Dual Diagnosis

Dual diagnosis is the co-occurring combination of mental illness and substance abuse disorder. About 65% of people dependant on substance use has at least one mental illness or more and about 51% with diagnosis of mental illness have at least one substance use disorder. I guess for me working on a youth acute inpatient ward, where mental illness, drug and alcohol are mostly the reasons for admission, it did not come to me as a shock during the study day. As I have seen so many patients presenting on admission with dual diagnosis disorders. The most things that find surprising was the amount of people in the general population that are constantly been diagnosed with both illness. As a graduate nurse I have heard of the term dual diagnosis and seen many admission but has not taken my time to find out the meaning. However I was surprisingly shocked of the amount of patients that I have cared for that had the combination of mental illness and drug/ alcohol diagnosis. Most of the patients that I have nursed used alcohol and drug as a way of masking the symptoms of their mental illness more than as a social enjoyment. The learning experience that I took from the study day is that mental illness is a broad spectrum of different collateral combinations of illness. Therefore it requires different attentions at different stages as many patients may be at the different stages of change. Another thing that learned and took away from the study day was the different stages of change. Those stages consist of the pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, relapse and lapse phases and also the cost of demand supply etc. was very useful in realising the pressure and need for different involvement of different clinicians, as each step and phase requires different knowledge and experiences of different health clinicians to facilitate the recovery process. Another thing was that to better assist a patient in their recovery, every clinicians have to realised that addressing one issue at a time is much more important than avoiding it all completely as it allows patients that are not ready to embrace the change stage to think and process the decisions and work at their own pace. Dual diagnosis is not about forcing someone to change or give up their habits but instead assisting them to come a point where they realised they need help and that help will always be available whenever they are ready to take the next step.