There are cases where circumstances in an individual’s life can make their behaviors problematic that it greatly affects the life they live. Somehow, substance abuse could possibly be a byproduct of a certain psychiatric disorder. A person afflicted with an anxiety disorder could also become dependent to oxycontin, which can give anyone the feeling of relaxation. Make sense?
The term dual diagnosis is defined as the co-occurrence of a mental illness and substance-abuse problem in a person. Individuals who experience a dual diagnosis often face a wide range of psychosocial issues and may experience multiple interacting illnesses. With dual diagnosis, both illnesses may affect the person physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually. The two illnesses interact with one another. The illnesses may aggravate each other and each disorder predisposes to relapse in the other disease. There are times where the symptoms can overlap and even mask each other making diagnosis and treatment very hard.
There are a number of findings that is discovered to give explanation relationships . Causality theory suggests that certain kinds of substance abuse can causally lead to mental illness. Findings on the origins of schizophrenia showed that it can also be a result of using cannabis. Moreover, the self-medication theory suggests that people with severe mental illness misuse substances in order to reduce a certain set of symptoms and counter the side-effects of antipsychotic medication. Some studies show that nicotine could be effective for decreasing motor side-effects of antipsychotics. Similarly, the alleviation of dysphoria theory suggests that individuals with severe mental illness commonly feels bad about themselves and that this makes them vulnerable to using psychoactive substances to alleviate these feelings.
Dual diagnosis presents a major problem because most of the time it is only one of the two interacting illnesses is identified. Moreove, the patient tends to be in denial with one of the illnesses. An individual diagnosed with a mental disorder may be in denial about the drinking or substance abuse. The other way around could happen. The obvious substance abuse could hide the mental disorder. Therapists, psychiatrists, and professional counselors are having a hard time identifying both illnesses due to psychiatric symptoms can be masked by alcohol or drug use. In addition, alcohol or drug use, or withdrawal from alcohol or other drugs can copy or give the manifestation of some psychiatric illnesses. Also, untreated chemical dependency could contribute to a reoccurrence of psychiatric symptoms, and untreated psychiatric illness could contribute to an alcohol or drug relapse.
According to one alcoholic, specifically in America, the problem is that society- including the medical community and criminal justice system- do not accept and treat alcoholism as a real illness. Moreover, it seemed that they do not recognize how ineffective it is to treat one illness but not the other. Medical professionals have the tendency to prescribe antidepressants to their patients without screening them for substance abuse. The addict/alcoholic whose depression is not treated will keep on to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Those with depression whose substance abuse is not detected will get sicker because alcohol is a depressant and with every sip they are throwing gasoline on their simmering bipolar. Consequently, it is difficult for these people to find appropriate treatment. Most substance-abuse centers do not accept people with serious psychiatric disorders and many psychiatric centers do not have the expertise with substance abuse.
Integration is the key to treat two disorders where collaborative decision-making procedure should happen between the therapy group and the patient.
