In many cases, certain conditions of people could push them to do certain behaviors that could also posses a problematic effect onto them most especially with their health. Somehow, substance abuse could possibly be a byproduct of a certain psychiatric disorder. A person afflicted with an anxiety disorder could also become addicted to oxycontin, which is able to give the person a relaxing feeling. Make sense?
The term dual diagnosis is defined as the co-occurrence of a mental illness and substance-abuse problem in a person. People who experience this phenomena often face a wide range of psychosocial issues and may experience multiple interacting illnesses. In 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 go beyond and even mask each other making diagnosis and treatment more difficult.
There are a number of findings that is discovered to give explanation relationships . Causality theory suggests that certain types of substance abuse can causally lead to mental illness. Upon studying the causes of schizophrenia, it has been found that cannabis usage could causally develop schizophrenia. Self-medication theory adds that individuals with severe mental illness misuse substances in order to ease a specific set of symptoms and counter the side-effects of antipsychotic medication. Some studies demonstrate that nicotine could be effective for reducing motor side-effects of antipsychotics. Similarly, the alleviation of dysphoria theory suggests that people with severe mental illness commonly feels bad about themselves and that this makes them susceptible to using psychoactive substances to alleviate these feelings.
The problem with dual diagnosis is that most often, only one of the two interacting illnesses is identified. Furthermore, 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 apparent substance abuse could mask the mental disorder. Therapists, psychiatrists, and professional counselors can have a difficult time identifying both illnesses because psychiatric symptoms may be covered up by alcohol or drug use. Furthermore, alcohol or drug use, or withdrawal from alcohol or other drugs can copy or give the manifestation of some psychiatric illnesses. Also, untreated chemical addiction could add 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 looks like that they do not understand how useless it is to treat one illness but not the other. The tendency is that doctors may prescribe antidepressants to their patients without screening them for substance abuse. The addict/alcoholic whose depression is not cured 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 very hard for these people to come across 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.
