If you are planning for a rehab treatment program for someone in your family, it becomes important for you to understand the manner in which the program works first. It is true that different rehab centers will work out the program in different ways, but the overall pattern of the treatment remains the same. The main purpose of the program is the same too: to bring the patient completely out of the addiction situation. Hence, you must have a general idea of the manner in which the program works first, and then you can go ahead and look into the details.



Here we try to explain the general pattern of the rehab treatment program as implement in the US. It must be noted that the intention of the rehab treatment program in the US is to totally eliminate the dependency from the person's life.

There are actually four main phases of the rehab treatment program in most of the centers of the US. Let's look into each one of them, trying to understand what they are meant to achieve.

1.Intervention

The intervention part of the treatment is the first phase. Basically, intervention is when some other agency helps a patient to get into treatment and sustain it. This is actually done prior to getting the person's admission into the treatment center by the families and the friends of the patient, but in most cases the patient develops the denial again as soon as they are enrolled into the treatment center. It is important to bring these people out of their denial mainly because people who are not accepting the treatment procedure will also not respond to it.

Most rehab centers will use experts to counsel patients on the repercussions they might face if they stay with their addiction. There might also be a group educational program for several patients to emphasize the need of the treatment. In some cases, the families of the patients could be involved too, because they could be invaluable in helping them out of their denial. Psychiatric help might also be sought for people who have some mental issues coming in the way of their acceptance of the rehabilitation program.

2.Analysis and Diagnosis

Once the patient is ready for the addiction treatment, it becomes necessary to analyze their condition to check whether they can sustain the treatment or not. A battery of tests is performed on the patients in order to ensure this. Mainly it is checked whether the patient has any health complications that might come in the way of the addiction treatment. If the patient has some health problems, then a different procedure will need to be used for the rehab treatment. Similarly, psychiatric problems in the patients are analyzed too. Patients who have mental illnesses will be deemed as unfit to go through the normal detoxification process, which is the next stage of the rehab treatment, and will be put into a dual diagnosis program.

It is after the completion of the analysis and diagnosis stage that a proper treatment pattern for the patient is chalked out.

3.Detoxification

Literally, detoxification means removing the toxin from the body of the person. The toxin here refers to the addictive substance and its un-metabolized forms that might be present in the person's body. This process needs a lot of medical supervision and general care.

Usually, patients who are put through detoxification will first be isolated in the rehab center and then kept completely away from the substance in question. Within a day or two, depending on how addicted the person was to the substance, the person will develop withdrawal symptoms. Now, medical treatments will be provided in order to bring people out of this withdrawal.

The purpose of these medications will be to stop the cravings for the substance that the person gets and to stabilize the person's mental and physical condition. The person is said to be out of the detox treatment once the withdrawal has been dealt with.

4. Aftercare

The aftercare process refers to the part of the rehab treatment program that follows the detoxification. During this phase, the person is taught various techniques and therapies that can help them to keep the cravings for the substance at bay. This might include methods like Yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, acupressure, aromatherapy, magnetotherapy and several naturopathic methods. Even the families of the patients will be counseled at this stage on how to cope with the rehab treatment program and check that a relapse does not occur in the patient.