De-Addiction Through Behavioural Treatment

Don’t we so often hear the adage: “Old habits die hard”? It underlines certain behavioural pattern that takes shape over a period of time. As good habits stand a person in good stead, the bad ones like drug addiction causes untold misery. Changing bad habits through behavioural treatment helps in effective de-addiction.

Root of problem

What makes behavioural treatment such an important component of a de-addiction exercise is that it hits at the root of the problem. No habit let alone the addiction to drugs can be easily jettisoned overnight. It calls for a great deal of patience and painstaking efforts by both the professionals and patients to finally say goodbye to it.

Lifestyle skills

There is, in fact, always a fear of the patient returning to his or her old ways. The behavioural treatment is a great way of involving a drug addict in the de-addiction exercise. This involvement ensures that patients take the initiative and change attitudes and behaviours that propel them to drug abuse. The change is primarily affected through skills that help patients lead a healthy life post addiction and for the rest of the life.


Effective medication

One important benefit of behavioural treatment is that it makes medicines work better and increases the chances of patients continuing with it for a longer period of time. There have been numerous cases wherein the patients become irregular with their medicines once they have completed the de-addiction course.

Treatment methods

There are many ways in which behavioural treatment is given to an addicted person:

Behavioural treatment clinic: For a large number of patients the outpatient behavioural clinics are centres of great hope. These clinics regularly offer a diverse range of treatment aimed at impacting the behaviour of patients in a positive way. The basic mode of treatment in these clinics is through group counselling and other collective or interactive methods.

Types of treatment

Some behavioural clinics also offer other forms of treatments, which make a meaningful and positive impact on an individual victim of drug abuse. The treatment can be broadly categorised into three different segments. These are: Cognitive behavioural treatment – Multifaceted family treatment – Interactive motivational treatment.

De-Addiction Through Behavioural Treatment first appeared in http://www.cadabams.org