Comorbidity | Addiction Treatment Strategies

What Is Comorbidity?
“Comorbidity” is a term used to describe two or more disorders or illnesses occurring in the same person. They can occur at the same time or one after the other. Comorbidity also implies interactions between the illnesses that can worsen the course of both.
Is Drug Addiction a Mental Illness?
Yes, addiction changes the brain in fundamental ways, disturbing a person’s normal hi­erarchy of needs and desires and substituting new priorities con­nected with procuring and using the drug. The resulting compulsive behaviors that weaken the abil­ity to control impulses, despite the consequences, are similar to…

Comorbidity is a topic that our stakeholders––patients, family members, health care professionals, and others––frequently ask about. It is also a topic about which we have insufficient information, and so it remains a research priority for NIDA. This Research Report provides information on the state of the science in this area. And although a variety of diseases commonly co-occur with drug abuse and addiction (e.g. HIV, hepatitis C, cancer, cardiovascular disease), this report focuses only on the comorbidity of drug use disorders and other mental illnesses.*
To help explain this comorbidity, we need to first recognize that drug…