According to NIDA, addiction treatment is an ongoing process that must be continuously adjusted over time for individuals. For people who successfully complete a treatment program, the relapse rate is as high as 40 to 60 percent. Care models need to support people in their sobriety long after official treatment programs end. Therapy can play a beneficial role in aftercare. Recovery is a lifelong process, and participation in therapy often lasts for many years. Therapy helps people remain honest with themselves, process difficult situations, and find relief as they move forward with their lives. Mental health professionals have understood the benefits of psychotherapy for many years. Through personal exploration, clients can find solutions to many of their problems themselves. Therapists may pose questions to get clients thinking, but it is up to clients to draw their own conclusions. This approach provides a sense of empowerment to clients, often leads them to have realizations, and allows them to experience healing in other parts of their lives as well, not just the situation at hand. Studies have found additional benefits to participating in therapy.
Clients gain a global understanding of themselves.
Skills learned in therapy promote personal growth long after participation in therapy has ended.
Relief can be felt quickly and continues to grow over time.
Clients become comfortable facing a broader range of emotions than they were before therapy began.
Clients learn skills to help them cope with difficult emotions that may come up in the future.
By engaging in therapy and establishing a trusting relationship with the therapist, clients form healthy relationships. This skill can be applied to developing relationships outside of therapy as well.
There has been a growing amount of support from researchers and mental health professionals to use therapy as the first line of treatment before medication for the treatment of certain disorders, such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Many of these conditions co-occur in individuals struggling with substance use as well. Decades of research has been building to support the use of behavioral and interpersonal therapy methods as the most effective forms of treatment for many conditions. Evidenced-based research has found that medications do little to treat addiction on their own. Medications are useful for managing symptoms and certainly have their place in the treatment process. Enough evidence has been collected, however, to support the use of therapy even before prescribing medications. Psychologists have found that many of their clients display significant improvements with therapy alone. Through therapy, clients learn how to handle their emotions and gain relief from the disorder that is afflicting them, not just manage the disorder’s symptoms.