Substance Abuse and Mental Health Facilities in Old Town, ME

Dual diagnosis is a common occurrence in Old Town, as in the rest of the country. Although this condition covers a wide variety of substance abuse and mental health disorders, suffering from a particular mental illness could increase your susceptibility to abuse drugs and alcohol.

Examples of these mental illness that could eventually lead to addiction include major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia, personality disorders, conduct disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and suicidal ideation and actions, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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.

There are highly qualified dual diagnosis treatment programs available today. These programs are suitable if you have been diagnosed with both a mental health disorder as well as a substance use disorder or an addiction.

The treatment services provided by these programs are highly effective and integrated. This is because you need them to manage all the disorders that you have been struggling with at the same time so that none of them aggravates the other or causes you to suffer a relapse or a recurrence of any of these disorders.