Intensive Outpatient Program in New Jersey - Garden State Treatment Center

What is IOP?

IOP stands for “intensive outpatient program.” It is designated for a very specific segment of the population. Inpatient treatment is a program that requires you to live at the treatment center, and it is for people experiencing long-term substance use disorders. It is often the first stop on the continuum of care.

On the other hand, an IOP is for people who don’t require a stay in a residential treatment center. The services that you receive in an intensive outpatient program in New Jersey are ambulatory. This means that you aren’t admitted to a hospital. It may also be the next step if you have just been released from an inpatient program. Outpatient treatment programs only provide you with weekly or biweekly treatment sessions, which may not be enough after you have been in an inpatient program.

What Are the Benefits of IOPs?

You will have several benefits in an IOP. For example, the program isn’t residential, so it allows you to continue to go to work or school. It provides you with a clinical setting that can address your needs as issues arise. Most importantly, intensive outpatient treatment has given people better outcomes than outpatient treatment programs.

How Long Does an IOP New Jersey Take?

An intensive outpatient program requires that you attend three separate sessions each week. Each session lasts three hours. If necessary, the staff at your facility will increase the number of sessions, or they may extend them so they last longer. As time goes by, your sessions will become less intensive. While you remain at home, your treatment will last longer than it did in the residential treatment facility, which will be advantageous.

In most programs, you will attend treatment sessions for three to four months, but if your addiction is more severe, you may need a much longer program. After you finish your intensive outpatient program, your treatment will not end there. Substance use is a chronic disease that must be treated over the long term. That is why you must go from one form of treatment to the next for several years.

What Are the Core Services of an Intensive Outpatient Program?

Every IOP in New Jersey has several core services, and they include the following:

Group Therapy

The most important part of an IOP is its “group therapy.” According to the research, group therapy has been proven to provide treatment that is equally as effective as individual therapy.

Group therapy helps you develop your communication skills. If your socializing has revolved around substances, you may need to develop your socialization skills, and group therapy will allow you to do this.

Group therapy is also highly important because you and your peers will have the opportunity to confront each other, support each other and help each other when needed.

When you were ingesting substances, your life may have been very chaotic. Group therapy gives you the structure and the discipline you need to live normally again.

Group therapy provides you with a safe place where you will learn norms and healthy ways of interacting with each other.

Other group members will have been in therapy longer than you have been, so you will benefit from their experience. In contrast, you will have more experience than newer members, so you can guide the new members as you have been guided by older group members.

You can participate in other groups focusing on different skills.

Skills Development

Skills development is one type of group therapy. It will be beneficial to you because you will be able to practice your new skills in a non-judgmental environment.

Another group therapy is the “psychoeducational” group. Psychoeducational groups are intensive outpatient groups in which you learn about your substance use disorder, dependence, and the consequences of the disorder. Your IOP New Jersey treatment begins with psychoeducational groups. This is not where you will experience extreme emotions, but you will learn techniques that will keep you from relapsing in the future.

Individual Therapy

Individual therapy supplements group therapy, but it is a one-on-one meeting with your own therapist. You will receive addiction counseling, and if you are in a dual diagnosis program, you will also receive psychiatric intervention for your mental health disorder. Dual diagnosis treatment is for people simultaneously experiencing a substance use disorder and a mental health disorder.

In most cases, IOP New Jersey will focus on the problems your substance use disorder is causing you. It also helps you maintain your sobriety for the long term. In the beginning, you will attend a weekly therapy session that lasts 30 or 50 minutes, and you will receive your own primary counselor to develop a rapport with this professional.

A typical session begins with your counselor asking for your reactions to your group therapy sessions. Your counselor will also be interested to know how you spent the time in between your current session and your last. Of course, your counselor will be interested in your feelings and will ask you if you engaged in any substance use. Your counselor will also be the one to interfere if you are experiencing any urgent issues.

Group therapy is not the appropriate place for you to discuss intimate issues, so it is imperative that you have individual counseling in your intensive outpatient program. Your counselor will also point you in the direction of services that you may need that are outside of the treatment center’s walls. At this point, you may be ready to be discharged or move on to the next level of care.

Skills Training in an Intensive Outpatient Program

Interpersonal Process Groups

These groups focus on one issue, such as sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and gender. The group may be open to your entire family or just you and your significant other. These groups teach you how your substance use affects the important people in your life.

Support Groups

Support groups are for people in the same stage of recovery. They also focus on issues such as conflict resolution, tolerance, and changing negative thinking. A support group may even address how your actions are affecting the group.

Stress Management

You are trained to recognize the triggers that cause stress and learn techniques that help you respond effectively to stress.

Assertiveness Training

This training teaches you the difference between passivity, aggressiveness, and assertiveness. In an IOP, people practice being assertive.

Relapse Prevention Techniques

In a safe environment, you pretend to be in a place where substances are being used or where your triggers encourage you to use substances. Instead, you learn techniques that keep you from indulging in substance use.

Drug or Alcohol Refusal Training

In this training, you practice refusing someone’s offer of your substance of choice.

Is IOP Painful?

IOP New Jersey is not painful. Treatment centers offer medication-assisted treatment that eases the withdrawal symptoms you experience when you are being weaned off your substances of choice.

If you are in an intensive outpatient program that lasts three to five days a week, the staff may need to administer medication to you and monitor you to ensure that you comply with your program.

Medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, helps you in the following ways:

  • Relieves withdrawal symptoms or cravings
  • Prevents relapse
  • Reduces the chances of illnesses that users of substances are susceptible to contract
  • Relieves the mental health disorder that may be the reason that you have a substance use disorder
  • Monitors health conditions that accompany substance use

Research supports MAT for the treatment of opioid disorders and alcohol.

In the United States, 42.1 million adults have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and 18.2% of this population also have a substance use disorder. In contrast, 23.1 million adults were diagnosed with a substance use disorder, and 37.9% also had a mental health disorder. Because substance use disorders and mental health disorders often occur simultaneously, the intensive outpatient program that you enter must be able to treat both disorders if your mental health disorder is moderately severe.

A moderately severe mental health disorder includes anxiety disorders and stable mood disorders, which will be treated in coordination with your substance use disorder. You will not be recommended for the IOP New Jersey if you have a severe disorder.

Monitoring Drug and Alcohol Use

An intensive outpatient program includes monitoring of your substance consumption. This isn’t done to prove that you are ingesting substances when you are supposed to abstain. It is done so that the staff can determine whether the therapies they give you are working for you. It may include voluntarily testing your fluids.

This testing will inform your therapist that your treatment needs to be modified if your tests return positive for the presence of your substance of choice. It is also a method that gives your family members proof that you are following your treatment program when the tests come back negative. Then, your family members trust your clinicians, and they can begin to believe that intensive outpatient treatment is working for you.

In addition to the above, monitoring is another way that your therapists can help you avoid relapses. Most importantly, it stops you from deciding to substitute another substance for the one you are weaning yourself off of now.

Case Management

When people have substance use disorders, they often lead to other issues. In an intensive outpatient program, your case manager will be able to send you to several agencies that can help you with those issues.

A case manager helps you find services that can assist you with the particular problems that you are having. The issues that you may need help with cannot necessarily be addressed in an IOP, so your case manager will help you determine which needs are greatest at the moment so that he or she can find help for these issues outside of the treatment center.

Case management services include the following:

  • Helping the client find food or shelter
  • Helping clients obtain services from their providers
  • Addressing clients’ individualized needs
  • Being someone to advocate for clients when they need to find resources
  • Providing social services, including advocacy, monitoring and assessment

12-Step Fellowship

The most common type of recovery group is known as the “12-step fellowship.” Examples of 12-step groups are CA or Cocaine Anonymous, NA or Narcotics Anonymous and AA or Alcoholics Anonymous. These programs have high retention rates, so they have proven that giving people principles of conduct and support is a highly effective way of helping people navigate their way through their addictions to substances.

Is an Intensive Outpatient Program in New Jersey Right for Me?

Intensive outpatient treatment will help you overcome your substance use disorder if you are willing to participate. It is just one step on the continuum of care, but it is a very important step. As a matter of fact, an IOP New Jersey is as effective as residential treatment for a majority of the people.

The intensive outpatient program in New Jersey at Garden State Treatment Center is better than the rest because we will remain with you from the beginning of your journey toward sobriety until the end. After we guide you through recovery, we will develop a treatment plan that is tailored specifically for you. We even have an alumni program designed for our outpatient program graduates. It is our way of offering you continuous support and guidance throughout the years.

Contact us at Garden State Treatment Center today if you are ready to get help for your substance use disorder.

FAQ

  • How long are most IOP programs?
  • What is IOP mental health?
  • What is the most used drug in New Jersey?

Published on: 2022-08-30
Updated on: 2024-02-16