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Denton County, Texas to Implement and Fund Hythiam's First County Level PROMETA(R) Treatment Program for Substance Dependence Among Probationees

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 September 2007, 09:03 CDT

Hythiam, Inc. (NASDAQ:HYTM) today announced that Denton County Community Supervision and Corrections Department (CSDS) has approved the implementation and funding of the PROMETA® Treatment Program for substance dependent criminal offenders under supervision. Located in Texas, Denton County has a population of approximately 600,000 individuals and includes portions of the rapidly growing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

Denton County's implementation follows a previously announced state legislative allocation of $2 million for Texas PROMETA®-based treatment programs within Texas. Additionally, Hythiam anticipates that a soon-to-be completed evaluation of the PROMETA® Treatment Program in Collin County will result in additional implementation and funding throughout Texas, and serve to further influence counties across the country.

"Our mission is to improve public safety and public health by reducing relapse and recidivism rates," said Honorable Carmen Rivera-Worley, District Court Judge for Texas' 16th Judicial District. "Criminal offenders who are addicted to drugs, especially cocaine and methamphetamine, are a very difficult population to manage. The difficulty in mandating compliance with the terms of their supervision among these individuals, often results in probation violations which needlessly increases the number we must remand to incarceration. We have seen strong indications of the utility of PROMETA® among criminal offenders from Collin County, Texas, and jurisdictions outside of Texas, as well. Thus, we are eager to work with treatment providers towards our mutual goal of recovery from addiction, and ultimately criminal rehabilitation."

Judge Rivera-Worley continued, "The costs and casualties that stem from substance dependence are not always easily visible to those looking at this epidemic from the outside. Of particular interest to me on a personal level is the negative cascade that occurs when a single parent is incarcerated for their drug or alcohol related problem. Foster-care systems like our Child Protective Services in Denton County are overwhelmed with children who are orphaned due to drug related incarceration. Successfully treating the parents of these kids will result in tremendous benefit not just to the children, but society in general."

"We see momentum for the adoption of the PROMETA® Treatment Program building across multiple counties and multiple states throughout the country," said Terren Peizer. "Speaking to this growing support is the fact that Denton County is the first county entity to adopt PROMETA® directly, based upon existing third-party data from the numerous public sources. We expect that the availability of near-term double-blind placebo controlled study data will greatly accelerate the current rate of adoption for the PROMETA Treatment Program across all business segments. In the interim, we look forward to helping Denton and other forward thinking entities rapidly put solutions in place to address the escalating criminal activities, healthcare costs, and societal costs that stem from untreated substance dependency."

Terren Peizer will be discussing this and other corporate developments in his presentation this afternoon at the Roth Capital Partners New York Conference, which is being held at the Westin New York at Times Square hotel in New York City, New York today and tomorrow -- September 5-6, 2007. The presentation will be webcast live at 2:30 PM ET this afternoon and archived for future reference on Hythiam's website at www.hythiam.com, as well as on the Roth Conference website at www.wsw.com/webcast/roth13/htm/.

About the PROMETA® Treatment Program

Hythiam's PROMETA® Treatment Program is designed for use by healthcare providers seeking to treat individuals diagnosed with dependencies to alcohol, cocaine or methamphetamine, as well as combinations of these drugs. The PROMETA® Treatment Program includes nutritional supplements, FDA-approved oral and IV medications used off-label and separately administered in a unique dosing algorithm, as well as psychosocial or other recovery-oriented therapy chosen by the patient and his or her treatment provider. As a result, PROMETA® represents an innovative approach to managing alcohol, cocaine, or methamphetamine dependence that is designed to address physiological, nutritional, and psychosocial aspects of the disease, and is thereby intended to offer patients an opportunity to achieve sustained recovery. To learn more, please visit www.prometainfo.com.

About Hythiam, Inc.

Hythiam, Inc. provides behavioral health management services to health plans, employers, criminal justice, and government agencies through a network of licensed and company managed providers. The company approaches the management of behavioral health disorders with a focus on using the latest medical and health technology towards improved outcomes and out-patient treatment. Hythiam also researches, develops, licenses and commercializes innovative and proprietary physiological, nutritional, and behavioral treatment programs. Hythiam offers disease management for substance dependence built around its proprietary PROMETA® Treatment Program for alcoholism and dependence to stimulants. The PROMETA® Treatment Program, which integrates behavioral, nutritional, and medical components, is available through both licensed treatment providers and company managed PROMETA® Centers. Hythiam does not practice medicine or manufacture, distribute, or sell any medications and has no relationship with any manufacturers or distributors of medications used in the PROMETA® Treatment Program. For further information, please visit www.hythiam.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for statements of historical fact, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking and made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect numerous assumptions and involve a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control that may cause actual results to differ materially from stated expectations. These risk factors include, among others, limited operating history and lack of statistically significant formal research studies, the risk that treatment programs might not be effective, difficulty in developing, exploiting and protecting proprietary technologies, intense competition and substantial regulation in the healthcare industry; and additional risks factors as discussed in the reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on its website at http://www.sec.gov.

Source: Business Wire

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