Mental Health

It’s not easy living with an addiction. You spend most of your time thinking about obtaining and using drugs and you hardly have enough time or energy to do anything else. It drives your life and consumes you. Addiction affects your health, your reputation, your career, and even your relationships.

For those with a mental health disorder, this becomes even more difficult to live with. Having either condition is difficult enough. Imagine having to deal with the effects of addiction on top of dealing with the effects of a mental disorder. It’s easy to see how someone with this type of condition could get overwhelmed.

It’s hard to watch someone you love struggle with this kind of situation. They may feel hopeless or powerless over their own life. This cycle is very difficult to break. That is why they need professional treatment.

If a person with a mental health disorder also happens to have a co-occurring addiction or substance use disorder, what they need is dual diagnosis treatment.

While there are plenty of treatment options for addictive disorders and even severe mental illness, there aren’t a lot of treatment providers that specialize in dual diagnosis.

Treatment for Mental Illness: How Does it Work?

Before we dive deeper into dual diagnosis treatment, let us talk about how treatment usually works for those who are suffering with a mental disorder. Psychotherapy is most commonly used for the treatment of mental disorders. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy,

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders

Like we mentioned earlier, mental health and substance abuse have a close relationship. This is the reason why dual diagnosis is such a common problem. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported that over eight million Americans are struggling with a dual diagnosis.