Co-Occurring Disorders
Overview
What you need to know about Co-Occurring Disorders:
- Dual Diagnosis Recovery: People with co-occurring disorders can recover from addiction, but addiction treatment generally takes a little bit longer and needs to be a little more intensive. For best results, treatment must address substance abuse and mental health issues concurrently.
- Medication: Although most evidence based programs of addiction treatment respect the use of medications when appropriate, some philosophies of care and/or treatment programs do not. However, because medications for mental illness symptoms control are so necessary and because symptomatic mental illness greatly hampers addiction recovery, people with co-occurring disorders should not consider any treatment program that does not allow/encourage medicated treatment when appropriate.
- Detox: Because the abuse of many drugs can induce symptoms that mimic those of mental illness (cocaine psychosis, for example), it can be difficult to accurately diagnose a co-occurring disorder patient until after the detox process is well completed.
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