DUAL RECOVERY PROGRAM TACKLES TWO PROBLEMS AT ONCE

They often happen together, a drug addiction along with depression.

Typically, health professionals would decide the person's primary problem
and use that to determine treatment. The person could be funneled to
therapy for substance abuse. Or, he or she could be referred for mental
health care.

What they really needed was treatment for both problems at once - and now
Syracuse has a program that does just that. "Individuals with co-occurring
disorders should be the expectation, not the exception, in the
substance-abuse treatment and mental-health service systems," Health and
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said as he presented a report to
Congress last week from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration.

It estimates up to 10 million Americans have at least one mental disorder
as well as a problem with alcohol or drugs.

"People with co-occurring disorders cannot separate their addiction from
their mental illness, so they should not have to negotiate separate service
delivery systems," administrator Charles Curie says in a Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services news release. He says people too often are
treated for only one disorder.

"If one of the co-occurring disorders goes untreated, both usually get
worse, and additional complications often arise, including the risk for
other serious medical problems, suicide, unemployment, homelessness,
incarceration and separation from families and friends."

The report says people with simultaneous disorders can recover with
appropriate treatment - but that's the key. It goes on to recommend that
federal agencies, state agencies, behavioral health professionals,
researchers, recovering people and their families work together to create a
system in which both disorders are addressed as primary and treated as such.