In psychiatry we talk about “dual pathology” when there is a mental disease in association with substance abuse problems. Both the mental health problem and the substance abuse don’t necessarily need to occur at the same time, and it’s been a controversial issue to determinate whether the mental health problem is the cause of the substance abuse, or the other way around.

It is clear that this association involves a worse prognosis: a greater treatment failure rate, a greater suicide rate as well as more comorbidity, more hospitalizations…

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