Dual Diagnosis and Addiction Resources

I was looking for information on Dual Diagnosis and found Bruce at It Really Is Okay To Talk about it. Here he shares his personal experience with a number of issues. He has put together a collection of links to home pages relating to everything from substance abuse and eating disorders to suicide and depression. He is quite candid with sharing his experiences as a police man which led to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that that later led into mental illness and dealing with addictions.

I came across Bruce while cruising a small webring devoted to "Dual Diagnosis" which refers to "co-occurring Mental Illness, Drug Addiction and/or Alcoholism in various combinations."

This definition came from Kathleen Sciacca's Site, Comprehensive Service Development for Mental Illness, Drug Addiction and Alcoholism The site serves all three in the triad of "service providers, consumers and family members." According to the brief biography on the site, Sciacca has been involved with dual diagnosis treatment in one way or another since 1984. She started when "there were no program models available, and little attention given to [dual diagnosis] clients as a priority." (You might have a dictionary handy if you aren't educated in the field.)

Another site on the ring is Dual Diagnosis Practitioner Resources in Substance Abuse and Co-Occurring Mental Disorders. Here you can find articles available on the web. There are links to the Counselor's Manual for Relapse Prevention, A Guide to Substance Abuse Services for Primary Care Clinicians, and Screening and Assessing Adolescents For Substance Use Disorders to mention a few of them. (Here too, if you are not a clinician you might want to have a dictionary on hand while reading some of these documents) Something that both sites have in common is the goal to improve existing treatment protocols for the dually diagnosed patient.

Several members of the ring seem to be based in Australia. The next features two Australian clinicians who "created an innovative treatment model for dealing with patients with serious mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse and have been running such groups continuously since 1993." here you can review the complete Dual disorder study here or read the Executive Summary.

At the Dual Diagnosis Catch 22 page, you can find links to information about Hepatitis C in particular and other Self Help resources in general.

Of special interest to 12 steppers with dual diagnosis is the Dual Diagnosis Friendly site featuring suggested changes to the Preamble and other parts of the 12 step meeting formats that are dual diagnosis friendly.

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