Therapeutic Community for Addicts

The State Welfare Organization opened 17 therapeutic community centers in the past year to help people with severe addiction, head of SWO, Anoushiravan Mohseni Bandpei said.

The special centers were launched in six provinces for treating addiction among children and junior youth, ISNA reported.  

Therapeutic community is a participative, group-based approach to long-term drug addiction. In TC centers, psychologists, sociologists, and social workers help addicts learn better ways of dealing with their problems instead of using narcotics.

According to Bandpei, the approach has proven to be more effective in addiction treatment than traditional methods such as admitting them in rehabilitation centers.

“We have deployed 5,000 community-based teams and provided training to facilitators to assist in implementing the program at a community level,” the SWO chief said.