The Double-Edged Sword of Diagnoses – Dual Diagnosis

Professionals meet with a large number of patients. While each one is unique and needs to be addressed and interacted with in their own, nuanced way, it can be difficult not to see connections between patients. These patterns between patients can be in the form of similarities in their personalities, environments, or living styles. As a result, the different cases can then inform each other on particular practices or ideas.

While this approach isn’t a bad idea, it does have a number of drawbacks, most heavily illustrated when one person is diagnosed. Diagnoses can be a double-edged sword when it comes to certain patients and it is important to continue to view each case as unique and nuanced even when diagnoses are present.

How Diagnosing Helps Professionals

Seeking a particular diagnosis can still be very impactful. Having a good idea of what someone is suffering from can help someone seek the right specialist or literature on how to deal with a particular patient, or what practices may be best avoided. It can help inform someone about what the goals and potential symptoms may be and help the patient and professional work out a roadmap for what coping with or recovering from the diagnosis may look like. Most importantly, it can also help narrow down the vast number of medications that may actually help the patient to a few options that can be presented to the patient.

However, even when diagnosing a condition, know that diagnoses are often fluid and that there can be many other factors occurring in each patient. Just because someone was diagnosed with an addiction or depression doesn’t mean that it is necessarily true beyond a doubt, nor does it mean that they cannot be suffering from additional addictions or mental health disorders at the same time.

Comparable Patients Don’t Necessarily Mean Comparable Diagnoses

Having patients and practices inform each other isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Similar cases can help someone narrow down the various potential diagnoses possible, or even help someone determine what medications may be best for a certain patient based on evidence from other patients. However, that doesn’t mean that the results are going to be the same between diagnoses and patients.

Each person can exhibit any number of symptoms for a potential mental illness. It is possible that the way that anxiety manifests in one person will be completely different from how it expresses itself in another.

Creating Expectations

If someone does receive a particular diagnosis, it could carry its own issues to be wary of. If someone isn’t exhibiting all of the symptoms, but still expects themselves to be suffering from a more comprehensive array of symptoms, it could create more complications in their mental health or coping mechanisms. For addiction, someone who begins detox may expect themselves to begin to feel nauseous or experiencing mood swings.

While these are common symptoms, they aren’t necessarily all going to manifest in the same person at the same time. As a result, someone could be putting themselves under more stress than they need to depending on the diagnosis and what their expectations of having that diagnosis may be.

How a Diagnosis Creates a Label

As a patient, being diagnosed with a particular issue can be both a help and a hindrance. While it can help each person better understand the intricacies of what they are feeling, it is also something that can implant itself deep in someone’s mind. This diagnosis can become a label or a part of someone’s identity as a whole. Identifying with a particular addiction or mental health disorder can lead someone to feel as if it is a part of them, rather than an external force to be overcome, and thus hinder the recovery process as a whole.

Addictions and mental health issues are things that are to be addressed over time in order for someone to continue on the path toward their own life goals in spite of the other issues that may challenge them. Instead, it is possible that a person may internalize their diagnosis and simply begin accepting it as part of them. Diagnoses are fluid and provide a large number of benefits for someone in recovery–both to the professionals and the patients.

However, a diagnosis isn’t necessarily set in stone, and operating under a blanket diagnosis can be dangerous. Instead, it is important to continue to address each patient on a personal level in a way that acknowledges the unique way that the symptoms may manifest in them.

Alta Centers provides a place where each person can explore their own goals and needs for the future while undergoing detox in a safe, controlled environment. Since each patient is unique, the professionals at Alta Centers create unique environments in their luxurious complex in order to provide people with the comfort they need to address their vulnerabilities during this difficult phase. Diagnoses can create labels on people, but Alta Centers prides itself on understanding each individual first, as well as their own troubles and goals for the future. There is always an option to personalize each recovery and use these individualities to help each member in the community grow as a group. For more information on how Alta Centers can help you, or to inquire about the different kinds of treatment that may be applicable for your specific case, contact Alta Centers today at (888) 202-2583.