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Experts: Treat co‐occurring SUDs and mental illness in teens concurrently
Author(s) -
Knopf Alison
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent behavior letter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7575
pISSN - 1058-1073
DOI - 10.1002/cbl.30075
Subject(s) - mental health , mental illness , substance abuse , psychiatry , psychology , substance use , clinical psychology , equity (law) , political science , law
All adolescents entering treatment for either a substance use disorder (SUD) or a mental disorder should be assessed for both, according to experts. There was a time when it was believed that an adolescent with an SUD and a co‐occurring mental illness needed to have the SUD treated first, and then the mental illness, said Larke Nahme Huang, Ph.D., director of the Office of Behavioral Health Equity at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). “We're not saying you need to treat them in a parallel fashion, but in an integrated fashion,” Huang, a clinical psychologist, told CABL last week. “They interplay with each other, and it's hard to tease apart the dynamics.”