Where Trauma Assessment Fits In With Addiction Treatment Programs

The disease of addiction is one that leaves so much collateral in the wake of someone’s life that there are a massive array of problems that develop because of this. Regret, fear, remorse, apathy, and other things as such are very common in someone whose life has been effected by an addiction. These things can even start to happen in those around the addict, people who are close to them and try to help in any way they can.

The Path of Treatment Centers

When it comes to the standard treatment modes of treatment and detoxification facilities, there are several things that are taken into account and addressed. Primarily, the way that an addict cannot manage their own lives is taken under care and remedied with counseling and programs in treatment centers.

Under this, the addict will learn to be able to have confidence in the fact that they can survive in the real world again, independently and without the massive burden of having a severe addiction. Things like how to write checks and pay bills, manage money, keep a clean home, do laundry, so one and so forth, are taught to the addict.

One might think that is rather absurd, or even shocking, that someone might not be able to know how to do these things. But take into consideration the power of an addiction- these people knew how to do such simple things but have since, maybe not necessarily forgotten, but have lost the discipline and the stamina to carry out such simple tasks.

Trauma Examples

Of all these things that are taught and remedied in the world of treatment centers, one thing that is missed and should be addressed is the emotional trauma that comes about from the destruction that an addiction brings on. The American Medical Association defines trauma (in this case, psychiatric trauma) as, “An experience that is emotionally painful, distressful, or shocking and which may result in lasting mental and physical effects… Psychiatric trauma is essentially a normal response to an extreme event. It involves the creation of emotional memories about the distressful event that are stored in structures deep within the brain.” 

For anyone who has had an addiction of any caliber, this sounds pretty spot-on. This also sounds pretty general, but what most people do not know is that trauma treatment has its own special regiment and modus.

Emotional trauma is assessed in its own way and treated as a separate affliction than other types of emotional distress. Most people can refer to the ways that returning veterans, survivors of a mass shooting, or survivors of a natural disaster are taken care of, just to name a few of the extreme examples.

Examples Of Addiction

In the life of an addict, things happen that are extremely traumatizing, and the worse part about these types of events is that the addict tends to feel that they are their fault. Lost friendships, a friend overdosing, witnessing violence in a bad part of town, lost opportunities for relationships, work, school… the list can go on and on.

These could typically be defined as regret or remorse, but really, that is a mild way of putting it. The emotional distress and scarring that happens because of these types of things going on is severe enough to be classified as trauma. As a result of this kind of an assessment, there should be a bonafide path that treatment centers take in order to assess trauma.

Under this light, it is possible that treatment centers will be able to become even more effective at what they do, helping people more thoroughly and creating a more complete picture as to what happens and what is left behind in the expansive wake that the storm of an addiction can create.