Women residents: expanding their role to increase treatment effectiveness in substance abuse programs.

It has long been noted that chemically dependent women have special needs that differ from the needs of chemically dependent men. A therapeutic community model, which has been found effective, suggests several changes in traditional treatment approaches. After intervention with our female-based therapeutic model, several positive changes occurred. Extremely disproportionate populations of males and females began to even out, with female residents' length of stay increasing dramatically. Length of stay for male residents also increased by a significant amount. Success of treatment, as measured by the number of drug-free ex-residents, also increased significantly for male and female populations.