Video: Tackling Addictions and Co-Occurring Mental Illness

As many as one-third of addicts have one or more co-occurring mental health issues. For them, navigating recovery can hold extra challenges, especially as untreated depression, bipolar, and ADHD may trigger relapses.

On Monday August 29, 2016, Zoe Kessler hosted Christine Stapleton on the Psych Central webinar series to explore this topic in an open, candid, and engaging fashion.

Christine Stapleton is an award-winning journalist and author who is now 18 years sober. She shares her personal journey of tackling addiction and co-occurring hypomania and depression. Stapleton warns of possible pitfalls in 12-step programs and offers tips on topics including dealing with medical professionals and where to find help.

Treating all mental illnesses simultaneously is essential to long-term recovery, but even addicts aware of their additional diagnoses find unexpected and often troubling obstacles.

The stigma of mental illness is compounded for the dual-diagnosed addict by ignorance in the recovery community and medical profession. The use of mind-altering drugs, such as antidepressants and mood stabilizers, is considered taboo by many in 12-Step recovery programs. Poorly trained physicians are ill-equipped to recognize and simultaneously treat addiction and other mental illnesses.

As a recovering alcoholic with hypomania, Christine Stapleton has encountered many of these challenges.

In this Co-Occurring Mental Illness & Addiction webinar, she explains:

• How untreated mental illness can trigger relapse
• Why the use of antidepressants, mood stabilizers and other drugs are frowned upon in the recovery community
• The best way to deal with untrained medical professionals
• Where to find additional information about addiction and co-occurring mental illnesses

With education, understanding and willingness, addicts with co-occurring mental illnesses can acquire the additional tools needed for long-term recovery.

Christine was diagnosed with depression six years after she quit drinking. Now, with 18 years clean and sober, she knows her recovery depends on her treating all of her mental illnesses.

Christine is an investigative reporter for The Palm Beach Post in south Florida. Her accolades include two Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards and Healthline.com recently named her Psych Central blog “Depression on My Mind” among the best 2016 depression blogs.

Click below to watch the previously record webinar:

from World of Psychology http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2016/09/19/video-tackling-addictions-and-co-occurring-mental-illness/