What to Consider When Choosing a Professional Addiction & Mental Health Interventionist

An Intervention is a clinical instrument used by addiction and mental health professionals daily to help increase the probability of a successful outcome. Intervention is specific strategies to address problematic addiction, mental health behaviors, or any other concern that must be corrected. The chosen strategies seek to achieve a specific goal to improve the problem, condition, or behavior. 

The addiction and mental health interventionist is part of the integrated professional intervention services team. In collaboration with the intervention coordinators, clinical staff, and aftercare team, the interventionist comes to your home to start executing the strategies to address the problem to achieve the set goals. It is impossible for an interventionist who operates alone or has one or two support staff to fulfill the obligations of what an intervention is by way of clinical definition.

Coming to someone’s home or coaching the family over the phone to perform a paid twelve-step call with a quick overview of the dos and don’ts of enabling is not an intervention, nor should anyone call themselves an interventionist with this approach. In-person, professionals should perform interventions with an integrated clinical team and family recovery coaching support staff that will support your family after the intervention.  

Local Addiction & Mental Health Interventionists

“The Number One Predictor of Successful Outcomes in Addiction and Mental Health Intervention, Treatment, and Counseling is the Client Counselor Relationship.”

A family member finds one of our state pages for our intervention services and inevitably asks, “Are You Local Here in Our Area”? The short and quick answer is yes, we are. Family First Intervention is a nationwide Addiction and Mental Health intervention services provider with professional Interventionists positioned throughout the United States.

Many family members are unaware that because we have an interventionist in your area does not mean the one near you best fits your family, your loved one, and your situation. More often than not, when families retain our intervention services, we may not send one of our local professionals based on the family dynamics, clinical assessment, or background of the loved one needing addiction and mental health treatment.

Addiction and Mental Health Interventionists are not widely and readily available, like therapists, doctors, lawyers, or any other needed professional. If someone doesn’t like the doctor in their area, they choose another one, maybe even in the same building or practice. You do not have the luxury of selecting a local interventionist like you do other professionals. If the one or two local interventionists you find are not the right fit for you, your family, your loved one, or your situation, you can’t just keep looking; they are not there.

“Studies have found that the right professional can get farther with a client with the wrong information and approach than the wrong professional can with the right information and approach.” 

Think about that for a second. Just because the interventionist is local does not mean they are the right fit for your family, and they may not be the right fit for your loved one or the problem. In addition to the client-counselor relationship being one of the number one deciding factors of a successful outcome, does your intervention services company have the resources to support your family and your loved one after the intervention? Will your local interventionist consisting of one or two people, have the time to offer multiple support groups throughout the week? How will your solo interventionist provide weekly meetings to address discrepancies found in working with your loved ones’ clinical team at the treatment center and your family?

If the interventionist you retain only has one or two people guiding your family after the intervention, will they be able to help you in times of immediate need? With so many things to consider, finding an interventionist that may be less expensive with minimal travel expenses may cost you much more later. 

Most interventionists families find are through treatment center referrals or local listings. Interventionists that work for or depend on treatment centers for referrals are often only delivering speeches to inspire your loved one into the center. Most of them do a great job at that and cannot offer support services afterward.

When considering an interventionist, the family should ask themselves what they are trying to accomplish. Intervention is a strategy to address a problem with a specific goal to achieve the desired outcome. If your only goal is to have a local person come and talk your loved one into treatment, then you should go that route. Suppose your family would like to address the problem and help the entire family that has been put through enormous stress and heartache. In that case, you should consider an intervention company with a family recovery coaching program with an integrated intervention team with multiple staff members. 

The easiest part of the intervention process is meeting with the family and the loved one with a substance use or mental disorder. The hard part is the family committing to the process and staying on track after the intervention. In addition to our 18 Interventionists, the Team at Family First Intervention has 11 intervention coordinators and Family Recovery Coaches to help before and after the intervention. Only one interventionist is needed to come to your home to intervene. When you look at it that way, you may realize where you should focus your attention and spend your resources when deciding who you allow to help you, your family, and your loved one.

Cost of an Addiction & Mental Health Interventionist

When we think of poverty, we immediately think of financial poverty. We know mental, emotional, and spiritual poverty is far worse than financial poverty. When we discuss the costs of interventions, we will focus on the forgotten mental, emotional, and spiritual costs.

You can pay less now financially and much more later mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as you find yourself no better off and often worse than before if you go down the wrong path or choose the way of inaction. Selecting an inexpensive interventionist that only focuses on your loved one going to treatment is as detrimental as paying large amounts of money for a long, drawn-out process that keeps the addiction and mental health problem going at the expense of the family’s sanity and your loved one’s safety.

Most people do not cut corners on costs regarding something important. When someone wants something bad enough, they find a way to get it. This is not always the case with addiction and mental health intervention and treatment.

One of the primary reasons for this is the mental and emotional state of those affected by their loved ones’ addiction and mental health behaviors when attempting to make rational decisions. Families often make decisions through the lenses of codependency, dysfunctional family roles, and fear. Others make decisions based on being the primary enabler. The enabler and other family members who have adopted unhealthy family roles are more worried about what will happen to them due to the intervention than they are concerned with what will happen to their loved ones. 

“The enabler and other family roles do not see the intervention as a solution being provided to them. They see the intervention as their solution being taken from them.”

Families in a flooded and biased emotional and mental state are vulnerable. They are often willing to go with the solution that feeds the comforting narrative, even if the cost is more expensive. In our experience, families will pay more for an intervention service company that does less than one that does more. Families will pay more if they feel they don’t have to change; only their loved one does.

Families would prefer to control the intervention by doing it themselves while being coached over the phone. The coached intervention and do-it-yourself approach allow the family to stay in their dysfunctional family role while avoiding having to look at themselves. Not having a professional present feeds the false narrative that the family controls the therapeutic confrontation with their loved one. Interventionists who prey on these vulnerabilities by offering soft solutions while assisting families to kick the can down the road with coached interventions and long-drawn-out encouragement approaches contribute to the ongoing dysfunctional family system with little to no insight into improving themselves.

The more the family is led to believe they can continue to control the substance user and drag out the process, the more they will pay for that. This is why coaching interventions and long-drawn-out interventions that allow your loved one to remain in control are so profitable. They are much easier for the interventionists, and the family continues to pay for ongoing efforts that could be applied much more efficiently and cost-effectively with quicker results. 

What you can’t do when you do interventions correctly is avoid the immediate positive change that families would prefer to run from. Families fear an intervention’s unknown outcome more than the current situation. This fear allows families to hang on to their dysfunctional family roles like an addict or alcoholic hanging onto their addiction.

The family believes their way of doing things is effective like an alcoholic or addict believing the same. Families have a much more difficult time in our aftercare program when their loved one accepts help than when their loved one declines help. We know this, and we see this every day. Interventions that do not consider this or make this a priority are not interventions and are a disservice to family and loved ones. 

 “Families often ask us, what if our loved one says no. The real fear isn’t what if they say no. The real fear is what if they say yes.”

Families have been living with a no to addressing the problem for quite some time and have adapted to the no. Maladaptive family roles have formed to cope with the dysfunction and day-to-day insanity. Families are in uncharted waters when an intervention ends with your loved one undergoing treatment. Everything the family has known has been disrupted, and a new way of coping must be relearned.

The dysfunctional family system must rebalance itself as it returns to health, which takes time. As your family system is healing and your loved one is in treatment, the family must look at themselves, and the loved one’s addiction and mental health struggles are no longer to blame. In other words, hiding the family’s dysfunction behind addiction or mental health is no longer an option, and families struggle with that.

We understand this is not easy, and if other approaches were practical, we would offer them, and there is a reason we do not. We could schedule many more interventions and increase our revenue by providing intervention services that cut corners that do not help the family. Interventionists who make it all about the addict or alcoholic and not about the family are telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear.

Having done interventions since 2005, we have seen and tried every approach, and, in the end, they all end up requiring a face-to-face intervention that involves the dysfunctional family roles being addressed with ongoing family support groups and services. Trying to reinvent the intervention wheel for money and comfort for the professional is unfair to a vulnerable family system that is none the wiser.

Hiring a Professional Addiction and Mental Health Interventionist Considerations & Checklist

A solo person with little preparation and little to no support services after the in-person intervention while only attempting to talk your loved one into treatment is not an interventionist; they are getting paid for a twelve-step call.

Suppose your interventionist has convinced you to allow them to coach you over the phone or via video chat on how to do your intervention. In that case, your doctor can coach you on healing your ailments, or your lawyer can teach you how to defend yourself in court over the phone or video conference. If you’re paying for a long-drawn-out process that leaves you in limbo for months while your loved one runs the show and attempts various treatment options and levels of care, you can do that too for a large fee. Our point is, let’s not reinvent the wheel of what works. 

“An Interventionist that does not primarily focus on the family is Nothing More than a Paid Twelve Step Call.”

An intervention is about helping a family change their behaviors and the environment, contributing to your loved one not wanting help or asking for help and not hitting bottom. It is about supporting the family regardless of the outcome after the intervention so the family can learn how to detach with love and know they did everything they could to help themselves and their loved one.

Our intervention families have been on the merry-go-round with their loved ones for years. How is the family or having someone talk your loved one into treatment different from what you already have done? If your interventionist and their support staff are not helping your family address the behaviors assisting in this merry-go-round, never stopping, everything will be the same.  

Effective communication is essential. Family members who are not on the same page can and will compromise the outcome of the intervention. Families will benefit from being on the same page and understanding the effectiveness of not rewarding bad behavior.

A professional intervention cannot accomplish its goals in one or two meetings. Although the family day and face-to-face intervention are approximately 2-3 days, the ongoing family recovery coaching is not; it is much longer. Ongoing family recovery is vital to send a clear message of what the problem is and how it needs to change. Families can apply what they are learning in real time as the volatility of their emotions and their loved ones’ behaviors play out after the intervention.

When families are engaged in their recovery after the intervention, it helps them understand that if they’re not setting boundaries, holding their loved one accountable, and taking care of themselves while considering the rest of the family in their decisions, they’re doing what they have always done. When you do what you have always done, you will receive what you always have.

When reading some of the suggestions below regarding choosing an interventionist, please remember that some may need to be clarified for you. Your family is most likely looking for a professional through the lenses of codependency, control, enabling, dysfunctional family roles, and maladaptive coping skills. Families almost always instinctively look for a professional, like someone with addiction and mental health struggles, who looks for their solution. The common denominators are shortcuts and quick fixes that feel less difficult and contentious.

Families and their loved ones will almost always go the route that feels most comfortable and less likely to make their loved ones mad. If we have learned one thing about addiction and mental health recovery, we have learned that if there isn’t fear, anxiety, and anger in the solution, it is probably an easy one that will not work in the long run. If your loved one is mad at you, you are probably helping them get better. If your loved one is happy with you, you are probably helping them stay sick. 

• Please make sure you aren’t being left behind as a family. Your interventionist and the staff must have an aftercare curriculum for the family. If your interventionist has this, please ensure it is included in the price, and you are not nickel and dimed every time you need help or guidance.

• Please beware of the Coached Intervention, which is done by guiding a family over the phone to do their intervention. This feeds the family’s codependency and contributes to why an in-person professional interventionist is needed. This sounds good and feels good, and it isn’t good. This approach may work for a few, and it is an approach that is easy for the interventionist and the family, and easy solutions to interventions and addiction and mental health treatment do not exist.

• Please ensure your intervention services company has a support staff. Even if your interventionist can offer aftercare services, will they be there when you need them? About half of our monthly interventions are cleaning up the shortcuts of other interventionists. Most of these are due to the coached intervention approach, the long drawn-out encouragement approach, and the fact that there wasn’t someone available when the family needed them most. 

• Do not pay for a twelve-step call. Solo interventionists without insurance, office, or experience have flooded the field. Many still need to get a business listing or a professional website. Most are people new to recovery with a passion for saving others, which is excellent. These are not interventionists and can only talk your loved one into treatment. They are not capable of helping your family, nor do they have the clinical background and education to do so. If you go this route, the service should be free as part of the twelfth step of Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous. 
  
  One way to weed out the professionals from the inexperienced is to ensure the interventionist is Legit Script Certified on their website. Legit Script is a rigorous vetting process to prove you are a real business with insurance and listed with the state in order to advertise on Google and social media. If your interventionist does not have this, they either could not obtain it or did not get through the vetting process when they tried.

• Do not get sucked into extended, drawn-out models that cost you enormous money. This approach allows your loved one with substance use and mental disorder to make various treatment attempts hoping it sticks along the way. The most frequent complaint we receive from families utilizing this approach is they are tens of thousands of dollars in, haven’t even met with a professional face-to-face yet, and their loved one is still trying things on the family’s emotional and mental dime. Sometimes this model may be appropriate, and the times are very few and far between. Interventions should be done over three days in person with the family and the loved one with mental health and addiction problems. Please remember that ongoing family support should be included in the price.

“When Interventionists offer family support after the intervention and charge additional fees whenever you need help or speak with them, they take advantage of you. Imagine if your loved one went to treatment for a flat fee and then had to pay for each group and therapy session or any time they needed something; how many groups would they attend, and how often would they ask for help”?

At Family First Intervention, our entire Intervention & Family Recovery Coaching Program is a flat fee (other than travel expenses) for the same reason your loved one’s treatment is all one price. If we offered it to you on a pay basis, you wouldn’t take advantage of the curriculum. If we charged you every time you needed something, you wouldn’t call. Interventionists who offer their family program under this guise are not truly vested in your family’s recovery. They know you will likely not pay and attend your needed coaching and therapy sessions, nor will you call. In addition to being nickeled and dimed for needed help after the intervention, read your interventionist’s contract. Most Interventionists offer what appears to be a reasonable fee for the intervention and then charge you for the transport or sober escort when your loved one accepts help in addition to more costs for the support afterward.

Many things make the job of an interventionist difficult. Of all the challenges we face, nothing makes helping your family and loved ones more difficult than a family who has tried ineffective intervention strategies and treatment selections before bringing us in. The more you address the concerns through distorted lenses, the less confidence and faith you will have in the intervention and treatment process.

How Our Intervention Services Are Different

We cannot count how often a family has said they have done an intervention that didn’t work. Almost every time this happens, it is because the family did the intervention without a professional or they hired an interventionist who claimed to be a professional and wasn’t. Never once did any of these interventionists they hired or who had coached the family over the phone offer an ongoing and in-depth family program. Families who only focus on substance use and mental disorders and professionals who do the same do not address the environment that keeps everyone from moving towards a successful outcome.

In addition to the client-counselor relationship, the environment for addiction and mental health disorders is a tie for the number one predictor of outcomes. Interventionists who do not address this leave the door open for relapse for both family and their loved one. If nothing changes, then nothing changes.

At Family First Intervention, we could undoubtedly offer coached interventions. We could expand our services and offer sober coaching, sober escorts, interventions that take six to twelve months to complete, and intervention training, but we don’t. We offer an intervention service that works and does not cut corners on the environment, the client-counselor relationship, and the importance of moving the family into recovery.

We do one thing and do it well and do not need to add additional services that prey on the codependent fears and vulnerabilities of the families who need us. Having done addiction and mental health interventions since 2005, we have failed many times early on by trying other models and approaches. We see what works, and we know what doesn’t. What we offer works, and families and their loved ones can get better if they let us show them the way.