What is Dual Diagnosis?
It’s the term used when a person suffers from both a substance addiction and another mental health issue — such as depression or an anxiety disorder. It’s also known as co-morbidity.
A person may abuse alcohol or other drugs in order to cope with a mental health problem — which they may not even know they have. This is known as self-medication. They may then become addicted, and the addiction becomes the most visible problem.
On the other hand, a person’s addiction may itself create a mental health problem. It can be a chicken-and-egg situation.
Whatever the case, we believe that to give someone the best chance of a successful recovery, the whole person needs to be addressed when they arrive for treatment — not one problem in isolation.
If you don’t treat both together, you can’t beat either.— Dual Diagnosis Ireland
Mental health and addiction, side by side
About mental health
A mental illness affects our mental health just as a broken leg affects our physical health. It’s useful to think of mental health as a scale: at one end, active positive wellbeing; at the other, “serious and enduring” mental health problems.
Everyone sits somewhere on this scale at any point in time, and most of us move between positions. Even people with serious conditions can have long periods of being well.
A mental health issue does not have to be “severe” to hinder a person’s recovery from addiction.
About addiction
An addiction occurs when a person becomes dependent on a mood-altering substance or activity, increasingly less able to control the behaviour despite the damage it does to their life.
The best-known addictions are to alcohol and other drugs, but people can also become addicted to gambling, gaming, food and other intensely mood-altering behaviours.
If the substance or activity matters more to the person than the problems it causes, the likelihood is a very serious addiction — with a devastating effect on the person and the whole family.
Alcohol and anxiety
Many mental health problems aren’t perceived as “severe,” yet have severe implications for recovery from addiction — anxiety is a clear example.
According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, people with high anxiety are two to three times more likely to have problems with alcohol or other drugs than the general public, and 20% of people with a social anxiety disorder also have a substance-abuse issue.
The substance-abuse problem often becomes the more obvious one. But if a person is treated for the addiction while the anxiety goes untreated, the chance of long-term recovery is slim. Someone with an undiagnosed social anxiety disorder may find it extremely difficult to attend support groups or AA meetings — the very settings they’re advised to use — precisely because of the nature of their condition.
This is exactly why both conditions have to be understood and treated together.
See what the gap costs — in lives and money
The impact of dual diagnosis reaches into our prisons, our homelessness services and the public purse.