Psychiatry & Addiction
Family First Intervention only works with treatment centers that help people get to the underlying issues of why they are abusing alcohol or drugs in the first place and to help them confront and cope with past problems and traumas. There are thousands of treatment centers out there and over the years we have been fortunate enough to work with the ones that care about the client getting better by not drugging them and labeling them with mental illness prematurely. Many treatment centers today have psychiatrists on staff that diagnose clients for mental disorders and prescribe them medications shortly after arriving at the center, sometimes before they even get out of detox. Some treatment centers label clients with disorders and prescribe medications just to get another 15 to 30 days out of the insurance company. The whole time they are in treatment they are given large quantities of medications and are never able to get to the underlying issues of why they abuse drugs or alcohol because they are just as high as in treatment as they were when they first arrived. Whenever we hear a family tell us that they are going to take their loved one to a psychiatrist to help treat the addiction we always try to prevent that and get them to an appropriate treatment center where they can be taken care of properly. Talking with all of those people later, we are told they never got better, only worse. Psychiatrist take people in, spend about 10 to 20 minutes with them and then label them with a disorder and prescribe them medications that they may not need. This is not only a dangerous practice, it is also a highly ineffective one and is sadly becoming a very profitable way to keep clients coming back. By choosing the correct intervention group and treatment center, this will allow your loved one to get to a treatment center where the doctors and psychiatrist specialize in addiction. Unless the doctors and psychiatrist specialize in addiction in the treatment center, they will not be able to determine between the drug or alcohol side effects and any possible mental disorder problems.
Psychiatrist for Addiction
Many years ago, psychiatrists used to bring you into their office and sit down with you for an hour or more to really get to know and understand you so that they may help you work through issues. Today, psychiatrists are diagnosing everyone they see that has chemical dependency problems with mental illnesses such as bi-polar, depression and ADHD while prescribing mass quantities of medications that have horrific side effects; it is almost as if they have become legalized drug dealers. The psychiatrist spends almost no time determining which of the behaviors are from the drug or alcohol abuse and immediately labels people with a disorder. If you walk into a psychiatry office today all you see is a waiting room full of people and the exam rooms are filled with patients while the doctor bounces from office to office spending less than 10 minutes with each patient. All you're really there for is a refill on your prescription, and you actually spend more time with the receptionist making your next appointment than you did with the doctor. Nothing has been more detrimental to the long term success of an addict or alcoholic getting better than a psychiatrist mis-diagnosing patients and over utilizing their prescription pad. Psychiatrists try and treat everyone today with medications and diagnose everyone with a disorder instead of working with them to get to the underlying issues of why they are self medicating in the first place. Psychiatrists are prescribing psychotropic medications at a rate that is almost alarming not to mention the heavy influence of commercials and aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies. Bringing someone to a psychiatrist not trained in addiction, and most are not, is no different than bringing them to a drug dealer to self medicate the past traumas. What is the difference of taking street medications or psychotropic medications that have far worse side effects with almost no benefit. We have never once seen anyone with an addiction problem go to a psychiatrist and get better, they have only become worse.
