety, etc. We have recognized the need for quality, concurrent treatment for co-occurring disorders since the early 1980′s and employ a psychologist and a psychiatrist for the purpose of identifying mental health problems and treating them at the same time we are addressing the patients’ addiction.
Medical detoxification is only the first stage of addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long-term drug use. Medical detoxification manages the acute physical symptoms of withdrawal. For some individuals it is a precursor to effective drug addiction treatment.
We agree and to this end, we have two physicians who are addictionologists and one of whom is also a psychiatrist with many years of experience in addiction treatment. Many patients can benefit from new anti-craving medication interventions such as Naltrexone.
Addiction treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective. Sanctions or enticements in the family, employment setting, or criminal justice system can significantly increase treatment entry, retention, and success.
We agree, and our experiences support these findings.
Possible drug use during addiction treatment must be monitored continuously. Monitoring a patient’s drug and alcohol use during treatment, such as through urinalysis, can help the patient withstand urges to use drugs. Such monitoring also can provide early evidence of drug use so that addiction treatment can be adjusted.
Random drug screening is conducted on all patients who are being treated in our outpatient programs. Screening is also done on inpatients when there is cause to believe the patient may have accessed some substances. Since we do not permit patient passes, however, we seldom find that our inpatients have problems with substance use while in our program.
Addiction treatment programs should provide assessment for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and counseling to help patients modify or change behaviors that place them or others at risk of infection. Counseling can help patients avoid high-risk behavior and help people who are already infected manage their illness.
At Rimrock Foundation, each patient is medically evaluated for infectious diseases. We also maintain an active commitment to our Infection Control Program.
Recovery from drug addiction can be a long-term process and frequently requires multiple episodes of treatment. As with other chronic illnesses, relapses to drug use can occur during or after successful treatment episodes. Participation in self-help support programs during and following treatment often helps maintain abstinence.
Addiction is a chronic, relapse-prone disease which requires life-time management. At Rimrock Foundation, in addition to relapse prevention training in our continuing care program, refusal skill training, etc. we introduce our patients to the self-help programs during the treatment process because we believe they are crucial to recovery.
