May
6
Depression Treatment and Drug Treatment
Filed Under Drug Rehab
Given the intimate relationship between depression and drug addiction, it should perhaps go without saying that depression treatment and drug treatment are often inextricably bound up with one another. And the relationship cuts both ways: As successful depression treatment is that which takes careful stock of its patients’ proclivity towards drug , so is successful drug treatment that which is grounded in a thorough evaluation of its patients’ mental health. Indeed, more often that not, beating drug addiction means beating the depression from which
it stems.
Unfortunately, many drug rehab programs are oblivious to the ties between drug addiction and depression. Indeed, many drug treatment centers employ a philosophy which fails to account for depression treatment at all; their programs are focused entirely on fostering the appearance of sobriety, without addressing the underlying issues that endangered their patients’ sobriety in the first place.
It should perhaps go without saying that such drug rehab programs are, by and large, tragically unsuccessful. Here’s the bottom line: A drug addict whose drug addiction grew out of clinical depression cannot expect to stay sober without intensive depression treatment. Period. Again, drug addiction and depression are both comprehensive diseases, and only comprehensive drug and depression treatment can help patients get where they want to go. Recovery, ultimately, is achieved only by virtue of broad vision and creative thinking: If drug rehab is going to work, it’s got to see drug addiction and drug addicts as they actually are.