Dual Diagnosis Treatment: How We Can Help

At Recovery Ways, the therapeutic team takes a Dual Diagnosis approach to treatment. Dual Diagnosis Treatment emphasizes that a person has a mood disorder (such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc.) and a substance use disorder simultaneously. When this happens, it is common for the person to struggle to understand the relationship between the two disorders and how to manage both of them at the same time. When it comes to treating individuals with dual-diagnoses, the therapeutic team begins to identifying the specific disorders that are present in the person by identifying the symptoms that the person has been experiencing over time (not only while the person has been using a substance). When the disorders have been accurately identified, the therapist creates treatment plans with the patient in order to address both the mood disorder and the substance use disorder separately. One purpose in addressing dual-diagnoses is for the patient to understand the relationship between their substance use and their mental health symptoms. Some patients will experience stronger mental health symptoms when they are actively using. Some patients will identify that they had strong mental health symptoms before they were using substances. Some patients will learn that they are more susceptible to mental health symptoms because of their history of substance use. In any case, one of the goals is to understand the relationship between a person’s use and the presence of mental health symptoms. Another purpose to dual diagnosis treatment is to gain a better understanding of a person’s mental health and how to increase the overall quality of mental health for that patient. Therapist work closing with patients to identify the history of their mood disorder symptoms, the situations that may create increases in those symptoms, and how to manage those symptoms in healthy ways starting now. The therapist and patient will look at all areas of that person’s life in order to gain the greatest understanding possible of how to manage their mood disorder symptoms by using a great variety of tools that they can start to practice while in treatment. One of the major aims of dual diagnosis treatment is to treat the whole person instead of one isolated part of that person. At Recovery Ways, we understand that people are complex beings with intense and traumatic experiences that interact with others and can develop unhealthy patterns of living. To simply look at one area of a person’s life, treat it in an isolated way, and return the person to the same environment they came from can set the person up for failure. If a person is looking for meaningful and lasting change, it requires them to look at all aspects of their life, identify the healthy and unhealthy aspects, and begin to make changes in order to move towards being a healthy individual who has healthy relationships with his family, peers, and community. Recovery Ways takes pride in knowing that are here to improve the whole person.