Canada Drug Rehab

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, talks about different behaviorial patterns individuals may exhibit during their addiction recovery, especially when approaching milestones.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for the Sunshine Coast Health Centre, shares some indicators of addiction relapse and warning signs to watch for.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, shares why it is so important to have a strong after-care plan and support network after addiction treatment.

1. our treatment program is becoming increasingly evidence-based
2. counsellors are now masters level therapists
3. free weekend refresher stays for alumni
4. flexible, more affordable relapse prevention services for alumni
5. enhanced family and couples services with the full-time appointment of Cathy Patterson-Sterling as Director of Family Services
6. enhanced biopsychosocial services (physical assessments, personal fitness programs, etc.) with the full-time hiring of Kye Taylor, kinesiologist
7. enhanced alumni services with the full-time appointment of Darren Nivens as Alumni Coordinator
8. a new wing complete with additional space for group activities (lounge, group therapy), accommodation (8 new bedrooms upstairs), and recreation (including the opening of an indoor lap pool in November)
9. a newly-landscaped campus

Item 4 from this list is worth special mention: flexible, more affordable alumni services.

More Options for Alumni Means Long-Term Value For Families

A few months back, Daniel Jordan (Sunshine Coast General Manager) and I talked about making lifetime commitments to our clients.   This commitment involves a multitude of free support services including online and telephone counseling, family programming and weekend visits.  We know that any client who continues to work with us can find the answers he needs to maintain abstinence, healthy relationships, and improved quality of life.

One way that I felt we could improve our offerings was to offer a more flexible relapse stabilization program. Typically, private treatment centers require their relapsing clients to return for another full treatment stay – often 42 days or longer. However, at Sunshine Coast, we find that returning clients often have the basics and their needs are more specific so a shorter stay is often sufficient. Furthermore, the additional expense of a second 42-day stay can create unnecessary hardship when a short-term follow-up could have sufficed.

At Sunshine Coast, we have offered a shorter 30 day program for our alumni at a reduced rate for more than 2 years. In the fall of 2007 we added a 7 day rapid stabilization for clients who had a short relapse so that they could quickly get back to their families and careers. Many of our alumni take advantage of these relapse prevention services and can refocus their recovery for less than half the price of what it would cost at other centers. 

It’s this commitment to a lifetime of care with very inexpensive and short relapse program opportunities that creates real value for our clientele.  Families can now access shorter, more affordable treatment that has a length of stay appropriate for the individual needs of the client.

Many of our alumni have successfully bounced back from a short relapse with little more than a week or two of relapse prevention work. These alumni seem to know when they have had enough time in the center and when additional therapy has met their personal recovery goals.  It is this trust that they know themselves and their recovery needs that increases their confidence in their recovery work and enables them to move forward with fewer, less intensive, and shorter-duration relapses.
 
Conclusion

In these economically uncertain times, we at Sunshine Coast are committed to increasing value when it comes to residential drug and alcohol treatment. That means not only making treatment more effective, it also means providing flexible and affordable “refresher” programs for alumni. In the end, it is a treatment center’s long-term commitment to clients and their family members which separates real value from a quick sale.

About the Author

Melanie Alsager is the Administrator of Sunshine Coast Health Center and oversees administration, operations and clinical programming.

At Sunshine Coast Health Center, we welcome back clients who have had a relapse with open arms. When I say ‘open arms’ I mean that we no longer worry about how many times they have relapsed. A few years back we did worry about how many times clients relapsed before we would refer them to another program. Why?

Perhaps it was because we were worried about the impact a multiple-relapsing client would have on clients who were in the program for the first time. For example, perhaps clients might doubt the program (’Gee, I guess this program’s no good if alumni keep coming back’) or doubt themselves (’If he can’t stay clean and sober, how can I?’).  

Also, it would hurt our ‘success rate’ to keep re-admitting a chronic relapser.

Another concern we had was that we would be unable to teach the client anything new if they kept coming back.

I still recall having a staff meeting where we tried to assign a number of relapses a client could have before we would no longer accept them back. Eventually, we came up with a number but it never became policy.

Fortunately, as we have grown as an alcohol and drug treatment center our policy on relapsing clients has also ‘grown up.’ It is now based more on the needs of the client and less on what’s best for Sunshine Coast. In the end, it became clear to us that if we:

1. claim to offer individualized treatment, then the relapsing client should always receive a fresh, effective treatment plan that builds upon previous treatment episodes;
2. believe that addiction is a chronic condition then there is no better way to drive this message home to clients than to have them meet program alumni who have relapsed;
3. say we are “Partners in Recovery” there should be no arbitrary deadline when support is no longer provided;
4. want to reduce our relapse rates, there is no better way than to work with chronic relapsers .

So, when it comes to the ‘r’ word, at Sunshine Coast we decided to pull our collective heads out of the sand and acknowledge that, yes, our clients do relapse. If they weren’t, there would be a line-up from Powell River to Vancouver of people from all corners of the globe waiting for their turn.

One final note: Sunshine Coast now has relapse prevention programs that have been implemented in consultation with Terence T. Gorski, Stephen Grinstead, and CENAPS Corporation. By October 2008, Sunshine Coast Health Center hopes to be the first Gorski-CENAPS Certified Relapse Prevention Center in Canada.

Daniel Jordan is the General Manager of Sunshine Coast Health Center. His posts in “Life in the Drug Rehab Business” are designed to lower the veil on the secretive world of addiction treatment. By being transparent, Daniel believes that Sunshine Coast can help lead the way to a lowering of the stigma attached addiction and, at the same time, raise the standard of today’s addiction treatment programs.