When you enroll in an addiction treatment program, you’ll tap into a team of professionals who want you to get better. Rather than working through the issues alone, you’ll have a whole group of people who are rooting for you, working with you, and showing you the steps you can take to leave drugs behind for good.
While the exact composition of your treatment team might vary from facility to facility, these are a few of the professionals that typically work in the treatment industry. Learning more about who they are and what they do could convince you to enroll in your own treatment program, so you can make strides toward your own intense recovery.
President or Chief Executive
You might not ever meet this person, as it’s unlikely that your day-to-day treatment will be handled by someone who is in charge of the entire facility. However, this person has a vital role to play in your recovery.
In any industry, a chief officer is vital. As an article in the Harvard Business Review puts it, chief officers set the tone for the entire organization, developing a vision for what the company should do, and providing the leadership that ensures that everyone in the company knows what to do in order to meet those goals.
In a rehab facility, a president might make decisions involving the size of the staff, the amenities the program might offer, the fees the facility might charge, and the types of therapy the facility should stress in marketing materials. This work might trickle down to your care, as the leadership this person provides helps your treatment team know what to emphasize when they’re working with you.
Financial Officers
People who hold this job title are concerned with issues involving money. They might provide insight to the president on the amount of money the organization has, and they might advise the president if the organization should spend money on upgrades or innovative equipment. But this person might also work directly with you.
For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggests that about 7.1 million people had brand-new access to health insurance coverage for addiction in the past few years, due to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Someone who works as a financial officer might help you to understand how your benefits work, and that could be a great help to you if you’ve never had insurance before and aren’t certain what you should do in order to take advantage of your coverage.
A financial officer might also help to pull together scholarship programs or payment programs for you if you’re required to pay some of the fees for your care and you’re unsure how to do that.
While the people in the administration offices can be a great help to you and your family, the bulk of the work of recovery will happen in your interactions with therapists. These are the people who pull together your treatment plans, help you to build up new skills, and assist you in understanding the benefits that sobriety can bring.
According to the American Mental Health Counselors Association, these professionals can offer all sorts of services, including:
- Assessments
- Psychotherapy
- Solution-focused therapy
- Psychoeducational programs
- Crisis management
Some or all of these skills might be put to use in your recovery program.
While a therapist can use counseling to help you build up skills, you might need additional help in order to fully recover from an addiction issue. For example, the National Alliance on Mental Illness suggests that about 37 percent of people who are addicted to alcohol and 53 percent of those addicted to drugs have at least one serious mental illness. These underlying illnesses can make a true recovery more challenging, as the drug use might seem like the best way to keep a mental illness at bay. If you’ve been using drugs as a coping mechanism, you’ll need help in order to pull together new plans.A psychiatrist can provide that help. These professionals can use assessments in order to diagnose a mental illness, and their medical licenses allow them to prescribe medications that can correct brain imbalance issues. With their help, you could learn how to control your mental illness without illicit drugs, and the therapies they use could help to ensure that your recovery is as painless as it can possibly be.Some facilities have a prescribing psychiatrist on site, providing patients with around-the-clock help for the issues they’re facing. But according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, some facilities have in-depth contracts with local psychiatrists. Those professionals provide regular clinic hours, but they might have independent practices in the community.
The work that therapists and psychiatrists do can be enhanced and strengthened by the work done by social workers. These professionals can help you to understand how your addiction fits into the larger picture of your community, and they might help you to develop sophisticated plans you can use in order to fit back in when your addiction treatment is at an end.For example, you might need support in finding stable, secure housing when your addiction care is complete. A social worker might help you to enroll in community programs that provide subsidized housing, or a social worker might help you to find a sober living community that can help to buffer your return to the home in which you once used drugs.A social worker might also help you to build up the skills you’ll need in order to live an independent, sober lifestyle. In skill-building sessions, you might brush up on:
- Effective communication strategies
- Workplace skills
- Parenting techniques
- Budgeting and financial planning
Since social workers provide such valuable help, it’s not surprising that there are so many of them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were more than 600,000 of these professionals at work in the United States in 2012. Many of them work in the addiction treatment field.
Nurses
While addictions can cause emotional changes, they can also alter your body. And sometimes the changes drugs can bring cause illnesses that require medical treatment.
For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse suggests that cocaine can cause a plethora of medical disorders, including bowel gangrene and severe irritation of the nasal passages. While very serious medical problems are best dealt with in a hospital, some addiction treatment facilities provide on-site nurses who can help with ongoing care.
A nurse in an addiction treatment facility might administer medications, do routine health checks, assist with wound cleaning, and assess overall healing. That nurse might report the results of regular testing to a doctor, who pulls together treatment programs and assists with overall health.
Technicians
Addiction treatment facilities that offer around-the-clock care might employ a cadre of technicians who assist with the day-to-day operations of the facility. They might hand out food at mealtimes, clean the hallways, enforce the rules, and otherwise keep the facility running.
They’re far from background players, however. Sometimes these technicians have their own stories about addiction recovery to share with you, and you might find that their support and understanding are vital to your own recovery. They might even lead your support group meetings, giving you extra knowledge about what addiction is and what you’ll need to do to combat it.
Meet the Staff
If you’re intrigued about who might be available to help you recover from an addiction problem, we’d like to help. Just call the number at the top of the page, and our admissions coordinators can answer any questions you have about addiction care and recovery. We’re available to help any time, so please call.
Read our general and most popular articles
- Diaetoxil
- Nuubu
- Regener 8
- CBD Vital
- Nordic Oil
- Potencialex
- Diaetostat
- Figur Kapseln
- Viscerex
- Prostaphytol
- Nutra Prosta
- Nutra Flex
- Diaetolin
- Matcha Slim
- Hepafar Forte
- Derila Kissen
- Exodermin
- HHC
- HHC Vape
- KU2 Cosmetics Hyaluronsäure Serum
- Liba Capsules
- KetoXplode
- Green Gummies
- Liver Ignite
- Ketoxboom Fruchtgummis
- Viagra Alternative
- Gundry MD Energy Renew
- ProDentim
- Phentermine Over The Counter
David W. Newton is a board certified pharmacist and also has been a board member for boards of examiners for the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy since 1983. His areas of expertise are primarily pharmaceuticals as well as cannabinoids. You can read an article about his expertise in CBD on the National Library of Medicine.
Reviewed by: Kim Chin and Marian Newton