Medical Professionals Who Treat Addiction
Addiction is a disease that can be prevented, treated, and controlled with a specialist’s help. The doctors that treat addiction specialize in the fields of substance use disorder, also known as Addiction Medicine or Addiction Psychiatry. Addiction Medicine is a subspecialty that various kinds of physicians can become board-certified to practice in. Psychiatrists, internists, family medicine physicians, and emergency medicine doctors, among others, can specialize in Addiction Medicine.
What Do Doctors Specializing in Addiction Treat?
Doctors that treat addiction need to be highly knowledgeable in dealing with patients’ need for pain relief. As someone is undergoing detox from powerful substances like heroin, alcohol, and other addictive drugs, withdrawal symptoms can cause a lot of discomforts. Pain can also continue as withdrawal symptoms linger during rehab treatment. Understanding the various solutions to pain management when treating substance use disorder is an important part of this specialization in addiction treatment.
A physician treating patients with alcohol use disorder should be schooled in liver function issues, as these are common problems that affect alcoholics over time and with continued abuse of alcohol.
Doctors that treat addiction must have a deep understanding of the many different side effects that can occur during detox and with medication-assisted detox. Knowing which medicines to give and at which dosages to relieve withdrawal symptoms without causing a new addiction to take hold is something addiction doctors must know in order to be certified in addiction medicine.
Getting to know a patient through individual therapy sessions is vital to understanding some of the underlying causes that may have led to an addiction. Discovering which events or circumstances may have caused a substance abuse disorder is often key to treating addiction and avoiding future relapse.
Knowing how to treat psychological issues that can co-occur with addiction is another aspect of addiction medicine.
What Training Do Addiction Doctors Go Through?
Doctors specializing in addiction receive medical training that includes being able to recognize and treat the mental health issues that patients with substance use disorder often display. These can include conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders, and sleep disorders.
In addition to mental health problems, doctors that treat addiction are also trained to know the various factors that can lead someone to develop a drug or alcohol addiction. Addiction doctors need to understand the social, environmental, hereditary, and psychological factors that influence someone’s development of an addiction. A physician must know what course the addiction will follow and the different methods for treating it.
As noted previously, knowing how to manage and treat withdrawal symptoms and the long-term effects of addiction, too, are very important in this field of medicine.
Although an addiction specialist will mainly be dealing with patients suffering from substance use disorders, they will also have training in treating and diagnosing behavioral addictions, such as gambling or food addictions.
Finally, addiction doctors go through training that covers the various types of therapies necessary in rehab treatment. These include individual and group therapies and the different levels of care that exist for addiction treatment. The various kinds of treatment settings are also covered, including residential, outpatient, partial hospitalization, and other program types.
What’s The Difference Between Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine?
The differences between addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine involve a bit more specialization in dealing with specific conditions or disorders within those two fields of medicine.
An addiction psychiatrist has a wider skill set in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. With this physician specialty, a doctor can also diagnose and treat patients suffering from schizophrenia, autism, and other mental health conditions.
Addiction Medicine involves assessing and treating patients who are not only dealing with chronic pain associated with withdrawal, but also with the pain that may involve chronic cardiac, lung, or liver conditions that can be involved in addictive cases.
Why Choose an Addiction Treatment Center with Board Certified Doctors On Staff?
Having a board-certified physician on staff at the rehab treatment center you choose to overcome addiction is important. When an addiction specialist is overseeing your rehab treatment, you know that physician has been trained to deal with every aspect associated with substance use disorders and beyond.
At Muse Treatment in Los Angeles, our board-certified doctors specialize in addiction medicine. They are available 24/7 to supervise your progress, overall health, and medication dosages. Our Los Angeles drug rehab can help alleviate your pain or discomfort as well as assist you in gaining insights into the underlying reasons behind your addictive behaviors while you are in treatment. To learn more, call Muse today at (800) 426-1818.
