• Adolescents with alcohol- and drug-use disorders often have co-occurring mental-health disorders.
• "Dual-diagnosis" patients those with co-occurring substance-abuse and mental-health problems tend to have less successful chemical-dependency (CD) treatment outcomes.
• Findings indicate that dual-diagnosis adolescents in private, managed-care CD treatment who receive psychiatric services have better CD-treatment outcomes than those not receiving these services.

Adolescents with alcohol- and drug-use disorders often have co-occurring mental-health disorders. Furthermore, patients with co-occurring substance-abuse and mental-health problems tend to have less successful chemical-dependency (CD) treatment outcomes. A recent study of adolescent patients in private, managed-care CD treatment has found that those individuals who receive needed psychiatric services are more likely to be abstinent from both alcohol and drugs than those not receiving these services. Results are published in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"Studies of public programs have found that from one half to two thirds of adolescents in CD treatment have psychiatric conditions," said Stacy A. Sterling, a researcher with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California division of research and corresponding author for the study. "So it is a big problem for many teens entering drug and alcohol treatment. However, while there is growing recognition in treatment programs that many of their young patients may actually have dual diagnoses, the resources may not exist to adequately assess and treat those problems, and so they often are not assessed, or go un- or under-treated."

"While this may seem like common sense, few alcohol and other drug (AOD) programs for adolescents currently have the resources to provide psychiatric services in practice," concurred Michael Dennis, a senior research psychologist at Chestnut Health
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15-May-2005