How Much Does an Intervention Cost?

When someone we love is suffering from the damaging and life-changing effects of an addiction disease, we can often feel powerless.  How can we help them?  What are the steps to creating a change in an individual’s life without pushing them further away?

In recent years, the process of an intervention has answered these questions and more.  Hiring a professional interventionist can make a world of difference in the lives of the addict and their family.  The costs of hiring an interventionist to help you perform an intervention the right way can be broken down into several aspects.

Creating the Right Environment

There is more to an intervention than simply asking for your family member’s time and approaching them with your concerns. 

There are three main phases to an intervention:

  • The research and planning phase. This involves learning about the extent of the disease, forming the recovery team and the intervention team, and creating a plan.
  • The intervention. This involves the actual meeting with the addict. In the intervention, you’ll discuss the issue and express concern for the addict in a face-to-face meeting, establishing consequences and benefits.
  • The follow-up. It’s important to follow up on the intervention, ensuring the addict is headed to a treatment center. If they aren’t, then they must face the consequences laid out in the intervention.

During an intervention, the person suffering from addiction may feel ambushed or trapped.  This attitude may cause tempers to rise and injury to the emotional well-being of everyone involved.  To avoid this, a professional interventionist will spend pre-intervention time with the family for purely educational purposes.  After careful consideration is given to who will be a part of the intervention team, the family and friends will learn about their loved one’s addiction disease and the effects that it has on how this individual thinks and reacts to challenges.

In addition to drug addiction education, the interventionist will help the family and friends write detailed letters to the addicted individual.  This will help focus the attention during the intervention and keep the process from going astray.  It is crucial to have a treatment facility ready and waiting for the addict should he or she choose to enter rehab. 

A trained interventionist can help the family find an appropriate facility and arrange for admittance.

Are Interventions Usually a Package Deal?

The cost of this service varies between individual professionals and services; however, you can expect to pay a flat fee for the intervention as well as cover the costs for the interventionist’s travel, lodging and meals. Some interventionists opt to charge an hourly fee rather than a flat fee. If a flat fee is charged, it should cover the planning aspects as well as potentially follow-up care.

In some cases, there are specific rates applied to particular activities; however, the amounts for travel or per diem for hotels and meals may fluctuate.  Be sure to work these details out in advance as they may cause confusion after the fact.

Transportation for your loved one to the treatment facility is also not covered by the costs of an intervention.

Should your loved one decide to take advantage of the family’s efforts and enter rehab, the family is responsible for either transporting them to the treatment center or paying an additional daily rate to the interventionist if they are going to accompany your loved one to the treatment facility.

The cost of the actual treatment is also not included in the price of an intervention.  How much an individual family chooses to spend for the treatment center is a personal decision. Those costs will be determined by the treatment center and billed directly to the individual contracting for the service.

In some instances, insurance may cover a portion of the costs, and many facilities offer financing plans to help the financial burden become more feasible.