The Therapeutic Community

Odyssey House Louisiana was established in 1973 as a nonprofit residential substance abuse treatment facility and as the first true therapeutic community in New Orleans. Today, Odyssey House offers a professional, structured, and caring therapeutic community with comprehensive services and effective support systems that enable individuals to chart new lives and return to their communities as contributing members. But what exactly does “therapeutic community” mean?

The therapeutic community model is a consciously designed treatment environment in which residents learn to make changes in behaviors and attitudes that will enable them to lead a drug-free life. Through the program, individuals and their families learn to replace destructive patterns and behaviors with constructive communication and living skills. The benefits of such changes and choices – including improved self-esteem, constructive expression, positive relationships, and enhanced coping and living skills – ultimately lead to sustained recovery and successful reintegration of the individual into his or her community.

The structure of Odyssey House is critical to the program. The therapeutic community provides clients with a secure and home-like atmosphere during a challenging period in their lives, while the program functions much like a family. Many clients within our program lack fundamental daily living skills and many come from fractured families and homes. New residents begin by learning or re-learning the basics of responsible daily living, from completing household duties to treating others with respect. Initially, they focus on making choices and adopting behaviors that will facilitate their success in the program, such as delaying gratification, expressing feelings appropriately, learning to rely on others, and being accountable for themselves and others.
 
As clients matriculate through the program’s levels and treatment stages, they acquire increasing responsibilities and privileges within the therapeutic community. All residents follow a structured schedule of activities that include such therapeutic services as:

- Individual and group therapeutic counseling
- Family counseling
- Crisis counseling
- Educational and vocational assessment and training
- Parenting skills training

The comprehensive and effective support systems within the Odyssey House therapeutic community continue to benefit clients once they have completed treatment. In addition to equipping program graduates with new skills for living and working, Odyssey House helps them secure employment and permanent housing, and provides aftercare services as they return to their communities.

Within the therapeutic community model, OHL puts research and proven approaches into practice to provide comprehensive services to people affected by substance abuse, and is nationally recognized as a model treatment program. In collaboration with other community resources, OHL’s holistic services facilitate the healing process of addiction recovery and help individuals to start anew and build healthy lives. Equipped with new skills for living and working, and assisted with employment and housing, OHL program graduates return to their communities ready to assume responsibility for themselves and others.

OHL’s holistic approach addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social conditions of each client in treating the illness of addiction. Services and programs include substance abuse treatment, complete health and psychiatric care, life-skills training, vocational training, job readiness classes and job placement, individual and group counseling, parenting classes and childcare, case management and permanent housing placement upon completion of treatment. Through this philosophy of treating the whole person, not just the addiction, Odyssey House has been able to achieve statistically significant recovery retention rates that meet or exceed the national average.