You may feel like doing drugs is the only way to handle unpleasant feelings, but HelpGuide’s free Emotional Intelligence Toolkit can teach you how to cope with difficult emotions without falling back on your addiction. The drug-only group had approximately 44% personality, 28% mood, and 24% anxiety disorders. Behavioral therapies, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy , Dialectical Behavioral Therapy , are often used in the treatment of comorbid illnesses.

Alcohol’s impact on the brain generally affects psychiatric disorders. Several other mental illnesses, including anxiety disorders and schizophrenia, are also comorbid with alcoholism.

How do alcohol use disorders affect people?

This type of treatment is well-suited for individuals who have battled co-occurring disorders, such as depression and alcoholism, over the course of many years. Inpatient facilities offer therapy sessions, support groups and medication-based therapy to treat alcoholism, as well as any underlying mental health conditions. To answer these questions, it’s important to recognize that there are countless types of diseases and mental illnesses, all of which can manifest very differently in different people. So, while AUD doesn’t look like many other types of chronic disease, such as cancer or heart disease, it’s still considered a medical condition. Not only that, but treatment for alcoholism involves both physical and psychological components. Not surprisingly, alcoholic women are also more prone than alcoholic men to having independent mood or anxiety disorders (Kessler et al. 1997). Alcoholic women and men also seem to differ in the temporal order of the onset of these conditions, with most mood and anxiety disorders predating the onset of alcoholism in women (Kessler et al. 1997).

Genetic factors make some people especially vulnerable to alcohol dependence. Contrary to myth, being able to « hold your liquor » means you’re probably more at risk — not less — for alcohol problems. Yet a family history of alcohol problems doesn’t mean that children will automatically grow up to have the same problems. Nor does the absence of family drinking problems necessarily protect children from developing these problems.

Self-help for a dual diagnosis

When either a patient or medical professional isn’t equipped with the right information, the result is focusing too much attention on the immediate problem. With a condition like ASPD, attempting to treat alcoholism alone may not be effective. It seems counterintuitive to abuse alcohol when you feel depressed. A nervous system depressant is alcoholism a mental illness that is rapidly absorbed by the body, alcohol reaches the brain within minutes of taking one drink. As soon asalcohol interacts with certain brain receptors, a neurotransmitter called dopamine starts flooding the brain. RehabCenter.net is intended for educational purposes only and is not designed to provide medical advice of any kind.