understanding-recovery

Barriers

Many health professionals and other experts agree that our community’s current approach to recovery prevents people from getting the help they need. Under today’s acute care treatment model, alcohol and other drug problems are, for a variety of well-intentioned reasons, treated as a short-term crisis – not a chronic illness. The system’s emphasis on brief interventions of “treating and releasing,” instead of ongoing disease management, has created many barriers to successful recovery, including:

  • A lack of support after treatment. The short-term focus of today’s system means that after treatment, many are left with little of the continuing support and services they need to sustain recovery and rebuild their lives.
    • Following treatment, only one in five clients receives continuing care services, even though these are shown to help make recovery successful.

  • Prohibitive costs for people with alcohol or other drug problems, their families, their health insurance providers and their employers. This has kept many out of recovery and led providers and employers to cut back health insurance coverage for recovery services.

    • Among those who did not receive help but needed it in 2006, almost one-third (30.9 percent) cited no health coverage and could not afford cost.
    • Health care costs for employees with alcohol problems are about twice those of other employees.
    • Almost a quarter of a trillion dollars of the nation’s yearly health care bill is attributable to substance abuse and addiction.
  • Less successful outcomes for those in recovery because of the emphasis on short-term help. Many don’t get the length of treatment services they need or support from continuing care, increasing the likelihood of relapse. This contributes to a system-perpetuated stigma due to a “revolving door” of care with people regularly in and out of the system.
  • A negative image of recovery because of a perception that it does not work, because we see so many people cycling in and out of treatment, and too few examples of real people in healthy and sustained recovery. This may discourage people from seeking the help they need and lead others to believe that investing resources in recovery support is not worthwhile.