What helps people stay in treatment?
Getting treated for an addiction is hard work. It inevitably involves a slew of difficult challenges – logistical, financial and personal. Patients may find it hard to get time off from their jobs. They may have trouble getting transportation. They are likely to be called upon to explore personal or family issues that are painful. In addition to the logistical, social, and interpersonal issues, withdrawing from drugs is physically and emotionally challenging. The process necessarily forces the individual addict to deal with a myriad of uncomfortable, and often painful, experiences such that they may come to believe that he or she can not make it – or that it’s even desirable to get off drugs. Replacement therapies have proven very helpful in many people’s efforts to stick with their recovery effort. Addiction specialists have learned a great deal about how these medications can make the difference in recovery; scientists are enthusiastically testing new replacement therapies for other
Since successful outcomes often depend upon retaining the person long enough to gain the full benefits of treatment, strategies for keeping an individual in the program are critical. Whether a patient stays or not in treatment depends on factors associated with both the individual and the program. Individual factors related to engagement and retention include motivation to change drug-using behavior, degree of support from family and friends, and whether there is pressure to stay in treatment from the criminal justice system, child protection services, employers or the family.
