Nonprofit Opens Culturally Responsive Dual Diagnosis Center in Michigan

An Arab American nonprofit will open a new 53,000-square-foot recovery center in Dearborn in 2027. Dual diagnosis treatment is at the center of the model. The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, aka ACCESS, held a ribbon-cutting on September 23 for the ACCESS Recovery Center, a $25 million project for residents out in Michigan.

Families dealing with addiction and mental health conditions will find the building’s design matches its purpose. Co-occurring disorders are the rule rather than the exception and care that addresses only one side of the problem generally don’t work. ACCESS leadership described the center as an integrated model that combines substance use disorder treatment with the wraparound social services the nonprofit has spent decades providing.

Mental Health Links to Addiction

ACCESS CEO Maha Freij noted the vision for the center began when the organization’s director of community health and research raised the need to address opioid addiction in the Arab American community. The center turns heartbreak into action by pairing clinical care with education, prevention and outreach..

Integration is the piece people with co-occurring disorders often can’t find. Depression, anxiety and trauma frequently coincide with addiction. A person whose anxiety is untreated is at higher risk of returning to substance use and vice versa. Facilities built around dual diagnosis treatment tackle everything at once rather than forcing patients to choose.

ACCESS’s Features

The ACCESS Recovery Center will provide outpatient behavioral health treatment, urgent care, withdrawal management, crisis stabilization and 15 beds for residential treatment. The clinical and overnight services are new territory for ACCESS, which previously provided no residential care or drug withdrawal.

The funding picture reflects how much governments at every level now treat behavioral health. Most of the $25 million came from public sources from the state and local level. The City of Dearborn contributed five city-owned lots plus street paving and utility work.

Stigma Still Shapes Care

Freij noted that the Arab American community continues to face stigma around substance use treatment. ACCESS works with policymakers, faith-based organizations, schools and the criminal justice system on prevention and education. U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, whose family were once ACCESS clients, stated that dehumanization is too common when people fall into addiction or a mental health crisis. The center is meant to restore dignity.

Comprehensive Treatment in Michigan & Beyond

The Dearborn project is one example of a national shift toward behavioral treatment centers that treat the whole person. For people comparing options now, help exists in all 50 states. 

Getting started is made simpler with our browsable directory. We feature mental health treatment facilities and residential treatment centers across the country, including programs that specialize in co-occurring disorders. 

Feel free to also speak with an expert by calling 800-908-4823 (Sponsored) for help finding dual diagnosis treatment in any neighborhood.

Author

Terri Beth Miller, PhD

Author, Award-Winning Post-Secondary Teacher

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Terri Beth received her PhD in English literature from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and is an educator and disability studies scholar. For more than a decade, she has written extensively in the fields of mental health and addiction recovery and fiercely advocates for the destigmatization of mental illness.

Editor

Peter Lee, PhD

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Peter W.Y. Lee is a writer and historian of American history during the Cold War. His primary focus is the relationship between youth and popular culture and its impact on U.S. society during the twentieth century. He has published widely on how the public has used popular culture as a mechanism to address political and social shifts throughout time