Drug Rehabs Making National News

Although many people prefer not to look at it that way, drug rehabilitation is in fact a business. It is an industry in which we hope that the majority of people truly want to help their fellow human beings through a difficult part of their life. However, it is also an industry that needs to make money. That in itself isn’t actually a bad thing. We want our loved ones to enroll in the best addiction program around, and many people are willing to pay the cost of such programs. After all, it costs money to provide exceptional service.

As with most businesses, publicity is an important part of ensuring that potential patients are aware of the services that are available to them. They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and drug rehabilitation has certainly had its place in the news these past few years. Many a celebrity has done a stint in a drug rehab center, and the media tends to converge on these stories of addiction like a feeding frenzy. Although it likely isn’t helpful for the stars looking to overcome addiction, it does let the public know to an extent the options that are out there for them to take advantage of. And as tragic as these celebrity stories often are, they can serve as inspiration for people who are trying to come to terms with and seek help for their own drug or alcohol addiction.

Part of the reason that the media fixates on these stories, aside from the public’s fascination with celebrities, is that this type of feature allows for “side bars”, or other perspectives on the story. There are a multitude of angles from which a stay in a rehab program can be looked at, from those who have lived through the experience to the professionals who work in the treatment industry.

The problem is that alcohol and drug addiction seem to hog the media more than the treatment. One possibility for changing that is approaching your local media health producer with the story of a treatment center in the community.