At NEOVIVA, recovery begins with safety, clarity, and trust. The first phase of treatment, stabilisation and withdrawal, requires careful medical oversight and a deep understanding of each client’s physical health status and psychological needs.
Dr. med. Andrea Dzaja, Medical Director, provides structured, calm leadership during this delicate phase, ensuring medical safety while maintaining each client’s dignity and autonomy. Her focus is on blending medical precision with compassion, offering the highest level of care when clients are at their most vulnerable.
At NEOVIVA, Dr. Dzaja embodies the clinic’s professional tone, always focused, precise and collaborative. She values different perspectives and encourages open, interdisciplinary dialogue.
An interdisciplinary career
Dr. Dzaja began her medical career in gynaecology and obstetrics, a field that demands technical skill and sensitivity to complex emotional contexts. She moved into psychiatry and neurology, deepening her interest in the connections between physical and mental health.
At the Max Planck Institute in Germany, she held a research position, investigating how hormonal cycles affect mood, sleep, and specific neurological symptoms as part of an EU-funded project. During this period, she completed specialist training in psychiatry and psychotherapy. After four more years as a medical doctor in the neurology department, she later led a large neurological-psychiatric centre in Munich and managed her own private psychotherapy practice.
“The clinical and the human aspects of psychiatry cannot be separated,” she says. “Scientific accuracy and empathy must coexist in every decision.”
The medical role at NEOVIVA
Since joining NEOVIVA in Switzerland, Dr. Dzaja has led the clinic’s medical framework. Primary responsibilities include the medical care of psychiatric symptoms and disorders, and the management of acute withdrawal syndromes. This involves psychiatric assessment, medication management, and addressing complex comorbidities, integrating them into addiction treatment.
Dr. Dzaja coordinates with external physicians and specialists and manages the clinic’s licensed pharmacy. Another key element of her role is ensuring every aspect of care aligns with stringent Swiss medical regulations and ethical standards, from pharmacological protocols to therapeutic planning.
In addition, she advances the clinical team’s professional development to maintain adherence to clinical protocols and maintain consistent, high-quality care.
Her leadership style is authentic, clear and consistent. She explains medical decisions, encourages input from the clinical and therapeutic team, and ensures shared understanding. This clarity and direction underpin the clinic’s collaborative approach.
“Interdisciplinary case discussions are essential,” she says. “We think together and we take responsibility together.”
Withdrawal as a therapeutic process
Withdrawal and detoxification are a core focus of Dr. Dzaja’s work. She explains this stage not only as a critical medical intervention but as the beginning of the psychotherapeutic process. Her approach, she describes as a “gentle detox,” focusing on medical safety, clear communication, and prevention of unnecessary distress.
Withdrawal plans are individually tailored according to medical history, substance use patterns, psychiatric presentation, and physical health. Some clients require a gradual reduction, others more immediate stabilisation, she explains. Her approach utilises pharmacological supports, vitamins and phytotherapeutic agents, and treatment of other psychiatric symptoms like depression. Preparing clients for therapeutic dialogue is central, she says.
“Detoxification is not only the reduction of substances,” she explains. “It involves helping clients recognise the psychological mechanisms that sustain dependence. Identifying the belief ‘I need this substance to function’ and distinguishing it from the self is part of recovery.”
Throughout treatment, recovery counsellors play a central role. Their lived experience fosters rapport and understanding that clinical staff may not achieve on their own. Recovery counsellors offer orientation and emotional support when clients feel vulnerable and unsettled.
Dr. Dzaja explains that their presence during the withdrawal phase is especially important because clients connect more easily, feel understood, and are not alone in what they are going through. It helps clients tolerate discomfort, avoid old coping patterns, and prepare for the deeper therapeutic work when they have someone by their side who truly understands what this feels like.
Perspective as a therapeutic tool
A recurring principle in Dr. Dzaja’s work is perspective. Clients often enter treatment with a fixed view of themselves or their situation. Psychotherapy changes this view, helps clients respond to emotions more flexibly, and enables them to adapt to challenges.
She illustrates this with a film analogy: the same scene appears differently depending on the camera angle. The situation remains unchanged, but the meaning shifts. The therapeutic task is to help clients adopt multiple internal perspectives.
“This does not mean ignoring reality,” she says. “It means recognising that emotional pain is often intensified by a narrow viewpoint. When perspective changes, the nervous system begins to settle, and clients gain more capacity to act rather than react. For example, this is essential for dealing with feelings of guilt and often leads to great relief.”
Addiction as separation from the self
In Dr. Dzaja’s view, addiction represents a disconnection from the healthy self. She rejects the idea that addiction is a moral failure or a lack of willpower. Instead, she frames addiction as a way to manage overwhelming or unprocessed emotional states. This unconscious avoidance pulls people away from their own inner resources and limits their capacity to deal with difficulties. It distances individuals from their ability to regulate and connect.
“Addiction often conceals unresolved experiences: grief, fear, helplessness, or betrayal,” she explains. “Recovery involves facing these experiences with support. The work is to restore the capacity to feel and connect again.”
“Healing often begins when individuals can stop identifying solely with the victim role and begin to approach themselves and others with compassion.”
Beyond verbal processing
Not all clients initially access their emotional states through language. This means not everyone is ready for verbal therapy. For this reason, NEOVIVA integrates art therapy, equine-assisted therapy, and body-oriented methods. “These methods help clients access emotions that may be difficult to articulate and support reconnection to sensory experiences that addiction often diminishes,” says Dr. Dzaja.
“These modalities do not replace psychotherapy. They complement it. Together, they create conditions in which emotional experience becomes more approachable, less threatening, and more integrated. Importantly, they can help reveal aspects of the client’s inner world that sometimes remain inaccessible in conversation.”
Scientific curiosity and emerging directions
Alongside her clinical work, Dr. Dzaja continues to engage in research on the neurobiology of stress and depression prevention markers. She is exploring how emerging technologies and AI can measure neurophysiological stress patterns. This work may one day support earlier detection and targeted intervention.
“The goal is not to reduce individuals to data,” she emphasises. “The aim is to enable individuals to recognise their negative stress levels in everyday life and intervene immediately. If immediate intervention is not possible, individuals can still reflect on them, thereby preventing long-term developments and adverse consequences, such as addiction. “It will offer greater clarity and understanding so that intervention becomes more timely, compassionate, and effective.”
The human element
Despite the complexity of her work, Dr. Dzaja values professional authenticity, believing warmth, calmness, and transparency build trust. She communicates consistently with both clients and colleagues, and encourages a culture of responsibility and thoughtful dialogue.
One observation is evident when meeting Dr Dzaja: her clinical precision is paired with a genuine warmth and openness.
Her focus and genuine love for her work are sustained by a constellation of simple elements: time in nature with her sons, delicious healthy food, lightness, mental fuel, her Bengal cats, and early mornings on Lake Lucerne. She values the luxury of a regular sleep rhythm and regards it as an essential component of both her professional and personal responsibility. Her professional clarity and passion are grounded in balance, authenticity, and joy.
A guiding principle
Dr. Dzaja describes her work as helping clients restore trust in their authentic selves.
She believes that everyone is whole in their healthy self, and that the task is to create the conditions in which that self can re-emerge safely, steadily and with dignity.
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