Watching your daughter struggle with an addiction is a heartbreaking experience. However, you have taken the right first step in that you are actively seeking treatment. On this journey toward better health for your beloved daughter, you’ve likely encountered a number of different terms associated with rehab, including both outpatient and inpatient treatment.
Inpatient or Outpatient Treatment
As you’re exploring the various treatment options, you’ll learn that some individuals choose to live at the rehab facility, which is known as inpatient treatment. Other individuals opt to stay in their homes and attend outpatient treatment. In still other cases, people recovering from addiction with choose a program that combines both. These individuals may start with inpatient treatment and then move into an outpatient program. Considering a variety of factors can help you to determine whether your daughter should begin with inpatient or outpatient treatment:
- Past attempts at rehab
- The severity of the addiction
- Factors in the home environment
- Obligations and responsibilities
- Support system
Ultimately, you and your daughter should speak with a counselor at the facility to determine the best course of treatment, but you can begin by evaluating these elements.
Past Attempts at Rehab
Your family should consider whether your daughter has attended rehab for addiction before. Since she has started engaging in old habits again, think about the features of the previous program that were perhaps not the best for her. For example, your daughter might have attended an outpatient program, and she was still spending time with friends from the neighborhood who used to do drugs or drink alcohol with her. Therefore, an inpatient program may prove best this time.
Addiction Severity
Taking into account how severe the addiction is can also help your family to determine the right course of treatment. Your daughter might have a major addiction to a serious drug that is likely to cause extreme withdrawal symptoms when she goes through detox. Opting for an inpatient program that offers medically supervised detox is wise. On the other hand, your daughter may have completed an inpatient program recently, and you want to choose an outpatient program to offer her continued support.
Factors at Home
You also must consider factors at home or in the surrounding environment that could impede her progress. It is possible that another addict is living in the same home. In these cases, an inpatient program is almost certainly the better possibility. Furthermore, your daughter may live in an area where she will constantly be exposed to triggers, which also likely makes the inpatient program a better option. Of course, your daughter may also have a healthy circle of friends and activities that she likes to engage in, which could mean that an outpatient program will work best. Take the entire home and its surrounding environment into consideration when evaluating this factor.
Obligations and Responsibilities
When your daughter is concerned about children or pets at home requiring care, offer to take care of the little ones and animals for her so that she can go to inpatient treatment. In some cases, such as when your daughter needs to work to support her children, you may need to turn to outpatient support. Another possibility is that her job or school will not allow for a leave of absence without some sort of penalty. Do keep in mind that a number of workplaces and schools are supportive of these types of scenarios. In other words, your daughter may have the ability to pursue inpatient treatment and then return to her job or degree program after the program is completed.
Support System
You also need to think about where she will have an overall better support system. One possibility is that she has many relatives and friends at home who want to offer all of the support that they can. However, she may also have negative influences who live nearby or who come into her life frequently. While keeping your daughter close to you might seem tempting, also think about the fact that she can both benefit from and contribute to a support system if she opts for an inpatient rehab program. Together as a family, you can make the decision about what is right for your daughter. You shouldn’t think of yourself as alone in the decision though. Instead, call 844-639-8371 so that you can speak with a counselor to review the benefits of both possibilities.