"Dual Diagnosis" is the term used when a person suffers from both a substance addiction problem and another mental health issue such as depression or an anxiety disorder.
Most mental health services and addiction treatment centres in Ireland are currently not organised to treat such people holistically. For example, if you have difficulties abstaining from alcohol due to anxiety, you can not enter rehabilitation services (most residential drug services insist you must be "dry" before entry). Yet you can not get your anxiety problem treated until your addiction to alcohol has been addressed.
According to figures from the American Medical Association, up to 37 percent of alcohol abusers and 53 percent of drug abusers also have at least one serious mental illness, and 29 percent of people diagnosed as mentally ill abuse either alcohol or drugs.
A study by the UK Dept. of Health put the figures even higher, suggesting that 74.5% of users of drug services and 85.5% of users of alcohol services experienced mental health problems, and 44% of mental health service users reported drug use.
(Weaver et al, 2002)
Despite this, there is currently little awareness of the problem in Ireland. We aim to change this and make sure people get the right kind of treatments at the first time of asking. To do this we now need two volunteers
Find out more about how you may be able to help us:
 | 
