Addicted and Mentally Ill (Stories of Courage, Hope, and Empowerment)

Reconnect with dually diagnosed individuals using stories they can identify with!

Addicted and Mentally Ill: Stories of Courage, Hope, and Empowerment is a powerful tool to recommend to your clients who are dually diagnosed. This book presents vignettes about people with mental illness and addiction whose situations are representative of what goes on in a dual-diagnosis in-patient setting. This nonclinical, easy-to-read resource will give you, your patients, and their family members unique insight on dual diagnosis and how co-occurring mental illness and addiction can be treated with the minimum amount of blame, shame, or poor decision-making.

Addicted and Mentally Ill focuses on the most significant issues surrounding these individuals, such as:

• dual diagnosis and the family system—how family can help or hinder treatment
• the reasons why dually diagnosed clients resist treatment
• the fear of losing self-identity in treatment
• the misunderstandings about dual diagnosis—from the perspectives of the client, family members, and professionals in medicine and social work
• the role of hope, empowerment, and spirituality in recovery in dual diagnosis
• what the patient/client and family members can do to improve treatment options

Addicted and Mentally Ill is unique for its storytelling format, consisting of brief tales and short explanations you can recommend to clients and families with limited clinical knowledge or time. This innovative tool answers many of the questions that dually diagnosed individuals may have and helps them learn of the issues surrounding their illness as well as their addiction. For those professionals who provide direct counseling to these clients or patients, this book offers an interesting and nonthreatening way to help them learn about treatment options.

The stories in Addicted and Mentally Ill confront the life problems specific to dually diagnosed individuals, including:

• alcohol, drugs, and self-medication
• the difficulties of building trust in group therapy settings
• psychotropic medications
• illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and personality disorders
• suicide