New data that links severe mental illness and substance use could lead to more effective treatment options, according to a leading expert in psychiatry and addiction issues.
The Washington University School of Medicine-St. Louis and the University of Southern California jointly conducted a study of nearly 20,000 individuals, 9,142 of whom were diagnosed with severe psychotic illnesses, collected over a five-year period. The findings were published online in JAMA Psychiatry.
“What we are learning is that this overlap of mental illness with addictive disorders is not random,” said the National Institute on Drug Abuse Deputy Director Wilson Compton.
Researchers looked at nicotine, alcohol, marijuana and recreational drug use in mentally healthy test subjects and psychiatric patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder. The study found that 30 percent of those with a severe mental illness engaged in binge drinking (four servings of alcohol or more), compared to 8 percent in the mentally healthy population.
The results for smoking and marijuana were much higher. More than 75 percent of those with severe mental illness were heavy smokers and 50 percent were heavy marijuana users. In the mentally healthy population, only 33 percent were heavy smokers and 18 percent were heavy marijuana users. Compton said the findings do much in the way of helping both patients and doctors.
“We can use the fact that [mental illness and addictive disorders] go together to better reorganize our treatment centers to both address the mental illness and the substance issues,” he explained.
Past studies had been completed with individuals diagnosed with milder cases of mental illnesses, but this new study confirmed that rates of substance use in those with severe mental illnesses is much higher than previously assumed, according to the article.
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