Dual Disorders: A New Way to Think about Addiction?
Despite a growing evidence base and numerous policy changes, the association between addiction and other mental health problems is often ignored.
It remains that many patients with Substance Use Disorder (SUDs) also have Other Psychiatric Disorders (OPDs), suggesting that an integrative treatment approach sophisticated enough to address both SUDs and OPDs is necessary.
Clinically, the co-occurrence of an SUD with an OPD is referred to as a Dual Disorder (DD).
‘The Role of Education on Dual Disorders: A Discussion Paper’ (2017), published in the academic journal Addictive Disorders & Their Treatment, provides an overview of current treatment situations for patients with DDs.
The key conclusions reached are that:
- The diverse range of skills, attitude and knowledge among healthcare professionals involvement in the treatment of DDs has a negative impact on the effectiveness of such initiatives. This problem can be identified at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional education levels.
- Undergraduate courses, in particular, regularly fail to recognise the concept of DDs.
In turn, the paper offers a number of recommendations:
- Services in the field of addictions should evolve to incorporate models based on DDs.
- Efforts to train practitioners on DDs she be implemented across all levels of training, from student to professional practice.
- Greater effort to provide DD educational programmes is needed. This would involve current programme modifications and the adaptation of clinical-practice guidelines for treating patients with DDs.
