One Treatment, No Cure

Drug addiction and mental illness often occur together. When people abuse drugs, it’s usually a form of self-medication. Self-medication may temporarily relieve some of the symptoms associated with mental illness such as anxiety, stress, and depression, but even medical professionals will tell you it’s difficult to point out both problems at the same time.

Self-medicating when you have a mental illness is a slippery slope. Often drugs exacerbate mental illness by worsening the symptoms or cause the mental illness to appear sooner than it would have otherwise. Some medical specialists in addiction believe that mental disorders are symptoms of drug addiction, while mental health practitioners beg to differ. It’s a case of which came first – the mental health disorder or the addiction?

In 2002, the Department of Health placed the responsibility for dual diagnosis clients within mental health services in the form of the Dual Diagnosis Good Practice Guide. Make no mistake, supporting someone with a mental health illness as well as a substance abuse problem is one of the biggest challenges facing mental health services, and clients often fall between the cracks.

It is known that brain diseases share biology. Since addiction and mental illness are both brain diseases, they involve the same brain chemicals and pathways. For example, serotonin transporters are associated with both mood disorders and alcoholism.

A well known study done in 1990 reported a dual diagnosis prevalence of 53 percent for problem drug users and 37 percent for problem alcohol users. A more recent study in 2004 found a prevalence of 60 percent for independent mood disorders and 43 percent as having at least one anxiety disorder.

Note that neither analysis takes into account those with a diagnosis of personality disorder — a disorder that is becoming more widely recognized as having a significant impact upon drug and alcohol abusing individuals.

Mentally ill patients with substance dependency and abuse carry a burden that can cause them to drop out of mental health treatment centers as clients who didn’t have any substance addiction problems which can become a future predicament.

Awareness is the key It is important that a medical professional dealing with a dually diagnosed patient address to both disorders in a way that’ll be fruitful for the whole. Treating one disorder will mean nothing. Awareness of both disorders is crucial. Without awareness there is no understanding and treatment.