What Alcoholics Anonymous Says about Dual Diagnosis:
Alcoholics Anonymous has long maintained (70 years) that people who suffer from alcohol addiction are suffering physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Medical professionals, not without controversy, have debated the validity of what came first, addiction or mental illness. Is there such a thing as physical addiction, the disease concept if you will or is it a manifestation of an underlying illness that drives the addict to self-medicate? For decades, the debate centered around a chicken and egg argument, i.e., which came first the addiction or the mental illness.
Although not completely understood, it is no longer debated. Most professionals accept that in some cases, namely those persons who face addiction and psychiatric disorders, Dual Addiction Treatment is the most powerful tool in the box.
Alcoholism as a mental illness
In 1956, the American Medical Association recognized alcoholism as a mental illness. It was not until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that the idea of co-concurring (dual diagnosis) alcoholism and psychiatric diagnosis began appearing. Some of the more debilitating mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia began to be diagnosed along with the diagnosis of alcoholism and other addictions, and began to be recognized by professionals. Out of this recognition was born the need for Dual Diagnosis treatment.
Even today, the need for dual diagnosis treatment is not always recognized by medical personnel. However, more and more professionals recognize the benefit. A major advantage is that the patient in a Dual Diagnosis Treatment facility has their addiction and their mental illness treated under the same roof. Their treatment plan is supervised by the same facility rather than between several practitioners.
Separating the dual nature of the challenges most addicts face is now widely thought to be the primary reason for the high relapse rates amongst addicts.
One traditional approach is to treat the addiction and then try to address the underlying mental problems. The challenge is this: the addict often cannot withstand the pain of the psychiatric disorder long enough to withstand relapse
Another variation of traditional treatment is to treat both conditions, the addiction and the psychiatric disorder, at the same time but separately. This leads to both professionals laboring mightily with an incomplete picture of the patient’s condition.
It makes more sense to many enlightened facilities to treat both issues at the same time in the same facility.
In order to fully treat trauma, depression and chemical imbalances – hallmarks of the addiction struggle – the underlying psychiatric issues must be co-concurrently dealt with so that the patient has a chance to recover without one part of the problem overcoming the other and causing relapse and demoralization. This is best accomplished in a Dual Diagnosis Treatment setting.
If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, please Contact us at (888) 576-0222. We’re here to help.
For more information about programs offered at Fair Oaks Recovery Center, including our intensive outpatient program in Sacramento, please call us today at (888) 576-0222.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
For well over twenty years in addiction and behavioral health circles, the question was debated: Just what is Dual Diagnosis Treatment? The most common definition is that persons who need Dual Diagnosis Treatment suffer from both addictions and psychiatric conditions.
