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Ten years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, four putative drug addiction experts suggested that it was time to treat alcohol and drug addiction as a chronic disease not as a social disorder, much like we treat heart disease and diabetes. Little has been done to move toward their proposed model , some have argued, and drug rehab suffers accordingly in their opinion. Drug rehab is suffering; it's true. More often than not, patients relapse after rehab. But doing more of the same over a longer period of time, the essence of the new medical model, does not guarantee success. As proof of the failure to integrate treatment into health care they point to a comment made by a member of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Drug Control Strategy 2010: "?addiction treatment is the only specialty in medicine that is not an integral part of the rest of the healthcare system. There is a great divide between addiction treatment programs and mainstream health care." The proposed shift in the treatment model was due I believe as much to the failure of our current approach to drug rehab as it was to expectations the change would lead to a more effective approach. The current system of treating drug and alcohol addiction doesn't t work. There's no doubt. Georgia drug rehab programs, for example, graduate thousands each year but the majority of them relapse soon after being treated. Proponents of the new system contend that drug rehab failures are due to the short shrift given to addicts in rehab. Most programs offer a quick detox and a short stint in rehab, the equivalent of a lick and a promise. A change will do us good they figure. But is that really true? Is there any evidence to back up their assertions? By my reckoning, the current system has already gravitated toward the new medical model they've proposed. Drug rehab programs are based on the notion that drug addiction is a disease and most programs treat addiction as an illness. To be fair, there is one difference between the medical model as it's now practiced and as it would be practiced if proponents have their way. Under a revamped system drug rehab will last indefinitely. An addict will be treated until he recovers. And here's where the finger pointing and name calling comes into play. Proponents accuse the Insurance companies of impeding progress on this issue. They won't pay for the extra time and care needed to effectively implement a full medical model. In their defense, the companies object to the costs which will be extreme. I side with the insurance companies in this argument. No proof exists that patients would ever recover from their addiction using a medical model. They haven't fared well in the more limited versions now extant. Why should we expect this to change if the only real change in our treatment of addiction is more of the same? Frankly, the medical model has not been effective in treating other chronic ailments such as heart disease and diabetes. Each has risen to epidemic levels under a system that advocates symptom management rather than prevention or alternative care. Our population suffers from too much disease as it is. Categorizing addiction as a disease, an unproven theory, won't reduce addiction in our society. Instead it will make addicts mere wards to the health care establishment who, by the way, stand to gain financially if such a model is adopted. Effective drug rehab programs already exist. We should model all rehab on these rather than burden our health care system with the extraordinary costs a new system would generate, particularly since no proof exists that the new system would work any better.
Article Source: http://www.largedirectory.info
This article was written by Fritz Alders, Managing Partner of Georgia Alliance, , a free Georgia drug rehabilitation helpline.
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