|
Have a look at the Disability Handbook on the DWP website which EMP’s use. The mental health conditions are, as has long been the case, broadly separated into three broad classifications: the psychoses, the neuroses and the dementias. Interestingly enough alcohol and drug dependency are classified under the dementias.
It is not a matter of broad disagreement anymore among the medical profession that alcohol/drug dependence and mental health problems are often so interwoven in an individual case that it is almost impossible to determine which is a product of the other.
It is widely accepted that among alcoholics there is a strong predisposition to addictive type behaviour, which may derive from very early childhood experience or, in the eyes of some, might even have a genetic component.
Modern approaches to addictive behaviours and mental illness have attempted to move away from an over concentration on labels and classifications and looking more at patterns of behaviour and addressing these in a clinical setting. Thus the individual may display symptoms of depression, mania, paranoia, delusions, anxiety states, aggression, suicidal ideation, obsessiveness, etc.
Thus clusters of symptoms/behaviours may lead the clinician to conclude that an individual is suffering a severe mental illness and it matters not, in the wider sense, whether that predates, is co-extensive with or is a product of the onset of the chemical dependence itself.
|
