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 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. People who experience this phenomena 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 exacerbate each other and each disorder predisposes to relapse in the other disease. At times the symptoms can go beyond and even mask each other making diagnosis and treatment more difficult.
Several theories have been formulated to explain the relationship between psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems. Causality theory suggests that certain kinds 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. Moreover, the self-medication theory suggests that people 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 illustrate that nicotine could be useful for reducing 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. Furthermore, the patient tends to be in denial with one of the illnesses. A person diagnosed with a mental disorder may be in denial about the drinking or substance abuse. Or, the other way around could occur. The obvious substance abuse could hide the mental disorder. Therapists, psychiatrists, and professional counselors can have a difficult time identifying both illnesses due to psychiatric symptoms can be covered up by alcohol or drug use. In addition, alcohol or drug use, or withdrawal from alcohol or other drugs can mimic or give the manifestation of some psychiatric illnesses. Also, untreated chemical dependency could add to a reoccurrence of psychiatric symptoms, and untreated psychiatric illness could contribute to an alcohol or drug relapse.
One alcoholic from America shared that society can be a problem because alcoholism is not seen as an illness. Moreover, it looks like that they do not realize how useless 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 cured will keep on to fail at the attempt to get clean and sober. 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 epression. 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.