If you are looking for an addiction treatment center whose treatments have the highest chance of working for you, you must attend an evidence-based treatment center.
By attending addiction treatment centers that use treatments that are evidence-based, you will utilize treatments that have had past success. If you also attend a scientifically researched addiction treatment center, you can be confident in the knowledge that researchers have studied and tested the treatments at that center and have found them to be highly effective.
If you want to learn about why the specific treatments offered here at Sana Lake Behavioral Wellness Center are so effective, we are going to go through some of the treatment and therapeutic services that we offer that are evidence-based.
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What is Evidence-Based Treatment?
Evidence-based treatment (EBT) is an addiction treatment that has had consistent past success. When it comes to addiction treatment, evidence-based treatments include everything from cognitive-behavioral therapy to medication-assisted treatment, to aftercare, and more.
What Are Evidence-Based Practices?
Many evidence-based treatments utilize evidence-based practices (EBP). In addiction treatment, evidence-based practices are procedures that are proven successful through research. Evidence-based treatments utilize evidence-based practices that are scientifically sound.
How to Tell if the Research That Your Evidence-Based Practices Is Based On Is Scientifically Sound
Scientifically sound practices are procedures that are proven true through extensive scientific research. For addiction treatment research to be considered scientific, it must have certain attributes. One of those attributes is having had experimental research performed on that treatment to test its credibility. Discussed below is a list of ways to know that the research that was done on your addiction treatments are, indeed, scientifically sound.
It Has a Control Group
When conducting experiments for research, it is VERY important that you have a set of controls. Controls are a group of whatever you are researching that is only affected by an independent variable. An independent variable is something that is not dependent on the actions of other things to function. If the only thing that affects a control group is the independent variable, you’re not doing anything to the control to affect it.
Only natural causes can affect the control group. For example, let’s say you are conducting a research experiment to see whether or not talk therapy helps people maintain sobriety longer after medical addiction treatment. In this research experiment, you will have one test group of people. You will actively send this test group to receive talk therapy after addiction treatment.
You will then have one control group made of people. You will not send the control group into talk therapy after medical addiction treatment. Therefore, you will have one test group that you manipulate and one control group that you do not manipulate. You can then compare the results of these two groups to see if any change really happened because of the one thing that you manipulated or because of something else.
Having a control group in your research experiment makes the results of your experiment more credible. Being repeatable also makes your research results more credible. To repeat your research experiment, get a different group of people to use for both your test and control group. Then, perform the exact same experiment on those people.
Let’s say that you were to repeat the talk therapy experiment that we previously used as an example. When repeating this experiment, you should send a new group of people to talk therapy after medical addiction treatment. You should then also create a control group made out of new people. Once again, you do not send the new control group to talk therapy after medical addiction treatment.
If you still receive the exact same results as you did in your previous experiment, it legitimizes your findings. This, in turn, makes your results repeatable, reliable, and predictable, which is exactly what you want.
It Has Rigorous, Objective, and Systematic Methods
To consider experimental research legit, it needs to have rigorous, objective, and systematic methods. All experimentation methods must also utilize logic and reasoning.
It Has Been Peer-Reviewed
To legitimize your research and results even further, you should put your research through peer review. Peer review is when other people within your field of work analyze your research to see if they too find it credible.
If your research is done well, there will be no reason for your professional peers to not find your research results credible. This is especially true if the world of medicine supports your research.
Data Analysis Methods Were Used When Making It
You should use data analysis methods to evaluate, recap, and illustrate your research when performing addiction treatment research. At the end of the day, the best research results are the ones that are clearly measurable. That way you can build upon your findings and discover more information that you can use to improve addiction treatment. Having measurable results also makes your results more predictable and thus better able to prove future success.
Medication-assisted treatment uses medication to help people manage their withdrawal symptoms as they detox from alcohol and substances. People primarily use medication-assisted treatment during the detox stage of addiction treatment.
Co-Occurring Disorders Treatment
Co-occurring disorders treatment is addiction treatment that simultaneously treats addiction and mental illness. There are several different evidence-based treatments and practices that you can use within co-occurring disorders treatment. Examples of these evidence-based treatments and practices include individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, support groups, and medication-assisted treatment.
Aftercare Support
Aftercare support is a series of treatment services that you can use as a form of support on your own after addiction treatment is over. An evidence-based treatment center should provide you with information to different aftercare support groups once your treatment program is complete.
Examples of aftercare support groups include 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. Aftercare support groups use evidence-based practices such as structured step-by-step programs, counseling, and medicinal services.
Types of Evidence-Based Forms of Therapy in Addiction Treatment
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on identifying and changing the problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that a person has. It then turns them into positive and productive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In addiction treatment, these problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can cause a person to want to misuse substances.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy uses evidence-based practices such as journaling, cognitive restructuring and reframing, and guided discovery. Other evidence-based practices used in cognitive-behavioral therapy include exposure therapy, breathing exercises to relieve stress, and successive approximation. Role-playing and regular talk therapy are also used.
Dialectical -Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical-behavioral therapy is a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy that focuses on how you use your thoughts and feelings to interact with others. Dialectical-behavioral therapy is known to be beneficial in treating borderline personality disorder.
In addiction treatment, dialectical-behavioral therapy helps people cope with and regulate problematic thoughts and feelings that make them want to drink or use drugs. Dialectical-behavioral therapy will also help people in addiction treatment repair the relationships that they may have broken due to their addiction.
Dialectical-behavioral therapy uses evidence-based practices such as individual talk therapy, group therapy, cognitive-based therapy, and mindfulness exercises.
Solution – Focused Therapy
Solution-focused therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on your future circumstances and goals rather than your past experiences. People who suffer from addiction often have guilt due to all the past mistakes that they have made. As a result, solution-focused therapy helps people in addiction treatment focus on improving their lives in the future rather than dwelling in the past. Solution-focused therapy uses evidence-based practices such as goal clarification, miracle questioning, experiment invitation, mind mapping, letter writing, art therapy, and journaling.
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational interviewing is a form of counseling that uses certain language to strengthen a person’s motivation and commitment to achieve a certain goal. In addiction treatment, the goal that a person in motivational interviewing is being counseled to want to achieve is related to his or her sobriety. Motivational interviewing uses evidence-based practices such as open questioning, giving affirmations, exchanging information, reflection, summarizing, active listening, and utilizing language of change.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an interactive form of psychotherapy that healthcare professionals often use to treat PTSD. During EMDR therapy, a therapist will have you follow an object that he or she is holding with your eyes while simultaneously thinking about past traumas.
The goal of EMDR therapy is to lessen the effect that thinking about your past traumas has on your mind and body by diverting attention elsewhere. In addiction treatment, the past traumas that people are trying to lessen the effect of are related to their journey with addiction. An evidence-based practice that is used in EMDR therapy is averting attention.
Receive Treatment At Sana Lake Behavioral Wellness Center
There are several different forms of addiction treatment at Sana Lake Behavioral Wellness Center. For those that need more medical attention, we offer partial hospitalization treatment. For those that want to receive addiction treatment while maintaining their day jobs and responsibilities, we offer intensive outpatient and outpatient treatment.
To learn more about our evidence-based treatment center and the services that we provide our members, contact us today.