What is Dual Diagnosis?
What is Dual Diagnosis?
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 can be difficult to identify. Many of the symptoms of drug abuse (such as extreme anxiety, depression, paranoia, delusions and hallucinations) are similar to those of mental illness. Many of the effects on one’s life (severe decline in self-care and functioning) may also be similar. Often, one problem is blamed on the other.
Substance abuse complicates almost every aspect of care for a person with a mental illness. Mental health professionals and families of mentally ill may underestimate the amount of drugs and/or alcohol dependency among people in their care. There may be several reasons for this:
People with a mental illness may abuse drugs or alcohol covertly without their families knowing it. It may be difficult to separate the behaviors due to mental illness from those due to chemical dependency. It takes time to unravel the interacting effects of substance abuse and mental illness.
If you are looking for a drug rehab or alcohol rehab with a dual diagnosis treatment component, go to www.recoveryconnection.org or call 1-800-511-9225 to locate one in your area.
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