Twin Rivers Addiction Recovery and Self Development Centre

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) May 2, 2011 -- WHY ARE 28 DAY PROGRAMMES A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY!
There is a trend growing in Europe and other continents promoting 28 day programmes as a viable option for addiction treatment-RUBBISH!
From what I can gather there appears to be two main reasons for marketing 28 day programmes outside of the USA;
1.Facilities can charge inflated fees allowing clients to believe that what they will receive in 28 days equates to other longer term programmes. In a ‘quick fix society’ this is direct abuse utilizing major addiction based traits-manipulation and deceit!

2.28 days is all some insurance companies or medical aid schemes will pay and some centres have picked up on this and are taking full advantage by making extravagant claims about the programmes content suggesting that all will be much better after 4 weeks!

28 days may be a suitable period for someone who has attended residential care on long term recently and had relapsed and preferably this would take place at the same treatment centre that would still have the client’s records on file. This should also only take place following a full assessment and motivational check.

Let’s imagine a client who is going into treatment for the first time. The client is naturally controlling many different feelings and perhaps trying to create a reasonably good impression in an attempt to avoid reality and being challenged which, let’s face it is a common scenario at this point of recovery and for some clients never changes and so remain in a cloud of denial and deception for many years to come. The client meets their focal counsellor for the first time and may experience anything from 4-12 individual counselling sessions over the 28 day period. How can a counsellor seriously build up a therapeutic alliance with the client in such a short time? Rejection is a large part of an addicts or alcoholics personal history and so some clients may experience a sense of rejection again linked directly with the therapist. Some clients may choose to deliberately sabotage the therapeutic alliance by not cooperating as they know that they are only going to see the counsellor for a few sessions. So if you mix the natural control/denial of feelings and the desperation of feeling like a ‘pass the parcel’ without enough music to complete the exercise, what are you left with. Probably high levels of compliance will kick in underpinned with the knowledge that there is only a few days to freedom and imminent relapse which is highly attractive and worth ‘protecting’. I worked with a client once who experienced a 28 day programme followed by another 28 days, as recommended by the therapist which the client was not expecting at all. Now you are left with an angry client focussed on revenge, anger and resentments (full blown old behaviour), what addict is graciously going to accept extended treatment in a humble fashion. The psychology that the client attended treatment for 56 days does not apply as the client originally expected only 28 days, behaved accordingly and feels conned promoting preoccupation for the next 28 days leaving the client having experienced a total of 56 days of addiction based thoughts and feelings with probably no advancement regarding recovery and with more resentments than they came in with and the perfect excuse to continue hating family, the world and themselves leading quickly to relapse.

I am aware of a 28 day programme in London that involves no individual counselling at all, only lengthy group therapy sessions. Individual therapy is an extremely important element of a recovery programme as well as group therapy. The kind of emotional ground that can be addressed in individual therapy can differ largely to what can be discussed in group therapy. Sure, some clients ‘work’ better and learn more about themselves in group therapy but this does not apply to all recovering people. A more common scenario would be for a client to take a topic to a certain ‘safe’ level in group therapy and in to greater depth in the privacy of an individual and confidential counselling session. Group therapy is a perfect testing ground for clients to see how their peers and the group facilitator respond to them before taking any disclosures further either in the group or in individual therapy.

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