Longevity Counts –

Oct. 16, 2019 – Jen Carvalho, the CEO of Azure Acres, said the field of addiction treatment has undergone significant transformation over the past two decades. “There have been such dramatic changes in the treatment industry in the last 20 years. In some ways it is unrecognizable,” she said. In the past, alcoholism and addiction were viewed as moral defects or an inability to get one’s life together. There was a shift in the 1970s toward helping individuals maintain sobriety through more therapeutic means.

According to Carvalho, substance use disorder treatment has been fully integrated into health care in ways that were previously unimaginable, which has reduced the stigma around the treatment of what is now considered a chronic and relapsing brain disorder rather than a moral character flaw. Insurance companies provide treatment benefits more often than they used to, and a client’s care can be integrated into a full behavioral health plan.

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