Substance Abuse and Mental Health Facilities in Lutherville Timonium, MD

Both substance abuse and mental illness tend to cause each other. For instance, if you live in Lutherville Timonium and you start using drugs or drinking alcohol excessively, there is a high risk that you might start displaying the signs and symptoms of a mental illness.

On the other hand, if you have been living with a mental health disorder, you might start abusing these substances to deal with the signs and symptoms of your disorder. This could later give rise to the development of a substance use disorder, or an addiction.

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.

Although dual diagnosis treatment takes many different forms, you will mostly find that it is offered on an inpatient basis. This means that you will have to live in the recovery facility for a period of time - which could be anywhere between 30 and 90 days - or even longer in some instances.

The reason why you might benefit from inpatient treatment is because you will require a wide variety of round the clock rehabilitation services to manage both your substance abuse and addiction as well as any other co-occurring medical and mental health disorders that you have also been struggling with.