Overall, 62% were women, and Black individuals were well represented, comprising 77% of the sample, compared to 11% White, and 8% Latino. The average participant had 12 years of education, corresponding with a high-school diploma, and 44% entered the study with a history of criminal justice system involvement. Information regarding participants’ substance use history, including substance use disorder diagnosis, was not reported. Of course, no one particular type of treatment setting is appropriate for all individuals.

• Neither can an Oxford House function if some do not pay their fair share of the costs.
• Detoxification program readmission represents a potential indicator that services received have not facilitated sustained recovery.
• We found that larger house sizes of 8 to 10 residents corresponded with less criminal and aggressive behavior.
• No significant differences were found in relation to residents’ number of days in outpatient and residential psychiatric treatment, abstinence rates, and Oxford House residence status.

Every Oxford House member attributes his sobriety to Alcoholics Anonymous and/or Narcotics Anonymous. Each Oxford House member, as an individual, considers himself a member of AA and/or NA. Equal Expense Shared (EES) is generally between 80 and 160 dollars a week and includes utilities. Weekly business meetings are mandatory to discuss any issues that the house may be facing.

Alcohol Detox Stages: How Long Does Alcohol Detox Take?

In fact, Oxford House creates an environment whereby each member can more fully realize the benefits available from active AA or NA membership. A house full of sober, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts invites informal AA or NA “meetings after the meeting” and each day finds many informal AA or NA meetings before individual members each go off to their regular AA or NA meeting. Oxford House has as its primary goal the provision of housing and rehabilitative support for the alcoholic and drug addict who wants to stop drinking or using drugs and stay stopped. As of 2008, there were 321 women’s Oxford Houses with 2,337 women, and 982 men’s Oxford Houses with 7,487 men, for a total of 1,303 houses serving 9,824 people (Oxford House, 2008). Of the residents, 18% were veterans, and 91% were working with average monthly earnings of $1,480.

Clearly, psychologists with interests in community based support networks for substance abusers have ample research topics worthy of exploration, and this research may have public policy implications. Our research examined the nature and outcomes of the Oxford House model of substance abuse recovery. We worked with the needs of diverse groups, including ex-offenders, minority groups including Native Americans, and women and women with children. Our efforts involved a commitment https://ecosoberhouse.com/ to collaborative research with a grass-roots organization, assessing change at multiple levels with a multidisciplinary team of economists, biostatisticians, social, developmental, clinical and community psychologists. Less than 4% of our sample with Hispanic, and this led us to examine possible reasons for this under-representation. Alvarez, Jason, Davis, Ferrari, and Olson (2004) interviewed nine Hispanic/Latino men and three Hispanic/Latina women living in Oxford House.

Friends of Recovery Association

Often several members of an existing House will move into the new House to provide a core group of new members who already know how an Oxford House works. Failure to adhere to any of these three requirements would bring the entire Oxford House concept into question. Therefore, it is important that each Oxford House meet these minimum responsibilities in order for its charter to be continued. All Oxford Houses have been careful to avoid undo dependence on government or other outside funds.

The missing element for many patients is supportive settings following treatment for substance abuse, and the expansion of these types of settings is an important activity for psychologists. Vaillant (1983) noted that environmental factors may be key contributors to whether or not individuals maintain abstinence, and these factors include the support one receives for abstinence among their support networks. Moos (2006 Moos (2007) pointed to other individual, biological, and socio-environmental factors that predicted abstinence maintenance. Moos (1994) what is an oxford house maintained that effective interventions for recovering individuals might be those that engage clients and promote naturally-occurring healing processes, such as self-help based treatments. Abstinence-specific social support may be critical to facilitating abstinence among persons with substance use disorders. Such social support is often acquired and utilized through participation in mutual-help groups (Humphreys, Mankowski, Moos, & Finney, 1999), where individuals are likely to develop peer networks consisting of abstainers and others in recovery.

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Findings indicated that there were no significant differences between the crime rates around Oxford Houses and the control houses. These results suggest that well-managed and governed recovery homes pose minimal risks to neighbors in terms of criminal behavior. Finally, Mortensen, Jason, Aase, Mueller, and Ferrari (2009) studied this national sample of Oxford Houses for six years following the completion of our study in order to investigate factors related to whether the Oxford Houses remained open or closed. Results indicated a high sustainability rate (86.9%) during a six year period of time. Houses that remained open had significantly higher incomes of residents than houses that eventually closed. No other significant differences were found between the two groups of houses, including sense of community among residents, neighborhood or policy characteristics, and house age.

Together, the productivity and incarceration benefits yield an estimated $613,000 in savings accruing to the Oxford House participants. Individual characteristics determined criminal charges, as younger participants fared better in Oxford Houses, and older participants without a co-occuring disorder did equally well in both Oxford House or usual care groups. For all three other study outcomes (including abstinence), Oxford House outperformed usual care regardless of age or diagnostic status.