Relapse Prevention, Essay Example

Relapse entails a setback in an individual’s attempt to change any target behavior. Relapse prevention classically comes to the end treatment, where healthcare professionals work with the patients to gain control over their symptoms. The most complex part of treating relapses in persons with co-occurring disorders (COD) is during addiction. Addiction is a severe relapsing brain disorder, and treatment of relapse at this point is the most challenging. Drug addiction entails compulsive and repetitive drug seeking, as well as drug-taking behaviors, in spite the negative results of such behavior.  Addicts are very prone to drug-seeking behaviors even after years of abstinence. Treatment of addiction begins with medical and psychosocial evaluations along with relieving the withdrawal symptoms, which is designed to attain a drug-free state among the individuals that are addicted.

The chronic nature of an illness implies relapsing to drug abuse at some point is not feasible, but likely. Relapse rates to drug addicts and other substance use disorders are the same to relapse rates for other chronic medical diseases, like hypertension and diabetes that may have both physiological and behavioral elements. Therefore, treating relapse among the people that are addicted means changing deeply embedded behaviors. Also, gaining the capability to stop drug addiction is just one portion of a long, complex recovery process. For one to offer the necessary treatment to the addicted persons, one should dig the core addiction problems of drug craving and relapse, which is a challenging task. When an individual has reached the addiction point, it will mean that there is the need to integrate medications with behavioral therapy, which is demanding and costly, making it hard to treat relapse when it is at a point of addiction.