mily or work environments(Riley, 1998).Treatment settings offer a wide range of services which include hospitals,residential programs, halfway houses, and organizations including AlcoholicsAnonymous, Al-Anon and Alateen.Programs that involve chemical dependency usually take place in a special unit ofpsychiatric or general hospitals, are run by professionals including ex-addicts, wherelength of stay vary from a number of days to a month. After discharge from thehospital, the client is encouraged to join some type of follow-up program such asAlcoholics Anonymous (Neistadt & Crepeau, 1998).Residential programs are run by former addicts whose lives have been consumed byaddiction in one form or another. This type of community requires a lot of structurewhere all members of the household are given responsibilities to maintain theenvironment. The community is closely monitored and residents usually have little orno contact with outsiders for certain lengths of time. During their stay, residentsconfront their addictions on a continuous basis (Neistadt & Crepeau, 1998).When a patient with an alcohol-related disorder is discharged from the hospital, itbecomes important to find somewhere to stay other than home. Previous familiarplaces have often proved themselves counterproductive to the patient. The halfwayhouse provides emotional support and counseling to help reintroduce the patient backinto society (Kaplan & Sadock, 1998).Alcoholics Anonymous is a voluntary program that helps the individual throughsocial support. The ideas behind AA is to stay focused on the value of beingabstinent (Riley, 1998). This program uses a twelve-step method as well as others,and many provide the individual with a more secular approach to treatment becausethey emphasize seeking help from a higher power (Neistadt & Crepeau, 1998).Al-Anon is an organization primarily for the spouses of people with alcohol-relatedproblems (Kaplan & Sadock, 1998). This group is...
