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Mitigating outside distractions and unnecessary complications is essential to achieving your full potential throughout addiction recovery. While addiction doesn’t play favorites, men and women deal with varying issues, emotions and situations when battling addiction.

As a woman, you will trudge through much different circumstances throughout your recovery journey than men. Because of this, a gender-specific addiction treatment program that is hyper-focused on your unique situation and needs may be the best recovery route for you.

Learn more about drug treatment for women and discover the benefits of women’s addiction treatment:

Drug Treatment for Women

Woman in an individual therapy session, working through her addiction.

Is women’s addiction treatment right for you? Learn about drug treatment for women and discover the benefits of women’s substance abuse treatment.

Gender-specific treatment should not only focus on biological differences, but also social and environmental factors. These can influence a number of gender-related characteristics impacting the addiction process, including:

  • Motivations for drug use, such as personal experiences and familial indicators uniquely impacting a woman’s addiction process and individual addiction triggers.
  • Reasons for seeking treatment which vary widely between men and women. Understanding that the stressors impacting women in today’s society differ from those impacting men highlights the reason and benefit of an all-female treatment program.
  • Treatment options that are most effective, including those aimed at addressing underlying traumas, those providing unique childcare options, and those encouraging the female voice to express itself openly and honestly.
  • Consequences of not receiving treatment, which can include loss of parental rights and potential loss of custody in cases involving substance addiction and familial instability.

A number of life circumstances are more common in women as a whole than men, impacting the therapeutic environment and creating a need for gender-specific treatment options.

The manner in which these issues are addressed and accounted for can benefit sustained personal success and help ease the assimilation into treatment in general.

One specific example is the impact that physical and sexual trauma, and corresponding
PTSD diagnoses, has on drug-abusing women seeking treatment.

Additionally, factors such as financial independence, pregnancy, child care and decreased social stigma for women seeking treatment are unique to the female gender and important to consider when identifying how women’s-only addiction treatment can prove more beneficial for some individuals.

Benefits of Women’s Addiction Treatment

Studies have shown that developing sexual and intimate relationships in treatment have negative consequences in regard to completing treatment and achieving long-term
personal success and sobriety.1

While this is an isolated example, it effectively highlights a potential distracting factor associated with co-ed treatment facilities and the unforeseen temptations affiliated with shared traumatic experiences.

The benefits of a women’s-only treatment program include:

  1. Comfortable environments in which to heal yourself and address personal issues and hardships. As previously stated, traumatic experiences can play a major role in substance addiction and excessive emotionality. Being in the presence of men can elicit post-traumatic stress and cause a woman to feel emotionally exposed, negatively impacting potential therapeutic progress. In an all-female treatment environment, women can feel safe and secure knowing they won’t have to encounter unnecessary emotional triggers throughout their recovery journey.
  2. Healthy and advantageous relationships can form, aiding in the recovery process. In a women’s-only addiction treatment program, the possibility for unhealthy romantic relationships are diminished, allowing you to focus on your emotional health and addictive history. This creates a situation in which your primary objective of sustained sobriety remains your sole focus and the relationships you forge support that goal entirely with no ulterior motives or hidden agendas.
  3. Women-specific addiction issues can be thoroughly discussed. Whether addressing issues on pregnancy, parenting, sexual abuse, domestic violence, body image, legal trouble and so much more, a woman’s-only treatment program can empower you to get to the heart of important woman-centric matters with other women in an open, safe space.

The road to recovery is notoriously bumpy. Full of distractions and road-blocks, navigating this journey requires complete commitment while actively avoiding all unnecessary distractions along the way.

Enrolling in a gender-specific treatment program narrows the scope of potential complications within the therapeutic environment. Additionally, it ensures that the content of the treatment program will be specifically focused on topical areas uniquely impacting your progress and personal journey.

Women’s-Only Addiction Treatment at Covenant Hills

At Covenant Hills, we believe that it is important to separate the sexes during addiction rehab. Our individualized treatment programs are gender-separate as well as gender-specific. Men and women live and recover in completely separate living and treatment environments.

Through our Christian-based treatment programs, we address gender-specific issues and approach them through the lens of God’s truth.

Learn more about how we approach gender-specific treatment, or contact us for a free and
confidential assessment.

Resources:

1 National Center for Biotechnology Information. Substance Abuse Treatment for Women. Accessed October 7, 2018. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK83257/.