BACKGROUND
Recovery Boot Camp Drug & Alcohol Treatment Center in Delray Beach, Florida provides male patients with Residential, PHP, IOP and OP levels of treatment for drug, alcohol and co-occurring addictions. Key features of the program include a combination of rigorous coursework, life skills training, and team-building activities. Recovery Boot Camp grew out of Healing Properties Sober Living Community, which has been in operation since 2002 and provides men with a safe, clean, healthy, and structured sober living environment.
This report summarizes data reported by clients being treated at Recovery Bootcamp during the period between February 27, 2018 and June 15, 2018. This report was completed on June 27, 2018.
Demographics
Patients were mostly white (85%), and 62% were single or never married. The median age was 31. Only 12% held any kind of college degree, though over half (53%) had taken some college without receiving a degree. Most of the patients (71%) were in a stable living environment, though 13% were moving from place to place, and 9% had been homeless before entering treatment.
Appendix A contains detailed demographics of the patients submitting Intake questionnaires.
How Feeling Overall Before Treatment
72% of the patients entering treatment during this period reported feeling bad or terrible during the 30 days before beginning treatment:
What Brought Patients to Treatment
The majority of patients (58%) reported that they had started treatment because they became tired of living the way they were. 38% reported being asked to go to treatment by family or friends. Few were referred to treatment by the criminal justice system.
Alcohol or Drug Usage
Heroin was the primary drug of choice for 34% of the patients. There were also significant numbers using opiates (23%), alcohol (19%) and cocaine (17%).
Addiction Severity
Almost all (94%) of Recovery Boot Camp’s patients met the definition of having a severe alcohol or drug use disorder, and 66% of them reported having experienced all 11 of the DSM-5 SUD criteria in the year before starting treatment.
Previous SUD Treatment Episodes
Among the 47 patients, the large majority – 83% – had been in SUD treatment before, and 39% had been in treatment on 4 or more occasions.
Use of Medication Assisted Treatment
Only a very small portion of Recovery Boot Camp’s patients are using Opioid Maintenance Therapy:
Additionally, few are using Vivitrol or Naltrexone to control cravings:
Presence of Mental Disorders
As part of their Intake Questionnaire, the patients were asked a series of screening questions about the 30 days before they started treatment. If they answered one or more of the screening questions for a particular co-occurring disorder positively, they were then taken to a full academically-validated instrument to measure the severity of their symptoms of that disorder.
The majority of patients entering Recovery Boot Camp reported suffering moderate or severe symptoms of one or more co-occurring disorders in the 30 days prior to entering treatment.
INSIGHT stopped screening Recovery Boot Camp’s patients for mania or psychosis in mid-April, but there were results from the 34 patients screened in the first two months.
Eating Disorders
Additionally 21% of Recovery Boot Camp’s patients reported behaviors typically associated with eating disorders in the 30 days before starting treatment. The most common behavior was binge eating: either eating during the night after awakening from sleep or eating an unusually large amount of food after their evening meal and being distressed by the night eating (15%), or eating large amounts of food and losing control (6%). In addition, fasting (skipping two or more meals in a row) was reported by 11% of patients.
Suicidal Thoughts and Self-Harming Behaviors
Over half of the Recovery Boot Camp patients reported wishing they were dead or could go to sleep and not wake up in the 30 days prior to treatment. Almost a quarter (23%) of the patients had thought about how they might kill themselves, 13% intended to carry out a suicide plan, and 11% claimed to have actually prepared, started to or attempted to commit suicide in the month before treatment.
Only two (4%) of the Recovery Boot Camp patients reported harming themselves on purpose, such as by cutting themselves, in the month before starting treatment.
PROGRESS DURING TREATMENT
Improvement in Co-Occurring Disorders
During the time they were in treatment, the severity of the co-occurring disorder symptoms that Recovery Boot Camp patients were experiencing declined dramatically. The following graphs compare how the percentage of patients reporting moderate to severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD and mania declined between the intake and the last progress monitoring survey they submitted:
TREATMENT SUCCESS
Treatment Completion Rate vs. National Norms
Among the 31 clients discharged from Recovery Boot Camp during the period between February 27, 2018 and June 15, 2018, 20 (65%) successfully completed all recommended treatment and two (7%) successfully completed at least one level of care.
Reduced Suicidal Thoughts: By the time of discharge, none of the patients reported having suicidal thoughts, even though 53% mentioned having these at intake.
Because Recovery Boot Camp offers a continuum of care, there is no directly comparable national data. The closest comparison is to patients in long-term residential SUD treatment in the 2014 Treatment Episode Data Set – Discharges (TEDS-D). The median length of stay among the 114,257 patients in this group of 90 days is essentially identical to Recovery Boot Camp’s median length of stay of 91 days.
Recovery Boot Camp’s 72% completion rate is dramatically higher than the 44% completion rate reported for the patients who discharged from long-term residential SUD treatment in 2014.
Satisfaction with Treatment
Three-quarters (74%) of Recovery Boot Camp patients submitting ongoing progress monitoring surveys were very satisfied with the treatment they were receiving:
Sample comments from patients about the treatment they were receiving at Recovery Boot Camp are included in Appendix B.
APPENDIX A: PATIENT DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
| Characteristic | Total Recovery Boot Camp |
| Number of Patients | 45 |
| Gender: | |
| Male | 100% |
| Female | 0% |
| Age (years): | |
| Median | 31 |
| Range | 19–56 |
| Ethnicity: | |
| White, non-Hispanic | 85% |
| African-American | 9% |
| Hispanic/Latino
Native American Other |
2%
2% 2% |
| Marital Status: | |
| Married | 15% |
| Single, never married | 62% |
| Divorced | 19% |
| Separated | 4% |
| Highest Level of Education Completed: | |
| Attended high school, but have not graduated | 4% |
| Have graduated from high school or received a GED | 30% |
| Attended college, but have not received a degree | 53% |
| Associate's degree | 4% |
| Bachelor's degree | 4% |
| Master's degree | 4% |
| Employment Prior to Treatment*: | |
| Employed | 70% |
| Student | 6% |
| Neither (by choice) | 17% |
| Fired/kicked out | 4% |
| Other | 2% |
APPENDIX B: SAMPLE PATIENT COMMENTS
| Positive
Ex Girlfriend...Girlfriend (Whatever we are) had relapsed this past week and she finally went to detox so it was a huge relief to know she’s safe and I was able to get through it by applying what I’m already doing today and it feels amazing!! Thank you for all your help and I should be sponsoring guys REAL SOON!! |
| I’m grateful that I was able to stay at recovery boot camp for php and not just tossed out like other treatment centers would have done |
| Thank you Willow!!
|
| Why satisfied/dissatisfied with treatment: |
| Because of Mark and Dave |
| Cuz the staff is awesome |
| Everyone has been very helpful and supportive |
| Everyone's helpful, when I have questions, and supportive. Really helping the whole process and blew any skepticism I had out the water. |
| I usually never put the highest mark for anything. That would mean perfect. |
| It's working |
| Staff hold clients accountable and push them to work the program |
| This place saved my life... again |
Recovery Boot Camp Treatment Effectiveness Report ©2018 All Rights Reserved. Vista Research Group, Inc.