many people who struggle with substance use also have a co-occurring mental health condition. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, approximately 50% of people suffering from drug and alcohol abuse also have a mental illness.
This is why you see people suffering from depression turning to alcohol or drugs to cope with their symptoms.
Such scenarios often lead to a dual diagnosis where both conditions must be treated at the same time, instead of one following the other.
What Is Dual Diagnosis Treatment?
If you or a loved one is battling a mental health condition and substance abuse, it’s important to understand that treatment for one condition does not necessarily mean that your other issues disappear as well. You will need separate treatments for each issue if you want to achieve full recovery.
In other words, treatment should help eliminate your cravings for drugs and alcohol while helping you manage your depression or anxiety without turning back to drugs or alcohol for relief. The good news is dual diagnosis treatment centers exist to treat both conditions effectively so that they don’t interfere with each other or cause more problems down the road.
Looking up dual diagnosis treatment centers near me will help you address both conditions at the same time to ensure that each issue is addressed effectively.
Benefits of Dual Diagnosis Treatment
Dual diagnosis treatment can bring many benefits to people who have a dual diagnosis. The most significant one is that this kind of treatment has the potential to greatly improve your quality of life. Here are some more specific examples:
Reduced Risk of Relapse
If you have been abusing drugs or alcohol for a long time and you stop using them, then there is a high chance that you will start abusing them again in the future. This is because drug use or alcohol abuse has become an ingrained part of your life.
When you go through dual diagnosis treatment, however, this cycle can be broken as you learn new coping skills and other ways to deal with problems and stressors in your life without turning to drugs or alcohol for relief.
Improved Physical Health
If you have both an addiction problem and mental health issues, then there is a good chance that both these conditions are affecting your physical health negatively in some way or another.
For example, if you have depression then it could be causing sleep problems which could lead to fatigue or exhaustion during the day which could affect your ability to function at work or school effectively thereby affecting your performance negatively which may result in getting fired from your job.
The Final Word
Mental health affects substance use in many ways, including how people begin using substances, how much they use them, how long they use them for, and how frequently they relapse back into substance abuse. As such,
In addition to addressing all aspects of your treatment plan in one setting, dual diagnosis can help you get better faster by providing more comprehensive care than traditional addiction treatment alone would provide.
This may include a combination of medication management, therapy sessions and other behavioral therapies designed to address both mental health and addiction.
