What Makes a Rehab Clinic Effective?

Anecdotal evidence on rehab failures and substance abusers who suffer multiple relapses suggests that it may be easier to catalog the elements that make a rehab clinic ineffective rather than defining the features that lead to effective rehab and recovery from substance addiction. Successful rehab stories are often obscured by reported rehab failures. Ultimately, the features that comprise an effective rehab clinic can be derived from stories of both rehab successes and failures. Those features can be distilled into five categories.

Getting Help from a Rehab Clinic

• Effective rehab clinics understand the challenges posed by substance addiction. Clinics that profess to be able to “cure” an addiction in some specific period of time are overselling their abilities. Addiction recovery is often a lifelong process. A clinic’s rehab and recovery program needs to consider the life challenges that an addict will face. The program should be organized as a starting point to teach addicts how to handle those challenges and to lay the groundwork for continuing education.

• Effective rehab clinics offer a tailored rehab program for each addict’s individual problems. Clinics that utilize a one-size-fits-all or an outmoded approach will be less effective than those that tailor their treatment to each addict or that employ modern treatment programs. No single rehab clinic can offer the best rehab program for every addict and every addiction problem. An addict may need to review multiple clinics to find the best fit for his specific situation and problems. Clinics that profess to be all things to all people will rarely be the best fit.

• An addict’s rehab will be ineffective if the addict approaches it with the wrong attitude.  Starting a rehab program with an expectation that it will fail more often than not leads to rehab failure. Clinics that do not address an addict’s attitude at the start of a rehab program may miss a crucial step in assuring rehab success. Even the best and most appropriate clinic for a specific addiction problem will not be able to help an addict who does not want to be helped.

• Effective rehab programs devote as much time as is necessary to an addict’s problem. Programs that accelerate or shorten the amount of time that an addict is in rehab will frequently set the addict up for failure. Recovering from an addiction disease takes time. Rehab programs that establish artificial time limitations often fail because they overlook unique and individual challenges that are often not apparent until many days or weeks into the addict’s individual rehab and recovery.

• Effective rehab programs confirm that an addict has the right support systems to continue his recovery after he is discharged from the clinic. Addicts who return to their old living environments often face the same challenges and triggers in those environments that first led them into their addictions. Rehab clinics that do not provide or recommend post-discharge support services will shortchange their patients and leave them without one of the more critical components of a successful long-term recovery.  

Rehabilitation and recovery from addiction is never an easy process. Rehab clinics can be a great resource within that process if they offer the right program for an addict’s specific problems.

If you have questions about rehab clinics and their programs or about whether any specific program is the best match for your situation, please contact the Hired Power staff and counselors at 800-910-9299. We can suggest many alternatives to help you find the best rehab program for your particular needs and situation.