ABSTRACT
The overarching goal of the 2 × 4 Model clinic is to provide the highest standard of longitudinal evidence-based care for patients with any major mental illness in combination with any addictions, by one treatment team, under one roof. A central operational attribute of the 2 × 4 Model is the way that it binds together Diagnostics, Psychotherapies, Medications, and Communications into one integrated whole. Alcohol and opioid intoxication can impair cognition and consciousness, while their withdrawal states can produce severe anxiety, insomnia, and psychosis. Accordingly, pharmacological interventions that reduce the severity of intoxication and, more commonly, withdrawal states are relevant to interdicting the capacity of addiction to worsen mental illnesses. Experiencing psychiatric symptoms and then adopting the drug use rationalization that the self-medication hypothesis provides is a common dynamic that can fuel and propagate drug relapses. The 2 × 4 Model clinic should develop its own procedure for taking new and returning patients into the clinic.
