While addiction and mental health disorders are in many ways separate challenges, they are both actually more connected than you’d think. In fact, many people with a mental health disorder will have an accompanying substance use disorder, and vice versa. When you have both an addiction and mental health disorder at the same time, it’s called a dual diagnosis. Navigating both of these conditions makes your recovery journey much more complex. But with the right dual diagnosis treatment center, you can find true healing.
Dual Diagnosis, Explained: What are Co-Occurring Disorders?
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), about 21.5 million adults in the United States struggle with both an addiction and mental health condition simultaneously. These two conditions together, called co-occurring disorders, are often interrelated, making it difficult to determine which one came first. They both ultimately influence and exacerbate each other. Certain people may even struggle with multiple addictions in conjunction with their mental health disorder.
So how do you reach the point of a dual diagnosis? Commonly, someone with a mental health disorder may seek out alcohol, heroin, or prescription opioids to self-medicate for their symptoms, such as anxiety triggers. As they build up a tolerance for their chosen coping mechanism, they can become addicted, developing a substance use disorder.
Or, alternatively, an ongoing addiction to alcohol or drugs can make you more susceptible to developing a mental health issue. Alcohol, for example, may lead to temporary feelings of confidence, relaxation, and less anxiety. Yet as it’s consumed regularly over time, it can cause chemical changes in your brain that lead to increased anxiety and depression regardless of circumstances, shares the Mental Health Foundation.
If you think you may have co-occurring disorders, it’s important to be professionally diagnosed by a dual diagnosis treatment facility. Common mental health disorders that typically receive a dual diagnosis for addiction can include:
- Anxiety
- Bipolar disorder
- Depression
- Personality disorders
- PTSD
All of these mental health disorders typically lead to a co-occurring addiction due to using a substance to cope with each disorder’s debilitation symptoms. Yet sadly, a drug or alcohol addiction only makes your mental health disorder symptoms worse in the long run.
Symptoms of Co-Occurring Disorders
How can you tell if you have co-occurring disorders? The short answer is, it depends. Your symptoms may look different than someone else’s, depending on your mental health disorder and addiction. That’s why it’s best to partner with dual diagnosis addiction treatment centers for an official diagnosis. But if you’re concerned that it may be time to seek help for yourself or a loved one, some common symptoms of co-occurring disorders to look out for can include:
- Risky or impulsive behavior
- Unexpected behavior changes and mood swings
- Feeling confusion
- Difficulty remaining focused
- Suicidal thoughts
- Social withdrawal and isolation
- Relationship troubles
- Financial or legal instability
- Difficulty keeping a job
- Using a substance despite its negative effects
- Intense cravings for a substance
- An increased tolerance for a substance
- Feeling like your substance use is out of control
- Experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you stop using a substance
The Risk Factors for Dual Diagnosis
Mental health disorders and addiction can affect anyone, regardless of their background, demographics, or socioeconomic status. Yet there are some telltale situations and risk factors that can increase your chances of experiencing them as a dual diagnosis, including:
- A family history of mental illness or substance abuse
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including abuse, neglect, a lack of support, divorce, or an incarcerated parent
- Exposure to violence, war, injury, a tragic accident, or another serious traumatic event
- Disruptive life circumstances, such as divorce or job loss
- Depression associated with pregnancy
- Consistent stress
- Living in poverty
- Social isolation
The Challenges of Co-Occurring Disorders in Recovery
If you think you may have a dual diagnosis, it’s easy to feel like the cards are stacked against you. After all, an addiction or mental health issue is difficult enough. Struggling with co-occurring disorders adds additional challenges to your recovery journey, such as:
The Inability to Stay the Course
If you seek professional treatment for your recovery, you typically have to follow a specific treatment plan, with therapy, counseling, and more. These commitments require discipline and focus for you to achieve the recovery you deserve. Yet it’s often more difficult with a dual diagnosis to stick with your treatment regimen, leading to missed sessions, gaps in medication assistance, and other consequences. Sadly like many, you may drop out altogether, never getting the help you need to heal.
Relational Difficulties
Because of your mental health disorders and addiction challenges, you can be ostracized from your community as an individual with co-occurring disorders. Or, you may come from situations that lack the healthy family or social support systems that are often helpful in the recovery process. These relationship challenges can lead you into further isolation, exacerbating your dual diagnosis symptoms.
Physical Health Problems
Unfortunately, your dual diagnosis doesn’t occur separate from the rest of your body. Ongoing mental health challenges and addiction can lead to health problems elsewhere. These health problems only make your recovery all the more complicated, and may include:
- High blood pressure
- Heart disease
- Diabetes
- Liver damage
- Respiratory issues
Financial and Job-Related Stress
Because of your addiction and mental health disorder, you’re likely more prone to poor financial decision-making. As a result, you may deal with the fallout of your financial difficulties while trying to seek treatment in the process. And your co-occurring disorders can also cause greater difficulty in maintaining steady employment, compounding your financial problems and adding more stress into your life.
Initial Misdiagnosis
A dual diagnosis can be difficult to identify. Because the symptoms of co-occurring disorders can overlap, it’s common for an inexperienced treatment facility to totally miss the other disorder altogether. You may only get diagnosed with an addiction and not a mental health disorder, or vice versa. When this misdiagnosis happens, the other issue is left untreated, negatively impacting any recovery progress.
Increased Relapse Potential
While relapse is a potential drawback for anyone in recovery, the complexity of co-occurring disorders makes relapse all the more possible. Your substance cravings combined with challenging mental issues like anxiety triggers may push you to pursue your addiction to find relief. And if you’re not getting the right kind of dual diagnosis addiction treatment, it puts you in an even more vulnerable position to relapse.
Long term, your co-occurring disorders leave you at greater risk for several negative outcomes compared to someone with only one disorder, according to the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. These negative outcomes can range from a poor treatment response and re-hospitalization to homelessness and incarceration. That’s why seeking help from the best dual diagnosis rehab centers can make a major impact on your positive recovery experience.
What is Dual Diagnosis Treatment?
As you pursue treatment of dual diagnosis, what does this actually look like? What can you expect at a dual diagnosis treatment facility? When a rehab center offers dual diagnosis treatment, it means they’re equipped with the expertise and resources to directly address both your mental health disorder and addiction at the same time. In other words, you don’t have to only focus on one condition while the other remains unaddressed.
The benefit of dual diagnosis treatment is in what it avoids. Because mental health disorders and addiction are so inter-connected within co-occurring disorders, treating each condition separately doesn’t work. The untreated condition would continue to wreak havoc on your life, eventually bringing you back to the drawing board on both disorders. However, with dual diagnosis treatment, both disorders are getting the help they need—keeping you on the path of long-term recovery.
The Dual Diagnosis Rehab Process
Once you’re admitted to a dual diagnosis rehab center, your treatment team will partner with you to develop a holistic plan of care that meets your individual needs. Because of your addiction, this plan will often start with medically-supervised detoxification. This necessary step allows you to remove the addictive substance from your body and manage withdrawal symptoms safely under the care of professionals.
Once you’ve gone through detoxification, residential dual diagnosis treatment centers will also offer you a focused setting to receive your continued treatment, as well as 24/7 accountability and support. At this point, your rehab facility may use medication-assisted treatment to manage the mental and physical symptoms your co-occurring disorders have caused. Yet they’ll also directly address the root causes of your dual diagnosis using both evidence-based and experiential therapies, including:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Motivational interviewing
- Group therapy
- Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF)
- Art therapy
- Psychodrama
- Music therapy
After your inpatient treatment, you can continue on with partial hospitalization or outpatient programming to help you readjust to the real world. Your treatment team may also create an aftercare plan to empower you to find the continued support you need once treatment ends.
Overcome Co-Occurring Disorders at Defining Wellness Centers
Though a dual diagnosis may feel insurmountable, it doesn’t have to be with a supportive treatment team alongside you. At Defining Wellness Centers, we can help you achieve the recovery you deserve with our personalized dual diagnosis treatment program. To learn more about our holistic, compassionate approach for treating co-occurring disorders, contact our team today.
