Already having a positive image with many other nationally renowned therapists, treatment centers, physicians’ health programs, and medical boards, the client population began to slowly grow on our campus. Known for cutting edge treatment, all staff are trained in trauma resolution techniques such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), motivational enhancement therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Physicians and other medical staff stay abreast of pharmaceutical assistance research.
Santé was committed to treating everyone with dignity, accepting and supporting patients that would be treated as a hopeless diagnosis elsewhere. In the years Santé was founded, people with mental health diagnosis and accompanying addictions had few options for comprehensive help. Unique communities, like the LGBT community, had few places to go where they would be safe and interact with staff trained to work with the complex issues they were facing.
Santé wanted to offer inclusive, comprehensive, and impactful therapy for long-term recovery and at a reasonable price. Patients came (and have been coming since) from across the US and Canada.
As Santé grew in those early years, their research and program implementation indicated that sexual compulsion/addiction did not “travel alone.” Santé found that cross-addiction and dual diagnosis was/is common. As National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) stated, “Comorbidity also implies interactions between the illnesses that affect the course and prognosis of both.” Moreover, according to SAMHSA, addiction has become the leading healthcare cost in America, where more than 19.5 million Americans over the age of 12 years old are currently illicit drug users.
Always committed to education, Santé conducted research, had numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and offered numerous educational workshops for professionals. In 1999, Rip and Deb consulted with the Center for Professional Health at Vanderbilt and were then invited to facilitate the Maintaining Proper Boundaries Continuing Medical Education course. After several years of Santé’s co-sponsorship with Vanderbilt, the course is now offered in collaboration with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
In the years since that very first day in 1996, community and addiction organizations have recognized Deb, Rip, and other key Santé leadership for their research, efficacy, and commitment to the field. But it was never about the awards and accolades then or even today, 25 years down the road. It’s about lives changed and saved.
The goal has been to do what is best clinically for Santé’s patients toward achieving long-term recovery while maintaining a slow sustained growth to increase support opportunities. Still owned by the same families who founded Santé, today’s high-caliber recovery continuum of care extends the spectrum of acuity needs from assessments, medical detox, residential treatment, intensive outpatient treatment, transitional living, Intensives Workshops, Boundaries Course, monitoring, and life-long alumni support services.
Collaboration, innovation, and a more extensive recovery continuum of care continue to evolve in the spirit of excellence, yet the organization has not lost its sense of self. The values remain the same: 12 step foundation; evidence-based therapeutic and medical treatment; expert staff pursuing ongoing education/certification; individualized, customized care in a supportive, therapeutic community; working on the core trauma-level issues underlying addiction; and simultaneous treatment for poly-addiction and dual diagnosis. The result… 25 years of miracles, one day at a time. We are proud of our distinguished past. And it is to the future we look for even greater achievements