Different Types of Dual Diagnosis Treatment Programs

Drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness are two problems that a large number of today’s youth faces and are more often than not, interrelated to each other. Often it is the mental and emotional condition like anxiety, depression, Pos Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) etc that lead a person to drugs and alcohol while many a times long term addicts lose control of their mind and psychological disorders like Obsessive compulsive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia take a grip. Suffering from dual diagnosis of addiction as well as a mental illness can be extremely harmful and in some cases even fatal, not only for the addict but also for his or her family members. Hence, a condition of dual diagnosis must be dealt with on an urgently.

Now, for such treatment, a simple addiction treatment facility or a mental institution may not suffice. As dual diagnosis includes the worst of both the problems of addiction and mental illness, you need to seek out a clinic which specializes in dual diagnosis treatment. But even if you have found a dual diagnosis treatment facility, you cannot be sure whether it is the best for the patient. That decision depends upon the condition of the patient and the nature of his mental illness. For example, even the problem of depression is not as simple as it seems to be. There are various types of depression like Dysthymia, psychotic depression, atypical depression, post partum depression (after child birth), catatonic depression and many others. In fact depression has been projected to take over the second place among the most disabling diseases in the United States. When we are dealing with a disease of such an enormous magnitude, it definitely deserves special attention and care.

Hence, there has been a continuous drive to integrate the treatment of addiction as well as mental illness in the form of dual diagnosis treatment so that people can get the treatment for both their problems at the same place.

Now, the first step is to detoxify the patient, that is, the use of medicines and chemicals to clean the patient’s body of all the residual traces of addictives and their byproducts. This is perhaps the most difficult step as the person goes into withdrawal with the body craving for the drugs or alcohol that it has been used to and in its absence the person undergoes severe pain, cramps and other symptoms. Hence, it is important for the facility to have enough palliative medical facility to help the patient ride through this phase of intense discomfort. Once the patient has been detoxified, he undergoes counseling session with a specialist psychotherapist to help evaluate his mental condition and the extent of damage that has been done. This process also helps the psychologist understand the factors or emotional traumas that might have led the person to his addiction and then the patient undergoes specific counseling procedure to help relieve the stress on his mind and thus completely cure him of the dual diagnosis condition.

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