Dual Diagnosis Presents a Challenge for Professionals

What is dual diagnosis? It generally means more than just having more than one thing wrong with you. The most common use of the term is to describe someone suffering from a mental illness as well as a substance abuse problem.

This category of person requires special treatment because getting them to stop consuming is not the only goal.

Dual diagnosis treatment also requires that the person afflicted stop using drugs so that an accurate diagnosis can be made. Until this is done, it is hard to separate the symptoms of mental illness from the effects of the drugs. Only when the person has gotten the drugs out of their system can a realistic assessment of their mental health be done.

A drug like cocaine, for example, can induce a form of psychosis when the amounts being consumed are great enough. The person can hear voices, have hallucinations, or go into a situational depression.

If after this, they are still given a dual diagnosis, then the next step is to treat both the addiction and the other mental illness.

It is common for people coping with a mental illness such as schizophrenia or depression to also become addicted to drugs. The drug use can be an attempt on the part of the person to cope with their illness. Unfortunately, this ends up complicating treatment when they have a dual diagnosis.

The thing that most people don’t understand about dual diagnosis is that a mental illness combined with a drug dependence doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.

Having someone with a dual diagnosis treated for their mental condition won’t be any means guarantee that they will have improved chances of stopping their drug consumption. And having someone with dual diagnosis get treatment for the drug addiction won’t necessarily improve their mental health diagnosis.

One approach to handling dual diagnosis situations is to integrate treatment of both disorders into a common program for recovery. This takes into account that the combination of two or more problems means that new strategies are required.