Welcome to the Odyssey Village. "We are healing children of addiction."

                    

      

The Flint Odyssey House is a Coed Facility                             The Saginaw Odyssey House  

Welcome to the Odyssey Village. The Odyssey Village is a consortium of wrap-around services that includes two psychiatrically-oriented longterm residential treatment programs for substance abuse; a work force development agency; two child development centers, and a health awareness center. The Odyssey Village was created from the old African proverb that, "It takes a village to raise a child" Here at the Odyssey Village we believe, "It takes a whole village to change one person's life in recovery." The Village includes two residential treatment programs in two cities. The Flint and Saginaw Odyssey Houses are both therapeutic communities and offer comprehensive substance abuse rehabilitation programs. The Flint campus is coed and the Saginaw campus is only for women.

 The Odyssey Method of Treatment was developed by Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber in the early sixties. Densen-Gerber believed that drug abuse was a symptom of a self-destructive pathology and other self-defeating behaviors. She believed that many addicts have underlying psycho-socio dysfunction. The drug abuse only camouflages the issue of a psycho-social spiritual pathology. They use alcohol and drugs to self-medicate. Case work after case work she developed the first psychiatrically-oriented program for substance abuse rehabilitation. The Odyssey Method of Treatment is based on professionally supervised open group confrontation and accountability. Therefore Odyssey encourages personal growth, character development, self-esteem evolution, and spiritual healing to replace drug dependency. The village concept stems from the need to offer residents a comprehensive and holistic form of treatment. It creates a focus on an extended family rather than your typical one on one professional counseling. The village concept is a community as a methodolgy, and more of a life-long relationship. The community or TC serves as a surrogate extended family. It provides residents the opportunity to be adopted into a healthy family structure that may or may not be in place prior to treatment. Odyssey believes the village concept expedites the recovery process.