Home Based Recovery Executive Director Rob DeClark says he’s spent the last few decades working in the in patient treatment industry.
“ The landscape changed considerably in terms of the amount of options and also in terms of the cost of treatment,” he says.
DeClark says that when he entered the field, a six week in patient stay ranged from $15,000 to $17,000. Now, he says the average is somewhere between $40,000-$50,000 thousand for the same quality of care.
He says most treatment programs have a core curriculum built around therapy, exercise, nutrition.
“We took that learning and that experience and thought, how do we reach more people?” DeClark said.
He says his company’s program involves a 30 day plan featuring a curriculum of videos, as well as 20 hours of time spent remotely with a therapist, followed by a 6 month aftercare program.
When asked about how an online addiction treatment course deals with the idea that it can be difficult to move past addiction issues without changing one’s environment, DeClark says the company is careful with its screening process.
“ We choose our clients wisely,” he said. “There’s no point in putting people through a program that has a very, very low chance of success.”
He says people attending residential treatment programs often struggle transitioning back once the experience ends.
“ People go off into treatment and from my experience, the hardest time for somebody leaving treatment is that first 72 hours as they try to take all the skills that they learned in this other world. And all at the same time, they go home…within a couple of hours they’re back in their regular environment and they’re trying to incorporate recovery into their home,” he said.
DeClark says there’s a myth out there that people need to hit rock bottom before pursuing treatment.
“Rock bottom is often described by people as I’ve lost my job, my house, my family, I’ve lost everything, right?” He said.
“ One of our mandates as an organization is to raise rock bottom and have less people experience the full, sort of losing of everything.”
DeClark says when trying to navigate the world of private addiction treatment, he recommends people understand what they’re paying for, and look at the staff page of any option they are considering.
“ Who are the people delivering the service, and do you have master’s level therapists and addiction physicians and psychiatrists and psychologists?”
“I get a lot of calls both personally and professionally from people that say, ‘I have a client, they need inpatient care. Where do you recommend they go?’ And it’s a different answer for different people. Some people do really well with concurrent mental health and addiction disorders…some centers are much more focused on simply treating addiction, and so it’s a very individual answer in terms of what might fit for the right person.”
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