Rehabilitation and ideal Rehab features

Addiction to a substance (alcohol, drugs) and other compulsive disorders such as gambling can wreak havoc on the person’s life. It affects all areas of the person – physical, mental, social (relationships), career, finance and spiritual.

Therefore any treatment needs to be holistic – to address all the affected areas. Any aspect that is overlooked may turn out to be a major trigger for relapse.

Therefore, ‘inpatient treatment’ is most beneficial. I call it ‘rehabilitation’.

Rehabilitation – “having someone have normal life again”, “make someone or something respected again”, “make something suitable for use again” – these definitions adequately indicate the objective of a rehabilitation centre for addictions.

A good treatment centre is a ‘rehab’. It helps in making an addict healthy, useful, independent and productive.

A rehab should have all the tools required to help “someone have a normal life again”. In my view, a rehab must have:

• Competent medical and psychiatric inputs

• Physical exercise (Yoga is a good option), as part of the routine

• Empathetic and experienced counselors (at least a few who are themselves in recovery, to lend a critical element of identification)

• A clinical psychologist as a resource (to diagnose potential psychiatric issues)

• Emphasis on family support

• A spiritual element (such as meditation)

• Strict protocols for therapy

• High ethical standards – top to bottom

There is no teacher like experience. If a rehab aims to incorporate at least these elements, each will be continually refined and evolved in synergy, to offer the better services for the addicts, so that they are optimally and fruitfully ‘rehabilitated’.