Trauma Care Research Paper

Addiction and Trauma Care Concerning the mental health field, treatment of patients with mental disorders throughout history has been of various qualities and varying rates of success. One major challenge since the beginning of psychiatric care has been in substance abuse treatment. The issue of how to properly treat those with substance abuse disorder has been a hot topic within the field of psychiatry since the beginning, but it has become even more so as understandings of mental illness has grown more nuanced over time. More recently, evaluating substance abuse disorders alongside other mental disorders has become commonplace, but with varying methods. This new approach to trauma-informed care opens up potentially successful treatment pathways …show more content…
Amaro et al. (2007) attempts to discern if trauma-informed substance abuse treatment has better long-term results than standard treatment using a group study. Patient retention is a major challenge in substance abuse care, and as a result, many different variations of standard treatment plans have developed to improve retention. One of the groups with the lowest retention rates are women with co-occuring disorders (847). The term co-occuring disorders refers to when a patient has a mental disorder and/or traumatic background along with their substance abuse disorder. Because patients with co-occuring disorders have some of the lowest retention rates, trauma-informed treatment arose as a possible answer to address the reasons for unsuccessful treatment. In the study, Amaro, et al. (2007) found that those that attended integrated trauma retention services had better retention rates than those who attended regular treatment services, though not to any statistical significance (856). However, it was found that women who received mandated integrated trauma services along an extended period of care showed more improvement of symptoms and better retention than those who had shorter periods of care (858). These findings lead Amaro et al. (2007) to support the “growing consensus that for persons with co-occuring …show more content…
and Amaro, et al. approach the same idea concerning trauma-informed care in that they all agree that the best way for psychiatric care to continue treating those with co-occurring traumatic and substance abuse disorders is with some form of integrated trauma treatment. Although not directly stating it, Amaro, et al’s findings support a more long-term model of care for substance abuse treatment, which corresponds directly to McLellan’s criticism of the mental health field’s treatment of substance abuse disorders. McLellan disagrees with the current model of substance abuse treatment and maintains that substance abuse disorders should be treated as chronic conditions and as such implies that substance abuse treatment would be a long-term thing. Longer-term treatment is evidentially more beneficial, as proved by Amaro, et al, which supports McLellan’s argument for a long-term model of