Table 1 De Leon criteria [18, 19]

Planned duration of the treatment

The length of the treatment will be adjusted to the individual needs of each patient.

Alienation from the community

In a residential context, the patients will be kept away from the exterior community 24 h a day for at least some months, before acquiring privileges of permit

Community activities

Excepting the individual counseling, all the activities are scheduled i community with the other residents

Staff roles and functions

Independently of the professional function, each member has to fullfill the function of community member. For this reason, the mission from each member of the staff is to provide help and aids according to the method of community self-help

Residents as role model

The members who show expected conducts and capture the values, ideas and beliefs of the community are used as role model for the other residents

Structured day

The activities are daily planned in order to distract de residents from their cravings, thoughts about consumption and drugs, and also from the routine of their daily living

Job as therapy and education

According to the methodology of self-help, all the members are responsible of the daily management of the facilities. The work is distributed among the users creating responsibilities and duties with education and therapeutic goals

A vision of recovery and right living

There are some established concepts in the methods used by the Therapeutic community to instruct about topics around the rehabilitation and drug cessation through the self-help methodology

Meeting groups between residents

The common sense of conducting this kind of meeting is to create awareness in each patient about patterns and attitudes related to the pattern of consumption that could be identified sharing their experiences with other residents of the community

Awareness training

The main goal of all the therapeutic or educational is to increase self-awareness of the individual about the consequences, impacts and repercussions of their previous conducts and attitudes in themselves and in their social environment.

Personal growth training

To achieve this goal, the community should guarantee education and instructions to the patient of how to identify their own feelings with their respective management and expression in a constructive way and how to share them in community.

Care continuity

Fulfilling the treatment plan, with the goals of increasing self-awareness and change of their vision based in the community and self-help method is the firs step. After this, a network between the user and community should be established in order to keep the process of continuous personal and growth and providing personal experiences to newcomers.