In response to a recent New York Times guest essay highlighting the enduring devastation of the opioid crisis, Odyssey House President and CEO Dr. Peter Provet underscores the urgent need for treatment approaches that keep families together. Drawing on decades of experience providing comprehensive, family-centered care—including Odyssey House’s Mother & Children program—Dr. Provet makes the case that supporting parents and children side by side is not only compassionate but essential to lasting recovery and breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma.
To the Editor:
Re “The Opioid Crisis Never Ended,” by Barbara Kingsolver and Tamara Reynolds (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 4):
The heartbreaking stories of opioid addiction, powerfully captured by the photographs and writing in this essay, too often end with families shattered and children separated from their parents.
In New York and across the country, there is an urgent need to expand treatment models that work with the whole family — parents and children together — rather than isolating addiction as an individual failing.
At Odyssey House, we see every day that mothers are far more likely to seek and stay in treatment when they can keep their babies and young children with them in a safe, structured, residential treatment setting.
Providing on-site child care, early childhood education, medical and mental health care, and parenting and built-in peer support not only fortifies recovery but also breaks the intergenerational cycle of trauma and substance abuse.
If policymakers are serious about addressing the intractable opioid epidemic, they must invest in family-centered treatment programs that prioritize keeping infants and young children with their mothers whenever it is clinically safe to do so.
Treating addiction as a family illness — and recovery as a family project — should not be optional; it is the standard of care our communities deserve.
Peter Provet
New York
The writer is the president and the C.E.O. of Odyssey House.