What is Dual Diagnosis: Everything
You Need to Know
It’s not easy living with an addiction. You spend most of your time thinking about obtaining and using drugs and you hardly have enough time or energy to do anything else. It drives your life and consumes you. Addiction affects your health, your reputation, your career, and even your relationships.
For those with a mental health disorder, this becomes even more difficult to live with. Having either condition is difficult enough. Imagine having to deal with the effects of addiction on top of dealing with the effects of a mental disorder. It’s easy to see how someone with this type of condition could get overwhelmed.
It’s hard to watch someone you love struggle with this kind of situation. They may feel hopeless or powerless over their own life. This cycle is very difficult to break. That is why they need professional treatment.
What is a Dual
Diagnosis?
Dual diagnosis is when a person suffers from addiction and mental health disorders simultaneously. Because of the connection between substance abuse and mental illnesses, dual diagnoses are actually more common than you may think.
Mental health conditions that usually co-occur with substance use disorder are the following:
Treatment
for Mental Illness:
How Does it Work?
Before we dive deeper into dual diagnosis treatment, let us talk about how treatment usually works for those who are suffering with a mental disorder.
Psychotherapy is most commonly used for the treatment of mental disorders.
How Does Treatment
Work for Dual Diagnosis?
If a person with a mental health disorder also happens to have a co-occurring addiction or substance use disorder, what they need is dual diagnosis treatment.
While there are plenty of treatment options for addictive disorders and even severe mental illness, there aren’t a lot of treatment providers that specialize in dual diagnosis.
What to Expect
from a Dual Diagnosis
Treatment Program
Treatment works differently for everyone. That is because everyone experiences addiction differently. Especially in cases of dual diagnosis, no two patients are exactly the same. There are so many factors at play: what kind of drug they were taking; how much and how often they were using it;
Dual Diagnosis
Treatment Center near Me
Now that you know what to expect from a dual diagnosis treatment program, it’s time to talk about what to look for in a treatment provider. Not all facilities are built the same.
For starters, if the patient struggles with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental disorders, you need to find a treatment facility that offers dual diagnosis care.
Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Disorders
Like we mentioned earlier, mental health and substance abuse have a close relationship. This is the reason why dual diagnosis is such a common problem.