Most treatment programs for drug and alcohol abuse in South Carolina include family counseling. These programs are most significant in the following instances:-

• When a young person is with an addiction, his or her parents or guardians are included in the family counseling program.
• When an adult is with an addiction, then the spouse is a definite part of the family counseling program and if there are dependent children, they are included too.
• When an elderly person is with an addiction, their caretakers within the family are included in the family counseling program.

The need for the inclusion of the family in the overall addiction treatment is because the addiction treatment program in South Carolina clearly outlines drug and alcohol abuse as a social disorder and not an individual disorder. Substance abuse resources in South Carolina have estimated that a single person’s addiction can affect at least four other people in a very significant manner, and mostly these people are the family members.

Families need to be trained on how to cope with the addiction of a particular member. If this is not done, the family will unwittingly push the person further into the addiction, and there may be psychiatric and emotional issues developed in the members of the family as well. For example, there may be arguments and tensions in the family which may account for problems like hypertensions and worse even among the non-addicted members.

On the other hand, if the family is trained properly, they can be a veritable source of treatment support for the patient. This is what the family counseling program in the state of South Carolina tries to achieve.