BRUNSWICK

In conjunction with Mid Coast Hospital and Penobscot Bay Medical Center, Maine Behavioral Healthcare in Brunswick has begun a flagship addiction program that they hope is emulated throughout the state.

The EMBARK program focuses on multiple levels of treatment on a patient-by-patient basis. Amy Safford of Maine Behavioral Healthcare stresses that the goal of EMBARK is to provide a safety net for those in need of help, and to foster awareness that substance abuse and addiction are not a choice, but a serious disease.

“It’s more about brain chemistry,” Safford said. “The first decision to use is voluntary, but after that it’s no longer. These people need to be helped.”

The program consists of three treatment levels and serves the most acute patients going through detox, and helps those going through lifelong substance abuse battles.

Level one is the most acute, in hospital detox care at Pen-Bay’s PARC unit. Level two, known as intensive outpatient, involves 3-4 days of treatment a week and is a combination of group therapy and one-on-one therapy at Mid Coast Hospital’s Addiction Resource Center. Level three consists of substance abuse counseling at MBH’s Rockland office. All three of these programs include Medication Assisted Therapy. Safford said that suboxone is the most commonly used medication for opioid addiction, which has been an epidemic in the state of Maine for years.

“We hope to serve 100 additional people over the next 12 months,” Safford said, adding that a lot of the people in treatment suffer from mental disorders alongside of their substance abuse problems, and that these two issues often go hand-in-hand.

“The EMBARK program differs in that it is a medication-assisted treatment program specifically for people in recovery from severe opioid disorders,” said Safford. “We are using a medication (suboxone) to enhance the psychosocial treatment approaches that we would otherwise use in treatment.”

This marriage of treating substance abuse and the psychological issues that stem from addiction is the main difference from previous programs.

“Where as before we would have

just treated patients right then and there, now we can evaluate them and determine what their need is,” Safford said, stating that the severity of addiction varies patient-to-patient. “It might not be just the standard outpatient treatment.”

Stafford said that the protocol now is to do a multi-layered assessment to establish the diagnosis of an opioid user. This includes urinalysis, recent physical reviews and prescription monitoring programs, where records are reviewed from previous medication providers. When the information is complete, the results are applied to American Society of Addiction Medicine criteria to determine what level of care is appropriate.

“Following the initial assessment, the client is seen by our psychiatrist who prescribes the medication,” Safford said.

Extra costs for EMBARK were minimal, Safford pointed out, because the program was started within an already existing addiction treatment service. Costs that did incur were centered around staffing the program and ramping up the service.

“We are able to serve many more people because of the collaboration we have with the community,” Safford said. “The more that people get behind the issue and understand what addiction is, the more resources will come together. It really takes everyone, from police to state government to prescribers. This is just the beginning and we’re trying to replicate this program across the state.”

For more information on EMBARK program, visit mainebehavioralhealthcare.org.

bgoodridge@timesrecord.com