What is Dual Diagnosis Treatment?
Dual diagnosis care may be the management of addiction along with the other conditions and illnesses that often accompany it, including depression and anxiety, along with other types of addiction such as gambling and sex addiction. When we're struggling with addiction, we quite often will also be contending with other equally destructive conditions.
Mental health illnesses can be similarly debilitating and when untreated will often operate in tandem with our addictions to weaken and destroy us. Programs that provide dual diagnosis treatment will help you to address and heal not just your addictions however your other concerns as well.
What is Dual Diagnosis?
Dual diagnosis is generally accustomed to describe the condition in which a person has both a dependancy problem and at least another mental health issue. The most common dual diagnoses include:
- Depression
- Bipolar disorder
- Anxiety disorders
- PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder)
- Conduct Disorder
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
- ADHD (Attention deficit disorder)
- Schizophrenia
According to studies, in the US about 4 million people have a dual diagnosis of addiction and mental illness. Studies also reveal that people with these particular mental health issues are in higher risk of developing addiction problems. For example, one study discovered that those who had a panic or anxiety disorder were two times more prone to develop an alcohol problem compared to the general population (National Institute on Excessive drinking and Alcoholism).
How Dual Diagnosis Can Help
With dual diagnosis treatment, we receive education around the common underlying problems that cause, contribute to, and exacerbate our addiction and mental health problems. Including things such as traumatic experiences we've sustained but haven't yet addressed.
Therapy provides us a safe space to revisit and look at our trauma. We're supported through the procedure for analyzing our thoughts, emotions, and fears. In treatment, we work to find out the habits, cycles, and patterns that we've adopted over the years that are adding to our conditions. Then, we practice healthy coping mechanisms and learn new life skills to develop new habits and patterns. We make conscious changes to our methods for thinking, our behavioral patterns, and our emotional responses. Additionally, we learn how to handle ourselves in healthy ways and how to shed the self-destructiveness we've been developing for much of our lives.
Benefits of Dual Diagnosis
With dual diagnosis care, we gain newfound clarity and perspective on our lives and our conditions. We quite often have been suffering not understanding exactly why. We might know we suffer from addiction, but we may not have access to been identified as having a mental illness. As a result, we've been struggling to understand why we think, feel and behave the way we do.
Receiving the right diagnosis can be empowering because we're no more in the dark about such important aspects in our personalities, our conditions, and our lives. Things start to make more sense for us. We shed layers of confusion and inner turmoil because there exists a new understanding about ourselves. Once that occurs, starting to have more hope that people can heal, because we have the important foundation of self-awareness. Then, we start to regain faith in ourselves because we're feeling more connected to ourselves and less alienated from our truth. Our issues in many cases are complex and interrelated. When working to recover, dual diagnosis care can be the gateway to deeper, more comprehensive healing.
Getting Help With Dual Diagnosis Treatment
The recovery programs at Accxy include individualized dual diagnosis treatment. This really is personalized to every client to assist address your unique needs and challenges.
Recovery from addiction is challenging. A co-occurring mental ailment complicates that recovery when we don't address it at the same time. Dual diagnosis treatment is the key to a successful recovery. Call today for more information.