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Integrated Dual Disorders Treatment Background
 The term "dual diagnosis" refers to the co-occurrence of substance abuse and severe mental illness. Since the problem of dual diagnosis became clinically apparent in the early 1980s, researchers have established three basic and consistent findings:
- co-occurrence is common - about 50 percent of individuals with severe mental disorders are affected by substance abuse
- dual diagnosis is associated with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of relapse, hospitalization, violence, incarceration, homelessness, and serious infections such as HIV and hepatitis
- the parallel but separate mental health and substance abuse treatment systems so common in the United States deliver fragmented and ineffective care.
Most clients are unable to navigate the separate systems or make sense of different messages about treatment and recovery. Often they are excluded or removed from services in one system because of the co-morbid disorder and told to return when the other problem is under control. For those reasons, clinicians, administrators, researchers, family organizations, and clients themselves have been calling for the integration of mental health and substance abuse services for at least 15 years. 
Dual diagnosis treatments combine or integrate mental health and substance abuse interventions at the level of the clinical interaction. This means that the same clinicians or teams of clinicians, working in one setting, provide appropriate mental health and substance abuse interventions in a coordinated fashion. For the individual with a dual diagnosis, the services appear seamless, with a consistent approach, philosophy, and set of recommendations. The need to negotiate with separate clinical teams, programs, or systems disappears.
The goal of dual diagnosis interventions is recovery from two serious illnesses. In this context, "recovery" means that the individual with a dual diagnosis learns to manage both illnesses so that he or she can pursue meaningful life goals.
A Summary of IDDT
The Ohio SAMI Coordinating Center of Excellence (CCOE) has created a brief six-page overview of the IDDT model, with emphasis on the Treatment Characteristics. It was distributed at the CCOE's Annual Conference in September. The PDF version is now available online (see hyperlink below). It is also accessible through the Library and Links section of our web site, under "Pamphlets and Brochures." If you would like a printed copy, contact the CCOE.
http://www.ohiosamiccoe.case.edu/library/media/iddt_overview2003.pdf |
