The painful and stressful social experiences associated with a mental illness diagnosis are a central reason why such people turn to drugs and alcohol.
For many years substance use disorders and mental illness were generally construed as issues that were best treated separately. It was common that patients in psychotherapy for mental health issues, upon revealing significant substance use problems, would be referred out for substance use treatment and told to return when their substance use issues were treated—presumably rendering them “ready” to do the work of psychotherapy. As our understanding of the interconnection between “psychiatric” and “addiction” issues has improved, the treatment system has begun to change. But has that change gone far enough? Here, Dr. Ross Ellenhorn advocates for a broader view of both our understanding and treatment of the inextricable connection between mental health, addiction and the life circumstances into which they are embedded…Richard Juman, PsyD
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that approximately 43 percent of individuals with mental health symptoms also have a co-occurring substance misuse issue. Yet decades of research on co-occurring or dual diagnosis disorders have garnered very few answers about the nature of the relationship between these two behavioral concerns. We have, in other words, a chicken and an egg, and we know they’re related—but we don’t know how. In more scientific terms, we can be quite confident there is a correlation between psychiatric symptoms and substance misuse, but we don’t have a similar confidence about causation. That is a significant problem, since understanding the cause of this relationship would lead to more effective treatment.
[For more of this story, written by Ross Ellenhorn, go to https://www.thefix.com/role-ad...-occurring-disorders]
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