How Is Dual Diagnosis Treated?
January 8, 2008
Historically, addiction treatment programs, drug rehab programs and psychiatric hospitals, have treated dual diagnosis separately. This has not proved to be an effective addiction treatment approach and today most addiction treatment programs, drug rehabs and psychiatric hospitals treat both disorders concurrently.
- Ideally, drug addiction, alcoholism and psychiatric disorders should be treated simultaneously.
- The first step in addiction treatment for drug addiction or alcohol addiction must be detoxification or detox – a period of time during which the body is allowed to cleanse itself of alcohol and/or drugs and all withdrawal symptoms managed.
- Detox should be medically monitored as medical challenges do occur. Time in detox varies, depending on what substances the person is addicted to, the frequency of use and amount of usage.
- Once stable in detox, a psychiatrist will assess the person to determine the mental illness and how to best address it. Addiction treatment programs or drug rehab programs for this population should take a gradual approach. Those with a dual diagnosis have to proceed at their own pace.
- The goal of any quality drug addiction treatment program or drug rehab program should be abstinence and medication compliance.
- After completing drug addiction treatment or drug / alcohol rehab, the person should be involved in psychiatric follow up and aftercare in the drug rehab or addiction treatment program they have completed in order to prevent relapse.
Denial is an inherent part of the problem with dual diagnosis. The person with dual diagnosis often does not have insight as to the seriousness and the scope of their problem. In many cases, an intervention is required to get the person into addiction treatment or drug rehab so the recovery process can begin
Dual Diagnosis Treatment and Substance Abuse
January 2, 2008
The term “dual diagnosis” may be new to your life and vocabulary or it may be something you are familiar with and have heard about before today. While not particularly well-known, dual diagnosis is more common than you might imagine. According to a report published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), “Thirty seven percent of people who suffer from alcohol abuse and fifty-three percent of people who suffer from drug abuse also have at least one serious mental illness, which creates a dual diagnosis. Of all people diagnosed as mentally ill, 29 percent abuse either alcohol or drugs (NMHA, 2005). “Dual diagnosis” is defined as an individual who has two separate but very interrelated diagnoses. For the purpose of this article, dual diagnosis means a person has both:
1. A psychiatric diagnosis
2. A substance abuse diagnosis which may include drug addiction or alcohol addiction
A dual diagnosis occurs when an individual is affected by both chemical dependency and an emotional or psychiatric illness. Both illnesses may affect an individual physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. Each illness has symptoms that interfere with a person’s ability to function effectively and relate to themselves and others. Not only is the individual affected by two separate illnesses, both illnesses interact with one another. The illnesses may exacerbate each other and at times the symptoms can overlap and even mask each other making diagnosis and dual diagnosis treatment more difficult.
Dual Diagnosis and Families
December 30, 2007
Dual diagnosis and families
The lack of professional knowledge about dual diagnosis can be frustrating for those affected and their families. Common experiences may include:
- Health care providers may blame the client for being difficult and unresponsive to treatment, rather than questioning whether the health care system is failing to provide effective dual diagnosis treatment and support for people with dual diagnosis.
- If a dual diagnosis client first seeks addiction treatment for drug abuse, the drug and alcohol workers may consider their mental illness as a secondary issue or side effect. Similarly, if they first seek treatment for their mental illness, then the mental health professionals may also consider their drug abuse as a secondary issue or side effect. The two problems are often not seen as interdependent and equally important.
- Specialist and early intervention treatments are often not available for dual diagnosis.
- Health care professionals may not involve the family in dual diagnosis treatment, even though the family is frequently much more familiar with the problems and experiences of the person with dual diagnosis.
The future of dual diagnosis treatment
Alcohol rehab and drug rehab services and mental health services are developing ways in which to respond to people with a dual diagnosis. Integrated service delivery and collaborative treatment is becoming core business for most services.
Dual Diagnosis Treatment
December 30, 2007
Integrated dual diagnosis treatment can be difficult
Effective management of either substance use disorders or mental health disorders is challenging. Dual diagnosis can mean an increase in challenging behaviours including self-harm and aggression, avoidance of services, and resistance to or non-compliance with addiction treatment and recovery programs.
Research suggests that people with a dual diagnosis respond well to integrated drug rehab programs that address both their mental illness and their substance abuse. However, these drug rehab programs were uncommon until recent years. Some of the reasons for this include:
- Dual Diagnosis can be difficult, because it isn’t always clear which problem has the more severe symptoms. Health services are now becoming more able to recognize dual diagnosis.
- Mental health services are usually reserved for people with severe problems, so dual diagnosis clients with less severe mental health problems may not get treatment. They should, however, be referred to a suitable service.
- A person with a mental illness may receive treatment, but their drug use problem could be dismissed as a minor side effect of their illness.
- The number of workers trained in dual diagnosis treatment is slowly increasing. The services for mental health and substance abuse generally don’t overlap, so professionals in one field aren’t knowledgeable about the issues in the other field. It is hard to find professionals who are skilled in treating both substance abuse and mental illness.
If you are looking for a quality and effective dual diagnosis treatment program, go to www.steppingstonecenter.org or call the national dual diagnosis helpline at 1-800-511-9225.
Understanding Dual Diagnosis
December 22, 2007
The term dual diagnosis is a common, broad term that indicates the presence of two independent medical disorders. Recently, within the fields of mental health, psychiatry, and addiction medicine, the term has been popularly used to describe the coexistence of a mental health disorder and drug addiction / alcohol addiction problems. The equivalent phrase dual disorders also denotes the coexistence of two independent (but invariably interactive) disorders, and is the preferred term used in this Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP).
The acronym MICA, which represents the phrase mentally ill chemical abusers, is occasionally used to designate people who have an drug addiction / alcoholism disorder and a markedly severe and persistent mental disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. A preferred definition is mentally ill chemically affected people, since the word affected better describes their condition and is not pejorative. Other acronyms are also used: MISA (mentally ill substance abusers), CAMI (chemical abuse and mental illness), and SAMI (substance abuse and mental illness).
Crystal Meth Addiction.. Devestating
December 1, 2007
The images in my last month local newspaper was enough to make anyone stop for a moment and see the devastating effect of crystal meth (Crystal methamphetamine) now becoming more mainstream and reaching epidemic proportion.
The newspaper featured stories about young men and women who went from being excellent students, good mothers, good fathers, all in all good citizen to becoming shameful addicts who won’t stop at anything to get their next fix.
What really captured my attention was the transformation of these beautiful men and women. How they went from being handsome to find themself looking old and sickly after they have started using crystal meth. Beside looking old and sickly, they had all kinds of lesions on their bodies, which I later found out is called crank bugs (feeling that bugs are crawling on your skin). The lesions are caused by constantly scratching your body from the itch.
What is Dual Diagnosis?
December 1, 2007
Dual diagnosis occurs when an individual is affected by both drug addiction, alcoholism and a psychiatric or emotional illness. These illnesses can both affect a person physically, socially and psychologically. And both illnesses have symptoms that interfere with a person’s ability to function effectively. The dual disorders may affect each other, and each disorder predisposes relapse in the other disease. At times the symptoms can overlap and even mask each other, making treatment and diagnosis difficult. To fully recover, a person needs to treat both disorders equally-and at the same time.
Other names for this illness are:
co-morbid disorders
co-occurring disorders
concurrent disorders
co-morbidity
dual disorders
Dual Diagnosis Treatment
November 30, 2007
Regardless of which disorder an individual experiences first, SAMHSA emphasizes that “both disorders must be considered as primary and treated as such.” Unfortunately, according to NCS findings, of those with co-occurring disorders, only 49 percent are treated for serious mental illness, 29 percent for substance use, and a mere 19 percent for both. Putting it another way, citing other studies, of an estimated prevalence rate of 4.8 percent for co-occurring disorders, only 0.2 to 0.9 percent are getting the full range of treatment.
Those who do get dual diagnosis treatment generally wind up in the hospital. In 1996 there were 87 hospital stays per 1,000 for individuals with mental illness only and 23 hospital stays for those with substance use only. Having both disorders, however, resulted in a rate of 457 (no typo) hospitalizations per 1,000. Meanwhile, those with co-occurring disorders comprise 10 percent of the homeless population but use nearly half of all homeless emergency assistance resources.
Comments
Contact Us