Question

Evidence indicates that as many as 90% of all people seeking treatment for a drug or alcohol use disorder also meet diagnostic criteria for another psychiatric disorder. This situation, termed co-morbidity, can arise for many reasons and can take many forms. Name a few highly prevalent forms of co-morbidity and describe how they might influence long term recovery from the respective disorders.

Answer 1

The highly prevalant forms of comorbid psychiatric conditions related to alcohol and substance abuse are:

1.manic depressive psychosis.

  ​​​​​​Depression is the most common comorbidity noticed in these patients.

  2.schizophrenia or split personality

3.behaviiural disorders.

4.mood disorders like bipolar disorder and depresiive episode.

5.anxiety disorders

6. Eating disorders ,non organic sleep disorders

7.personality and character disorders.

8.lifetime disorders like antisocial personality,phobia, post-traumatic stress.

Influence of comorbidities on recoverrecovey:

• Cognitive symptoms common in comorbid mental disorders may undermine the patients motivation and access treatment especially in early recoveryTheir comorbid conditions for example depression can leadsuicidal ideation and to avoid such thoughts he once again starts consuming drugs.Also others like antisocial persolity and adjustment disorders make the patient feel that he doesn't fit to the society and to feel good and to avoid such thoughts he starts his abuse habits.
• They have greater difficulty in accessing the traditional alcoholism treatment and self help groups in which most members donot have comorbid disorders because they are uncomfortable in group sitting due to social withdrawal.
• Most of the research has focused on treatment for patients with single diagnosis as a result specialized treatment for comorbid patients is less available .