Does Inpatient Psychiatric Treatment Address Substance Abuse?
Inpatient psychiatric treatment programs employ an intensive treatment approach designed to address chronic medical and/or psychological conditions. As substance abuse disorders entail both a physical and psychological component, inpatient psychiatric treatment works especially well for treating chronic and long-term substance abuse problems. While not everyone struggling with substance abuse will require inpatient care, certain circumstances warrant the level of treatment available through inpatient psychiatric treatment programs.
Inpatient Psychiatric Treatment
An inpatient psychiatric treatment program operates within a controlled and highly supervised environment. As people in need of this form of treatment often struggle with a range of psychological and medical issues, these programs provide ongoing monitoring around the clock to ensure patient safety.
Inpatient psychiatric treatment offers the help of psychiatrists.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, these programs offer 24-hour access to a team of specialty providers, including:
- Psychiatrists
- Psychiatric social workers
- Psychologists
- Nurse practitioners
- Psychiatric nurses
Treatment interventions used can vary depending on each person’s condition. Interventions and accommodations provided include the following:
- Quiet rooms
- Intermittent restraints when needed
- Suicide watch
- Medication monitoring
- Treatment planning
- Psychotherapy
- Group therapy
- Drug education and counseling
Who Needs Inpatient Psychiatric Treatment?
Mental Health Issues
Chronic substance abuse causes widespread chemical imbalances to develop in the brain. Under these conditions, psychological disorders can quickly take shape.
People who struggle with depression and anxiety symptoms on top of a drug problem require treatment for both conditions in a coordinated fashion. Inpatient psychiatric treatment programs have extensive experience in treating co-occurring addiction and mental health problems.
Has a Drug Treatment History
Addiction takes an ever-increasing toll on a person’s health and mental well-being. The longer a person uses, the harder it becomes to stop using drugs.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, long-time drug users face an especially difficult challenge in stopping drug use, with many people going in and out of drug treatment programs with little progress to show for their efforts. At this point, addicts have developed a range of physical and psychological problems that require intensive treatment care.
Inpatient psychiatric treatment works to address the damaging effects of addiction using an integrated treatment approach. As chronic medical and/or psychological conditions tend to aggravate addiction behaviors, an integrated treatment approach treats a person’s overall condition as opposed to treating individual disorders separately.
Danger to Self or Others
It’s not uncommon for long-time addicts to reach a point where they become a danger to themselves and others. Long-term drug abuse not only strips away a person’s ability to control his or her impulses, but also destroys any ability to reason and make sound judgments.
Once drugs take top priority in a person’s life, nothing seems extreme when it comes to maintaining and protecting his or her drug habit. Inpatient psychiatric treatment works to stabilize a person’s mental and emotional state at the outset using medication therapies when needed. From there, patients undergo ongoing addiction treatment.
Overall, the level of care provided by inpatient psychiatric treatment most benefit people who’ve reached the end of their rope in terms of trying to overcome a substance abuse problem. Once other problems start to develop as a result of drug use, intensive treatment care becomes necessary.