How Treatment Centers Help the Community

Everyone knows that drug addiction is a complicated disease that affects millions of Americans. However, what is less known is just how far reaching the effects can be on not only the addicted individual, but everyone around them, and their community. Treatment centers are the primary means of helping individuals battle their substance abuse and recover from it. But, just as addiction affects communities, treatment centers also help communities. To understand how, it is important to understand the far reaching effects of substance abuse and how treatment centers are related.

Drugs Breed Crime

Treatment centers provide drug education and counseling.

One of the effects of substance abuse on communities is crime. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 25 percent of all federal inmates are serving time for drug related offenses. Similar percentages of prisoners are serving time for drug offenses in local jails and state prisons. There are a number of ways that treatment centers help reduce crime in communities, including:

getting people off of drugs, providing education and counseling to stop the spread of addiction, providing long-term counseling to keep addicted individuals from relapsing, and helping addicted individuals build life skills so that they can function away from the drug scene.

By doing these things, treatment centers help to reduce drug related crimes in the communities in which they operate. This, in turn, helps communities become safer and more family friendly.

Financial Benefits

The National Institute on Drug Abuse states, substance abuse costs this country more than 480 billion dollars every year. This staggering number makes it obvious that substance abuse drastically affects the financial health of communities. However, treatment centers can help the financial damages of substance abuse just like they help the crime rates. Some of the financial benefits to communities of treatment centers are:

lower healthcare costs related to substance abuse, lower costs to courts for prosecuting drug offenders, lower incarceration costs related to drugs, fewer missed workdays, and higher productivity in the workplace.

All of these benefits combine to reduce the financial impact of substance abuse on communities, and improve their financial health.

Choosing Substance Abuse Treatment

Healthy Communities

Everyone knows that substance abuse has drastic effects on mental and physical health. Treatment centers help this by stopping substance abuse, and helping people recover from its ravages. This creates healthier and happier communities. If you or someone you know is suffering from the disease of substance abuse or addiction, you should look into getting help from a treatment center as soon as possible. The sooner you begin your recovery, the sooner you can get back to the life that you deserve, and the community that is counting on you to do your part to make it a better place to live.