Sunday, July 24, 2011

When is it Time For Inpatient Treatment?

Your teenager needs inpatient treatment for his addiction if his use is life-threatening, or if he is suicidal or has a serious mental illness, or if he just can't stop without going to an inpatient facility. Inpatient facilities -where the patients stay 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - are naturally more intensive, and can monitor your teenager in a way no clinic can possibly match. "Life-threatening" is of course sometimes a subjective term, but if your teenager cannot stop using cocaine, that would be a good time to consider inpatient treatment, given the lethality of that drug. And if your teenager hints at or even acts out at being suicidal, an inpatient stay will probably necessary to secure his safety. Also, if your teenager just can't stop using his drug of choice, even if it is marijuana, then an inpatient stay will likely be necessary. Teenagers often say that they don't want to go to inpatient treatment, since nothing external will change when they return home. That is true: the pressures of school, drug-and-alcohol using friends, and the vagaries of adolescent  adjustments will not have changed. But your teenager will have changed, gaining new strategies for refusing and moving ahead with a drug and alcohol- free life. Inpatient isn't perfect, nor is it usually curative of addiction. But it can safeguard your teenager's well being and start him on the road to sobriety!

2 comments:

  1. Mothers are usually suggested by healthcare practitioners to avoid intake of drugs during pregnancy as a result of of attainable teratogenic effect or the development of congenital anomalies in the fetus. After delivery, mothers are suggested to avoid intake of medicines while lactating. This is as a result of sure medications might cross the breast milk and act similar on the baby because it acts on the person who wants the drug.
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  2. International scales for testing vulnerability and determine level of care are widely used, also for teenagers. And do not preclude teenagers who are merely vulnerable, there is not efficacy in dramatic intervention for serious degrees of the presenting condition or co-morbidity. It is a dangerous notion and preventive care is, as the saying goes, absolutely better than cure. This level of care is not found in out-patient services alone. We should be careful to ensure this knowledge is out there for parents, in my professional experience.

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