why treatment interventions with drug clients are cost effective

By janice

The major modalities for substance abuse, like methadone maintenance, outpatient programs, therapeutic communities and civil commitment treatments ordered by the criminal justice systems, have all been reported to be successful by most criteria. All the respective treatment programs are considered drug intervention treatments and have proven to be cost effective.

Goal oriented, flexible policies and philosophy programs produce better results than inflexible programs, especially when the adopted combinations of treatment components, which are suited to individual substance abusers, deal with their specific needs and problems. The drug clients lengths of time in a rehab facility is highly correlated with positive outcomes, but the dropout rate is high for most modalities. Clients entering treatment under either a family intervention or the intervention of legal coercion do as well by most outcome criteria as clients who voluntarily check themselves into a treatment facility.

The evidence on treatment effectiveness suggests that local and state social policy to expand treatment capacities and increased attention to above adequate implementation of treatment programs. The adverse social consequences of substance abuse have led to allocation of substantial public resources for drug treatments. Governmental policies are seeking to contain the spread of drug use to adolescent and to break the link between criminal behavior and illicit drug use in order to reduce the overall crime rate.

The traditional approach by the criminal justice system have not achieved much success with curbing or stopping drug use. But, it’s been proven that by drug intervention with treatments as mentioned above, has been effective and will reduce the amount of crime cause by individuals who are addicts, which in turn reduces the cost incurred by these crimes such as tax-payers money to pay for the defendants lawyers, cost incurred while in jail, cost incurred while in prison after a conviction.

As the substance abuse treatment field continues to evolve and the methodologies of treatment improve, it is important to continue examining the cost-effectiveness of these treatments.