Addiction and psychiatric treatment

When it comes to treating individuals with both a mental illness and a co-existing addiction, people benefit most from a combined treatment approach.

More than half of those who seek help for addiction to alcohol or drugs also experience a mental illness. Similarly, between 15 and 20 percent of those using mental health services are also dealing with an addiction.

Indeed, mental illness and addiction are often linked. For example, individuals experiencing an anxiety disorder have two to five times the risk of addiction as the general population. Similarly, those with schizophrenia are almost five times more likely to have a substance abuse problem.

In BC alone, more than 130,000 people meet the criteria for both mental illness and addiction.

Since the two are so commonly found together, it is astounding how difficult it can be to find appropriate services for both problems.

In BC until fairly recently, addiction and mental health treatment programs were funded by different government ministries, involved different professional groups and were not integrated or even cooperative.

Individuals dealing with addiction are still commonly told they have to be clean and sober before they are able to access other psychiatric treatment. Similarly, many rehab programs still insist patients stop all medications before entering. Unfortunately, this is often a recipe for failure as it can result in a person with a serious mood disorder being removed from effective medication at a time when it is most needed.

Most treatment programs still require naming one disorder as the primary problem – which is not very useful when addiction and mental illness co-exist and each exacerbate the other. Treating these problems separately leads to poor outcomes with frequent relapses and crises – in both the addiction and mental illness.

Ideally, people with co-existing problems should receive treatment by professionals who are well-trained in both chemical dependency and psychiatry and who work in teams where both conditions are treated simultaneously and collaboratively. Such integrated treatment is long overdue and should be mandated by funding authorities.

To date, not only is there a lack of vision in this area, but also a shortage of professionals who are adequately trained to make this possible. This is why the recent findings recommend specialized training programs for health care professionals from different sectors to share expertise and begin truly working together in these areas.

If you or a family member are one of the many dealing with both addiction and mental illness, I urge you to seek help for both issues. Don’t give up or settle for treatment in only one area. 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.