USA TODAY: ….Mental health professionals treating people who have addictions often face a challenging chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Psychiatrists who work with addicts “must sort out and untangle whether the mental health problems are driving the addiction, or the use of substance is causing symptoms that look like a mental health problem in its own right, or both,” says Eric Collins, physician-in-chief at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn., and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.
Francesca Barnett, who runs the Portland, Ore., residential mental health and addiction treatment facility where Ayala works, says she has never seen anyone seek treatment for drug addiction who didn’t also have underlying mental health conditions. “It is very rare for the women we serve, due to their exposure to trauma,” she says. “An untreated mental health condition will exacerbate one’s addiction and vice versa.”
Clients at the facility are given an alcohol-drug assessment upon arrival, and a mental health assessment a couple of weeks later, after acute withdrawal symptoms have subsided, says Barnett, clinical program director and certified addiction counselor at Lifeworks NW’s Project Network, which provides mental health and addiction services to women and children through age 6… (more)
