Substance Abuse and Mental Health Facilities in West Lebanon, NH
If you live in West Lebanon and you start abusing drugs and alcohol, there is a high risk that you might develop a co-occurring mental health disorder. On the other hand, if you have an undiagnosed mental illness, there is a likelihood that you might start abusing these substances to self-medicate the symptoms of your mental illness.
Research studies show that substance abuse and mental health disorders tend to have some underlying causes in common. These might include changes in the composition of the brain, early exposure to traumatic and stressful events, and genetic vulnerabilities.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
In case you are living with obsessive compulsive disorder, you might suffer from obsessions. These refer to forceful thoughts, images, and urges that occur frequently and cause you great anxiety and distress. You might try ignoring these obsessions or taking them care of them with another action or thought - also known as performing a compulsion.
If this action that you take involves using drugs or alcohol, your problems will only continue getting worse. This is because you could soon find yourself living with a substance use disorder over and above your obsessive compulsive disorder diagnosis.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder tend to change over time. Whereas some of these symptoms will appear about 3 months after the traumatic episode you suffered, others will take years before they develop.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the condition will impact the regions of the brain that are associated with emotions and memory. If you have a healthy brain, it will be able to differentiate between present and past experiences. However, PTSD can interfere with this natural process. This is why it is important to seek professional assessment and treatment before turning to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate this condition.
It is recommended that you seek dual diagnosis treatment to manage all of the disorders that you have been struggling with simultaneously so that one does not cause the other to recur in the future.
This is especially true if you have been diagnosed with both substances abuse as well as another co-occurring mental health or medical disorders. Although these disorders tend to occur at the same time in many cases, it is possible to overcome them. To be able to do so, you will have to go through a highly integrated dual diagnosis treatment program.
