Integrated treatment of co-occurring disorders has various advantages over the traditional approach of treating each disease separately. One of the most significant advantages is that patients do not get lost, excluded, or confused going back and forth between different treatments. Integrated treatment has been known to be more effective than treating each of the involved diseases. Examples of co-occurring disorders are mental illnesses and substance abuse. Another example of co-occurring diseases is substance user disorder and depression. In the study to investigate the effectiveness of integrated treatment for patients with substance use disorder co-occurring with anxiety and depression, Wusthoff, Waal, & Grawe (2014) found that integrated treatment is effective in increasing the motivation for treatment amongst patients with depression and substance use disorder in outpatient clinics.
However, there are some barriers to implementing an integrated treatment approach. In other terms, in spite of the efforts to improve co-occurring disorder delivery, the barriers impeding integrated treatment persist. The three major issues hindering the delivery of effective co-occurring disorders, especially within the mental health system, include limited support for co-occurring disorder treatment training, organizational failure to sustain integrated care, and diagnostic and billing restrictions (Padwa, Guerrero, Braslow, & Fenwick, 2015). Therefore, to address these barriers, there is a great need to remove the diagnostic and billing restrictions, let alone organizations developing integrated care that is sustainable. Additionally, to address the challenges facing the implementation of integrated treatment approach, the government should support co-occurring disorder treatment training. Indeed, co-occurring disorder treatment concept should be included in the medical curriculum.
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References
Padwa, H., Guerrero, E. G., Braslow, J. T., & Fenwick, K. M. (2015). Barriers to serving clients with co-occurring disorders in a transformed mental health system. Psychiatric Services , 66 (5), 547-550.
Wusthoff, L. E., Waal, H., & Grawe, R. W. (2014). The effectiveness of integrated treatment in patients with substance use disorders co-occurring with anxiety and/or depression-a group randomized trial. BMC Psychiatry , 14 (1), 67.
