ASAM (American Society of Addiction Medicine) Level 3.5 Clinically Managed Residential – High Intensity for Adults: 24/7 supportive care with access to addiction treatment professionals such as addiction counselors, mental health professionals, medical team including nurses and physician.
Assessment: Addiction assessment is used to determine the prevalence of a chemical dependency in a client or the extent of one's addiction, considering sociological, psychological, physical, and family factors. A professional evaluation of a person’s overall medical history, substance use history, current health status, and overall physical and mental health conditions. This is intended to give a professional a better insight into creating a treatment plan for the client.
Behavior Therapy: Seeks to identify and help change potentially self-destructive or unhealthy behaviors. It functions on the idea that all behaviors are learned and that unhealthy behaviors can be changed.
Case Management: Case management services mean those activities provided to assist and support individuals in gaining access to needed medical, social, educational and other services essential to meeting basic human needs. Case Managers are assigned to each client.
Chemical Dependency: The repeated, uncontrollable use of alcohol and/or drugs in a way that threatens the individual's physical and mental health and well-being as well as the physical safety and emotional well-being of those around her.
Clinical: Relating to the observation and treatment of actual patients rather than theoretical or laboratory studies.
Clinical Evaluation: The assessment of a client to determine frequency, intensity and duration of use along with potential co-occurring disorders and mental/behavioral issues.
Cognitive Therapy: A type of psychotherapy in which negative patterns of thought about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter unwanted behavior patterns or treat mood disorders such as depression
Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT): A form of psychotherapy that integrates theories of cognition and learning with treatment techniques derived from cognitive therapy and behavior therapy. It helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions.
Continuing Care: Ongoing care of patients suffering from chronic incapacitating illness or disease. Understanding substance use disorder to be a chronic illness, it requires continuing care and ongoing recovery management rather than acute care or treatment delivered in isolated episodes.
Co-occurring Disorders: A co-occurring disorder happens when an individual struggles with both a substance use disorder and an untreated mental illness. Mental illness and substance abuse often feed off of each other in an unrelenting cycle.
Coping Strategies: The specific efforts, both behavioral & psychological, utilized to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize the effects of stressful events. They include problem solving strategies and emotion focused strategies to regulate the emotional consequences of stressful or potentially stressful events.
Detoxification or Detox: The medical process focused on treating the physical effects of withdrawal from substance use and comfortably achieving metabolic stabilization. Detoxification is not always required before entering a residential treatment program.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): A modified form of CBT. Both therapies allow people to better understand and manage their thoughts and behaviors. DBT focuses more on managing emotions and interpersonal relationships. The four modules of psychological and emotional function that DBT focuses on include: Mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance and emotion regulation. Traditionally, skill development in these four modules is approached in a systematic and gradual manner in both individual and group therapy.
Empowerment: The process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life. Enhancing the capacity to make choices that lead to desired actions and outcomes.
Enabling: According to the American Psychological Association, it refers to patterns within close relationships that support any harmful or problematic behavior and make it easier for that behavior to continue.
Evidence-Based Practices: Practices, or treatments that are backed by scientific evidence. Meaning, studies have been conducted and extensive research has been documented on a particular treatment, and it has proven to be successful.
Individual Treatment Plan: Includes client’s personal information, psychological history and demographics, a diagnosis of the current problem, high-priority treatment goals, measurable objectives and a timeline for treatment progress.
Integrated Treatment Programs: Treatment programs that work to treat substance use disorder alongside other co-occurring mental, physical, emotional or social considerations, recognizing how the presence of each can be a risk factor for relapse to either. The term is most often used to indicate the combination of addiction treatment services with mental health treatment services.
Intervention: An orchestrated attempt by one or more people to get someone to seek professional help with an addiction. An intervention is required when a person’s substance abuse has begun to disrupt the ability to function normally on a daily basis. Following are some signs that it may be time to seek treatment:
- Inability to keep up with daily work, school, and other responsibilities due to substance use
- Diminished interest in activities that used to be enjoyed
- Extensive time and resources spent seeking the substance
- Relationship damage due to substance use
- Inability to stop using the substance even in light of negative consequences
- Strong cravings for the substance
- Withdrawal symptoms that occur if substance use is stopped
Life Skills: Include critical and creative thinking, decision-making, effective communication, as well as tools for developing healthy relationships and positive self-concepts. Life skills help people make responsible and informed choices and can promote healthy lifestyles as well as attainable career goals.
MAT – Medically Assisted Treatment: The use of medications in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies, which can be effective in the treatment of opioid use disorders (OUD) and can help some people to sustain recovery. Not intended for prolonged use.
Mental Illness: Health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior, or a combination of these. Mental illnesses are associated with anxiety, distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. Mental illness is common.
Mill Pond – The pool of water, typically created by a milldam that provides the power to make the wheel of a mill turn: The sea that day was like a millpond (very calm).
Modality: The way or mode in which something exists or is done. In the medical field it is the application of a therapeutic agent. It is also expected that the use of a modality will motivate a physiologic response or change.
Motivational Interviewing (MI): A counseling method that helps people resolve uncertain feelings and insecurities to find the internal motivation they need to change their behavior. It is a practical, empathetic, and short-term process that takes into consideration how difficult it is to make life changes.
National Institute on Drug Addiction (NIDA): The National Institute on Drug Abuse is a United States federal-government research institute whose mission is to "advance science on the causes and consequences of drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual and public health”.
Opioid Use Disorder (OUD): Physical and psychological reliance on opioids, a substance found in certain prescription pain medications and illegal drugs like heroin.
Outpatient Treatment Program: Outpatient treatment is an option for people with substance abuse problems that are milder, where they have not become dependent on drugs/alcohol, but realize they have a growing problem. Outpatient treatment is also a powerful tool when transitioning from a residential treatment program.
Program Curriculum: The strictly defined process by which the rehabilitation program is run. It includes specific hours, modalities, goals and progression targets.
Recovery: SAMHSA Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration defines recovery as a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.
Relapse: According to the NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), “people recovering from addiction often have one or more relapses along the way”. Relapse is when an addict returns to alcohol or drugs after a period of sobriety. The highest risk for recurrence of substance use disorder symptoms occurs during the first 90 days following the initial intervention. This indicates that individuals attempting to recover from substance use disorder need the most intensive support during this first 3-month period, as individuals are experiencing substantial physiological, psychological, and social changes during this early recovery phase. There is typically a greater sensitivity to stress and lowered sensitivity to reward that makes continued recovery challenging.
Relapse Prevention Strategies: Help clients limit relapses in their recovery by teaching them to anticipate scenarios that may trigger their addictive behavior. It also teaches skills to cope with these triggering situations.
Residential Treatment Program: Is a live-in treatment program for individuals with substance use disorder.
SMART Recovery (Self-Management and Recovery Training): Focuses on self-reliance. There are no sponsors, however there is a community of support. Using a science-based program to help cope with urges, SMART Recovery provides tools and techniques designed to achieve a balanced life in recovery. smartrecovery.org
Sobriety: Sobriety, or being sober, can be defined as the state of not being intoxicated. In the fields of addiction and mental health treatment, sobriety typically refers to a person's decision to maintain abstinence from substance use. Sobriety often, but not always, follows a period of problematic use or addiction.
Suboxone: Is the brand name for a prescription medication used in treating those addicted to opioids, illegal or prescription. It contains the ingredients buprenorphine and naloxone. Buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, blocks the opiate receptors and reduces a person's urges.
Substance Use Disorder (Addiction): ASAM definition: A treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.
Support: Can be emotional, physical and/or financial. Defining support needs are unique to each woman and measured carefully to be helpful, not enabling.
Trauma Resolution: Accomplished when the painful memory or event no longer triggers anxious reactions or distorted thoughts.
Trigger: External or internal cues that cause a person in recovery to crave drugs/alcohol and possibly relapse.
12-Step Program: The 12-Step Program has been used since 1935. The program’s foundation is that recovery depends on taking responsibility for living with substance use disorder. The 12-Step program adheres to 12 tenets emphasizing personal growth and dependence on a higher spiritual being. The program requires a social network to support recovery.
Vivitrol: A medication used to treat alcohol and opioid addiction. It contains an extended-release formulation of naltrexone, an active ingredient that blocks opiate receptors in the brain and significantly reduces cravings. The medication is given as a monthly injection and should only be administered by a healthcare professional.
Withdrawal: In people who develop a chemical dependency on a substance, withdrawals from drugs/alcohol can produce physical and cognitive disruptions. They will vary from person to person and type of substance.