Sending your loved one's for addiction treatment

Addiction is a family disease. Most of the time family kills lot of  time in taking decision about long term in-house treatment. Unlike other countries in India family can take decision  to admit addicts & mentally ill people by the help of law. If the patients can not take rational & helpful decisions for themselves family can take decision for them with the help of law. So if you are sending your loved once to rehab you should be aware about following things:

1. The stay in rehab will not be comfortable for both the patient & his family.

2. Patient may try some tricks to come out of rehab by giving false reasons like: food or hygiene etc. It is always good to see the place & discuss the facilities, treatment plan with the people in the centre.

3. Have trust: You need to have a trust on people who are there in rehabilitation centre, You must take regular feedback from people over there about patient.

4. Understand the process of treatment: If there is a family meetings or open sessions put more efforts to understand that how this can help your loved once.

5. Give all the possible information: Legal cases, health complications, behavioural abnormalities etc all information give in detail.

6. Do not send things like extra medications, gold chains etc. because patient may misuse them.

7. Stop enabling: Do not become obsessive or over anxious about the client even if he is not cooperating for therapy he is at least maintaining the abstinence.

8. discuss all the do's & don'ts with counsellor before discharge

9. Discuss the post discharge plan with therapists & take dates for follow up.

10. have a back up plan: Patient may relapse after the treatment also be aware about the fact & set a realistic back up plan. i.e. what you should do if he/she goes back to addiction. etc.

Remember Big Journey starts with small steps ............

Sheetal Bidkar