Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center in Florida
If you have questions about dual diagnosis treatment, please contact Compassion Behavioral Health today. Below you’ll find more information about the link between mental illness and substance abuse and why dual diagnosis treatment is essential to healing.

The Link Between Mental Health and Substance Abuse
When someone is suffering from both a substance abuse problem and a mental health disorder, both problems will interact with each other and create a vicious cycle of dependency. This is why we can’t just treat one problem – we must treat both.
It’s difficult to say what comes first – the substance abuse or the mental illness – but it’s believed that people often start self-medicating to manage the symptoms of mental illness. For example, if a person is struggling with depression, they may turn to drugs and alcohol to numb their feelings.
If the cycle of self-medication continues, the body and brain will become addicted. Eventually, the person will no longer use drugs and alcohol solely to numb their pain. Now they will use them to manage their day-to-day life. To make matters worse, drugs and alcohol exacerbate the symptoms of depression.