Better rehab services – Addiction research at work

Fact: Addiction treatment success rates are often lower than 20% ! Addiction research shows that quarterly follow-ups may help us improve success by offering continuous support and recognizing problems earlier.

Addiction is a chronic disease

What do you do when you are sick? Typically, you would go to the doctor, get some treatment and expect a quick fix.  What would you do if you suffered from an addiction?  Most healthcare and insurance companies would expect you to do the same – get a quick treatment and be cured!

The thing is that addiction is much more similar to many chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension. The compliance rates and follow-through with treatment for these conditions is fairly low. For example, only 27% of patients with high blood pressure have their hypertension under control and only 46% of diabetics have their diabetes effectively managed.  For these kinds of conditions, short term interventions (less than 3 months) have produced positive findings only 38% of the time while long term ones (12 months or more) produced success rates as high as 100%. Still, addiction treatment rarely extends past a few months.

Today’s rehab services

More than half of patients entering addiction treatment are there for their 3^rd, 4^th,  or 5^th treatment episode. Still, most patients who leave treatment return to use within 30-90 days of their release. This use is associated with 6-11 times the risk of dying!!!