If you have been diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis and substance abuse disorder, you may recognize the difficult position you are in when it comes to treating them. If left untreated, how can mental health impact your use and how can use impact your mental health? The simple answer is: very strongly, but the more complex answer is about understanding exactly how the 2 can impact one another.
When it comes to addiction, there are many pieces to the puzzle to begin to treat your problems. Some of the things that can be addressed and may need to be worked through are: coping skills, past trauma, abuse, relationships, family, friends, behaviors, thought processes and mental health. Without gaining an understanding of these many areas and how to treat them, your addiction will continue to be negatively impacted.
Mental health symptoms are often made worse or exacerbated while using substances. Due to this, if left untreated mental health can greatly impact your continued use and abuse of drugs and alcohol. Without properly diagnosing and treating your mental health concerns, your drug and alcohol use may never be properly handled. As your mental health symptoms go in to “remission,” your use may appear to diminish. You might begin to think that everything is okay and you don’t need to worry about the mental health any longer. However, because your mental health was not properly treated it can worsen and your substance use increases again.
This creates an ongoing pattern of your mental health continuing to negatively impact your ability to maintain abstinence and recovery. On the other side, without giving your addiction enough credit and treating it appropriately, it can hurt your mental health stability. Because addiction in and of itself causes so much chaos in your life, it can undo all the hard work you have put in to taking care of your mental health services.
By not treating your addiction i.e. recognizing the powerlessness, making changes to people, places and things, etc, you are allowing for the possibility that your addiction will negatively impact your mental health. Once this process begins, you will be fighting to regain control of both your mental health and addiction.
However, all of this can be avoided if you allow yourself to heal in all areas of addiction as discussed in the beginning of this article. You must treat your addiction and mental health together, it doesn’t necessarily matter which one is primary but rather that both are treated per what will best help you and your future.