A press release from Journey Healing Center, Provo, reports that their dual diagnosis rate fare exceeds the national average. A dual diagnosis is when someone is simultaneously an addict and has an underlying mental illness as well. The national average is 60% and Journey reports their rate is 95%.
The most common secondary diagnoses are depression and anxiety. These are not uncommon with addiction, but why the rate is so high is unknown. It may be related to how patients are selected, either something to do with Utah, Provo, or a bias introduced because more serious cases end up at Journey. Without a comparison to the general population of addicts, there’s no way to tell.
Generally, a dual diagnosis makes addiction more difficult to treat. The mental health concern may even lead patients to drugs in the first place. Certainly those who are depressed or suffer from social anxiety can seek out drugs to self-treat their problems. But then, the addiction may trigger a sub-clinical disorder (one that doesn’t amount to a solid diagnosis) and make it worse. Withdrawal from some drugs is known to cause depression and anxiety when the drugs are removed.
To get a dual diagnosis, a medical professional trained in psychology or psychiatry has to be involved. This brings up the idea that other mental illnesses are not being diagnosed in programs where there is no specialist on board. If that is so, then under reporting would be the rule. Of course, no one is out at AA or NA meetings doing testing for depression, so many addicts and alcoholics never interact with the system – they may be escaping notice.
The real concern is whether patients get care for both their addiction and mental health problems. Journey states that they do have this as a goal, but not all treatment facilities do so. In some cases, clinical depression, anxiety or other forms of psychological disease are left out of the mix or left as something to be treated by another branch of healthcare. The focus, after all, in addiction treatment, is to first get someone to stop using. The reasons they use and the concomitant problems follow that.
