Drug and alcohol abuse and many mental health disorders are often inextricably linked. Whether due to lack of access to adequate health care or a general distrust of medical professionals, it is not uncommon for people with problems like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder to live for years with these issues untreated and undiagnosed. As such, these individuals often wind up treating themselves by self-medicating with copious amounts of alcohol, illicit street drugs, or prescription pills that have been illegally sourced. For these and other reasons, there are a number of counseling mental health resources available in the typical drug rehab environment.
Dealing with mental or behavioral health disorders can make the recovery process especially challenging. This is all the truer when patients have yet to seek treatment for these underlying problems. By implementing dual diagnosis programs or treatment for co-occurring disorders, many rehab centers have been able to achieve far higher rates of both short and long-term success.
Dual Diagnosis Treatment: Addressing Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders
When paired with an untreated mental health disorder, drug abuse can cause a person’s problems to quickly spiral out of control. That’s because most illicit and overused substances can actually cause mental health issues to become increasingly severe. Although people might obtain some short-term relief from their efforts to self-medicate, the psychological and physiological damages that they suffer as the result are hardly worthwhile. Certain mental health problems can also make it next to impossible for people to resist temptation. For instance, if you suffer from an issue that affects your natural impulse control, using healthy coping strategies to fight off cravings for drugs or alcohol will hardly be possible. As such, dual diagnosis treatment isn’t just beneficial in certain instances. Instead, it can also be downright essential.
You might want to look for options in dual diagnosis treatment if you suffer from:
- Feelings of extreme paranoia
- Chronic depression or anxiety
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Known but untreated behavioral disorders that have negatively affected you in other life areas
Access to this type of comprehensive and needs-specific treatment can also be essential for people who have tried to complete the rehab before but have failed multiple times in the past. It can be incredibly liberating and empowering to discover that prior shortcomings in this area were the result of insufficient treatment. For people who’ve consistently had a hard time completing rehab, identifying underlying mental health issues and then treating them invariably sets the stage for lasting success in recovery.
Group And Individual Counseling Services For Learning More About The Causes Of Addiction
Even when behavioral and other mental health disorders do not exist, all drug rehab patients can benefit from regular group and individual therapy sessions while in treatment. These services are designed to help people identify codependent relationships and other unhealthy social connections. They also enable patients to better understand various forms of early behavioral conditioning that may have set them up for self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors later in life. Often referred to as “talk-therapy”, these services are designed to assist people in making important connections between the ways in which their minds have been programmed to think, and the unhealthy actions that they’ve been taking. With these and other revelations, it becomes possible to establish thought patterns and behaviors that are truly conducive to success.
There is always a psychological component to addiction. This makes it important for treatment programs to have a strong counseling presence all throughout rehabilitation. As people strive to correct their patterns and habits, it is important for them to have a clear understanding of the belief systems and thought processes that have led to them. Therapy helps increase the rate of long-term success in sobriety by providing a comprehensive understanding of substance abuse triggers, the best strategies for preventing relapse, and the need for strong and healthful coping mechanisms. For many patients, being able to learn more about the root causes of their addiction, whether these lie in traumatic childhood events or early behavioral conditioning, can make overcoming the challenges inherent to addiction infinitely easier.
Top drug treatment programs always have a broad range of mental health resources available to their clients. Moreover, when there are needed resources that do not exist in-house, many of these centers are able to issue referrals to outside solutions that can be used in a supplementary fashion or post-treatment. Counselors also offer guidance in practical life planning, and in the development of essential life skills for thriving upon re-entry into the outside world. To find the best rehab program and mental health resources for your needs, call us today at 844-639-8371.