Sometimes a health condition doesn’t come alone, it’s accompanied by another one. For example, heart conditions are often followed by diabetes, and asthma usually leads to allergies. The people dealing with addictions are more likely to experience a mental health condition at the same time. Personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and mood disorders are only some of the health conditions that accompany drug or alcohol problems. Co-occurring conditions tend to affect people’s behavior, interactions and view of the world.
When dealing with a mental disorder people find easier to deal with it if they adopt a dysfunctional coping mechanism like gambling or alcohol addiction.
If you are facing this situation it’s important to understand how different conditions interact and what treatment you should seek to recover.
What are some examples of dual diagnosis disorders?
Here we will share a list of the most common types of dual diagnosis disorders people can experience when they are also dealing with drug or alcohol issues.
- Bipolar disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Depression
- Anxiety
- ADHD
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Panic disorder
- Schizophrenia
According to inspiremalibu.com, alcohol problems are often accompanied by one of the above problems mainly because alcohol is legal and all adults can purchase it. Because it has depressant properties, it often leads to bipolar disorders, depression, anxiety, and panic disorder.
The combination of substance abuse and mental disorders can come in numerous forms, but certain types are more common than others. The majority of patients are dealing with one of the following combinations:
- Personality disorder with drug abuse
- Substance abuse with schizophrenia
- Panic disorder with alcoholism
- Depression with drug addiction
You can find more information about this topic here.
How can you determine if you are dealing with co-occurring disorders?
It’s important for people to identify the early signs of co-occurring disorders to address a specialist to help them recover.
It’s recommended to compare the symptoms of addiction and the ones of mental illness, and you’ll quickly determine what conditions you are experiencing. Drug addictions come with symptoms like forgetfulness, paranoia, moodiness, euphoria, depression, hyperactivity, social isolation, bad performance at work, changes of personality, vomiting, decreased appetite.
Depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have some common symptoms and it’s advisable to immediately consult a doctor if you are experiencing them. They include anxiety, unexplained fear, suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, delusions, depression, moodiness, social withdrawal, and euphoria.
When suffering from two of the above disorders, the effects are worse than anyone can imagine, and only if they benefit from professional help they can recover. Mental illness and addiction have similar symptoms, and this is why so many people find hard to identify what they are dealing with. The most common signs are a high risk of suicide, poor physical health, lack of a job, financial problems, unstable relationships, impaired social functioning.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states that most of the patients develop the two disorders from a young age because of their bad habits. Usually, co-occurring disorders make the patient have antisocial behavior.
