Editor’s note: This is the first in a series about Belmont Gardens Recovery Center and addiction resources in Warren County.

Residential recovery facilities for drug and alcohol addiction can be costly.

Some centers in Mississippi charge upwards of $20,000 for a traditional private unit 30-day treatment program — fees prohibitive for most.

Health insurance may cover some of the costs, but typically not all. Those with Medicare and Medicaid have fewer options for professional help.

“Very few private places will take Medicaid and Medicare at all — just a couple around the state,” Vicksburg physician Dr. Dan Edney said.

TREATMENT FOR ALL

Therefore, Edney has opened the Belmont Gardens Recovery Center, a private facility that will accept Medicaid and Medicare, as well as affordable private pay for those with limited or no resources and traditional health insurance.

“Just based on the need and the passion in my practice I have been wanting to do this, and COVID kind of pushed it,” Edney said.

Located at 3201 Wisconsin Ave., the Belmont Gardens Recovery Center is formerly Belmont Gardens, a long-term care facility, but Edney said the pandemic hit the industry hard, so he decided to “pivot.”

“It made it a good opportunity to pivot and move from it being a personal care home and renovating it and redesigning it to a residential treatment center for drug and alcohol treatment,” he said.

The Belmont Garden Recovery Center is a certified 54-bed facility. Separate living units are offered for male and female patients and each includes a bedroom, a small dining space and a refrigerator. Common spaces at the facility include a dining hall where three meals are served seven days a week. There is a peer recovery lounge with a big-screen TV and an outdoor courtyard, which is a relaxing area for those in treatment and for family that comes to visit.

Yoga and art therapy are provided for patients, as well as recreational work.

“Physical activity is a big part of recovery,” Edney said.

All levels of treatment are available at the local recovery center.

“We are certified for detox, we are certified for primary residential and certified for transitional residential,” Edney said.

The center is also certified in offering Intensive Outpatient treatment (IOP), Edney said, for those who are transitioning from in-patient treatment.

ROADS TO RECOVERY

Using a 12-step program, the Belmont Gardens Recovery Center has three different tracks of therapy, which will make them unique to the state.

“Right now, a big part of my focus and private practice is chronic pain created by opioid addiction,” Edney said. “We are already known for it in our clinical practice and now we have the residential program to facilitate even better treatment.”

Edney called treating chronic pain created by opioid addiction a “unique cohort.”

“It requires special treatment within the addiction world. If you treat just one of them, you are not going to do very well,” he said.

Currently, Edney said, no one in the state is focusing on this type of dual treatment, and he’s calling what the Belmont Gardens Recovery Center is doing a flagship program.

The second track of programing is working with geriatric patients, he said.

“We are also going to focus on the older patients with alcoholism and drug addiction, which there are a lot of them, and they are not getting very good treatment right now,” he said.

The third track includes traditional drug and alcohol treatment.

“So, we are focusing on three different groups of patients in the same cohort and making sure everyone gets the individual attention for whatever got them here, whether it’s the problems of getting older leading to alcohol abuse or pain pill abuse or the problem of chronic pain or recreational abuse that draws them down into the pit of hell. All three are very treatable if you know what you are doing and you do it right,” Edney said.

WHO THEY ARE

In addition to Edney, staffing will include therapists with Master of Social Work degrees and LCSW – Licensed Clinical Social Workers.

Serving as the director of clinical services, Edney said, is Pam Parker, who is a Registered Nurse. Jessica Sanders is the lead therapist, Tara Hasty is the administrative assistant and HR director and Ryan Eagles is the direct care staff supervisor and peer support specialist. Staff psychiatrists are Dr. Frank Perkins and Dr. Joseph Kwentus from the Precise Minds Psychiatric Group.

Edney said the Belmont Gardens Recovery Center is a dual diagnosis facility.

“We provide comprehensive psychiatric evaluation and treatment,” he said, for those suffering from addiction.