First, we need a complete and individualized evaluation of the medical, psychological, and social psychopathology of each patient. This assessment is accompanied by a detailed exploration into rehab for alcoholism, as well as psycho-diagnostic tests and psychopathology, which can establish the characteristics of addiction and its intensity, the existence of mental illnesses associated with consumption of alcohol, and the impact of addiction on the patient’s family, work and friendships. This clinical procedure is crucial to determine the type of drug treatment and each patient’s medical needs, and provide information to design an individualized strategy of psychotherapy that can be performed after the patient leaves the hospital or specialized alcohol detoxification.
After these tests and evaluation, pharmacological interventions are performed, oral and intravenous, allowing recovery of neuronal functions of the brain structures that have been damaged by alcohol (NMDA, serotonin, and GABA systems, for example), so treated neurons can maximize your ability to use oxygen and quickly normalize neuronal membranes. The main achievement of this procedure pharmacological hospital is to provide the amount of medication necessary to ensure alcohol detox comfortable and safe, without craving and without withdrawal symptoms. By increasing the capacity of the treated neurons to use oxygen available, the neuronal membrane functions are normalized quickly.
Simultaneously, the alcohol detox treatment in specialized centers include attention to nutritional and psychological aspects of the patient: on the one hand, it is to maintain an adequate fluid balance, electrolyte correct deficiencies and address deficiencies in nutrition addiction that often accompany the patient. In this aspect, the nutrition of the brain in these specialized centers alcohol detoxification involves an enrichment of the diet with salts, trace elements, amino acids essential for neuronal recovery.
On the other hand, offers the patient an individualized plan of psychotherapy, based on clinical history and psycho-diagnostic tests, for the patient to restore harmony in their personal and family life, to clarify misconceptions about the disease and promote changes in attitude and lifestyle. This psychotherapy and pharmacological control, are the process that the patient is ambulatory after leaving the hospital in rehab for alcoholism, and allows the patient to participate actively in their own derived therapeutics.
Under these conditions, alcohol rehabilitation has four immediate goals:
- provide a safe withdrawal from alcohol dependence and allow the patient free of substance not prescribed
- provide a withdrawal that is humane and that protects both the patient’s dignity
- provide a recovery of cognitive and affective processes and
- prepare the patient for ongoing treatment of their dependence
