Assessment of Co-occurring Addictive and Other Mental Disorders

Publisher Summary Practitioners are often particularly concerned about the impact of illegal substance use—and rightly so, since those substances are implicated in symptom exacerbations and their illegal status has significant potential impact on the user. However, these are not the substances that most commonly produce functional or other problems for people with mental disorders, except in settings where illegal drug use is particularly common. The high frequency of tobacco and alcohol use across the community, and the negative effects these substances can have on people with mental disorders, means that they most commonly emerge as problematic. The high rate of alcohol use and its potential impact on psychotic symptoms, dysphoria, cognition, and social functioning are well known.