The Myth of the Typical Dual Diagnosis Patient

Clinicians who treat patients with comorbid substance abuse and psychiatric disorders need both the expertise involved in treating each of the patient's individual disorders and the specialized knowledge required to help the patient cope with having more than one illness. Programs treating dually diagnosed patients should include sophisticated psychopharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment, offer the capability of safely detoxifying patients from a variety of different agents, include relapse prevention and 12-step techniques, and provide long-term treatment to help patients work through the difficulties they will experience at various stages of the recovery process. By combining excellent psychiatric and chemical dependence treatment, such specialized programs may be able to substantially improve the prognosis of a patient population that has traditionally been very difficult to reach.