A Beginners’ Guide to Dual Diagnosis

When people suffer from dual diagnosis, they suffer from a couple of issues: substance use disorder and a mental health disorder simultaneously. Some other names for this problem are co-morbidity and co-occurring disorders. Patients opt for treatment for these conditions together. Some common treatment methods include medication, behavioral therapy, in-patient care, and support groups. A few mental health issues include anxiety, depression, and other kinds of mental health conditions.

At times, a substance use disorder involves drugs, alcohol, and some kinds of addictive substances. If these conditions occur, you will find the effects to be worse. When mental health problems remain untreated, they give rise to substance use problems, and when this substance use escalates, then the mental health issues of patients increase, and it forms a vicious cycle.

Analysis of dual diagnosis

Most people think that dual diagnosis is a diagnosis, but they are wrong, as it is an integration of diagnoses. At times, healthcare providers find it tough to make an ideal diagnosis as the signs of both disorders do overlap. This is the reason why, most often, healthcare providers use a huge array of screening tools for evaluating patients for these disorders. Patients should be honest while interacting with their healthcare provider as, based on their answers, the providers determine the disorder they have been suffering from. Again, they can also make ideal treatment of the problem.

The treatment process

The treatment for dual diagnosis includes treating a patient’s substance use disorder and mental health condition simultaneously. A patient cooperates with his healthcare provider to have a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which each disorder will affect the other. Again, it will also help healthcare providers to find out the most effective treatment process. If you opt for the recovery of a dual diagnosis, you ought to stop utilizing the addictive substance. It might begin with detoxification for numerous patients.

At the time of inpatient detoxification, a healthcare provider keeps an eye on a patient 24×7 for nearly a week. The healthcare providers wean off the substance. Again, they also propose many ways to lessen the impacts of withdrawal.

Use of a boot camp

Hundreds and thousands of parents find caring for their teens who suffer from serious behavioral issues to be emotionally draining. At times, this pushes them to their breaking point, too. In this situation, a teen boot camp in Phoenix seems to be the ideal solution. While choosing the ideal boot camp you must be judicious as taking this route turns into a huge mistake. Most often, parents come across juvenile boot camps relying on aggressive psychological strategies that are ideal for battlefields instead of therapeutic environments

These programs tend to be very strict as they embrace military-like methods. This way, they habitually fail to cure the deep-seated mental issues of adolescents. Most of the time, a tough-love and heavy-handed treatment policy makes mental health issues worse. When you begin your hunt, you must opt for a program that will address the causes that gave rise to behavioral problems.