Mental health treatment alongside addiction

What sits underneath

Depression that started long before the drinking. Anxiety that made the first tablet feel like relief. Sleeplessness going back years. Something that happened in the family that was never spoken about.

And sometimes the other way round. Heavy cannabis or chitta use bringing on psychosis in a young man who had nothing wrong before.

In medical terms this is called dual diagnosis. In plain terms it means two problems that feed each other, and treating one without the other does not work.

Why most kendras cannot handle it

A psychiatrist is expensive and hard to keep in a small town. Most centres in this belt work with a doctor who visits once a week or once a month, or with no psychiatrist at all.

That is fine for managing withdrawal. It is not enough for a patient who is hearing voices, or who is so depressed that he stops eating, or whose anxiety is what drove the whole thing from the beginning.

Dr. Amanullah Ghori, M.B.B.S., DPM, RMC Registration No. 23346, is on our own staff and examines every patient who is admitted. That is the plain difference, and it is the one families notice a year later.

What treatment looks like

Proper psychiatric assessment at admission, not a five minute look.

Where medication is needed it is prescribed and monitored, and adjusted as the person settles.

Counselling every day alongside it, individual and group, plus family counselling so that the household understands what is actually being treated.

Before discharge, a clear plan for what happens next, including what the family should watch for and when to bring him back.

Before you call

It helps if you know roughly how long it has been going on, how much he is taking, whether he has been admitted anywhere before, and whether there have been fits or blackouts. Bring any medicines and reports with you. None of it is essential. Ring us either way.

Nothing you tell us goes anywhere else. No name and no photograph leaves this centre without written permission from the family.

Where this information comes from

This page is written at the centre and checked by our consultant psychiatrist before it goes up. Where we describe how a drug behaves or how withdrawal works, we follow published guidance from bodies such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre at AIIMS, and the World Health Organization. You can read our editorial policy.