If You Have a Dual Diagnosis, It’s Best You Receive Comprehensive Psychological Services

Sometimes, mental health issues come in pairs. If you’re struggling with an alcohol or drug addiction, you might have a comorbid illness, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or borderline personality disorder. If you have multiple mental health issues, you may need a dual diagnosis program, not therapy alone. That would mean getting referred to comprehensive psychological services. With comprehensive psychological services, you’re getting treatment for all of your needs. So, it’s not just for your depression or anxiety, but also your substance abuse problem. You need a treatment team consisting of mental health professionals who are addressing all your concerns. That’s where comprehensive psychological services comes in, and can help you. 

What are comprehensive psychological services?

Comprehensive psychological services offer treatment for any mental health needs you have. Whether you’re getting help for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, an eating disorder, or any other diagnosis, all of your problems will be addressed in comprehensive psychological services. It’s difficult to determine what you need at times when it comes to mental health, but when you have access to all of these different programs and providers that can help, you have a better chance at getting the right help and getting better. And that’s what you want; the chance to get better. We all want the opportunity to get better. It’s the goal of mental health is to get to a place of stability. To obtain wellness, you have to figure out what your core issues are and address them. 

A common mistake people make in mental health treatment

You might think “if I treat my substance abuse disorder, my depression will go away, too.” While treating substance abuse is essential, it’s also vital to get to the underlying cause of the depression. Both problems need to be addressed, and that’s why dual diagnosis programs exist. Alcohol is likely masking some pain underneath that you have, so you’ll need to treat everything holistically in a comprehensive psychological services program or dual diagnosis program. You need to figure out what’s contributing to your depression and why you’re self-medicating with alcohol. These two things are entwined, but they’re also separate issues. A common mistake that people make is believing that if they get sober, everything will be OK, but that’s not true: when you get sober, you allow yourself to uncover the root cause of your addiction and address the real issues so that you don’t need to turn to substance abuse any longer.

Comprehensive psychological services are holistic 

Working in a comprehensive psychological services program, you’ll receive holistic care, which means that you’ll use a whole-person approach. You’re looking at the entire picture of who you are and what you need. Every aspect of your mental health will be taken into account. You can talk to your therapist about different aspects of what you need that you might not get in traditional therapy. That is why comprehensive psychological services are the gold standard for treating people with multiple mental health issues. 

Online therapy

Online therapy is an excellent place to establish a provider as your “point person.” Let’s say that you have multiple mental health issues. You can discuss all of them with this provider and figure out how to address each one. They’re your tour guide in the land of mental health. You can get better, and you need to focus on your core issues to get to where you want to be. Online therapy is convenient and can be accessed anywhere with a reliable internet connection. You have the right to achieve stable mental health, and you can do this.