True or False: Three out of four patients with schizophrenia report substance use.
True!
A review of electronic medical records of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders in a community teaching hospital’s psychiatric unit found that more than three-quarters used substances such as tobacco and cannabis. Researchers presented their findings in a poster at the virtual 2021 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.
Among patients with schizophrenia, 62.3% used tobacco, 41.5% used cannabis, 40.2% used alcohol, and 27.4% used cocaine. In patients who reported using tobacco, unadjusted odds ratios were 7.24 for comorbid alcohol use, 5.00 for cocaine use, 4.62 for synthetic cannabis use, and 2.80 for cannabis use, according to the study. Multivariate analysis results supported the findings.
With that information, one would hope that the behavioral health providers would do a better job at treating dual diagnosis individuals. Often families of loved ones that have serious mental illness and substance use disorders hear that the person needs to get sober before mental health treatment can be effective. However, they are also then told that the person is too ill to be in the substance use treatment because of their serious mental illness. Kind of a Catch 22 situation. Treatment needs to address both illnesses.
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