Therapy and Psychiatry

Treating Addiction With Psychiatry

Psychiatry takes a different approach to helping people overcome addiction. Using targeted medications and detailed medication monitoring, a psychiatrist can provide direct relief for lingering withdrawal symptoms and co-occurring mental health conditions.

People living with substance use disorders often experience the symptoms of mental illness when they reach sobriety. Estimates suggest that 37.9% of people with a substance use disorder have a mental illness – and conversely, that 18.2% of people with a mental illness have a substance use disorder.

These effects can occur along two separate pathways:

1. People use drugs or alcohol to self-medicate the symptoms of mental illness, whether they are aware of their diagnosis or not.
2. Living with a substance use disorder for an extended period causes the signs of mental illness, known as a substance-induced mental health disorder.

Regardless of the pathway to mental health challenges, the treatment for co-occurring disorders is the same. Working with a psychiatrist can provide targeted medications to help treat disorders such as:

• Major depressive disorder
• Social anxiety disorder
• Panic disorder
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder

If these mental health challenges go unaddressed during your recovery, the likelihood of relapse increases dramatically – with some estimates suggesting a threefold increase in risk of relapse.

But through working with an in-home psychiatrist, you can achieve recovery from these disorders. Multiple medications exist to treat these mental health challenges, with an overwhelming scientific evidence base supporting their effectiveness.

Integrated Treatment

While both psychotherapy and psychiatry are effective tools for helping people break free from addiction and mental health disorders, combining these therapies creates even greater results. Working concurrently with an in-home therapist and psychiatrist can provide even larger reductions in mental health symptoms and helps more clients than either treatment alone.

In the case of depression, for example, either psychotherapy or antidepressant medications can reduce the symptoms of this disorder by half. But when they are combined, the average reduction in symptoms raises to 66% – with many people achieving total remission from their mental illness.

This effect extends beyond mental illness alone, and into the treatment of substance use disorders as well. Integrated treatment plays a valuable role in the recovery process, as it can help addiction professionals to accurately screen for, diagnose, and treat mental illness straight away. Without this intervention, many people will fall into a dangerous spiral of troublesome mental health symptoms that spark cravings or thoughts of relapse, often leading to a worsening of both disorders.

As such, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration suggests that anyone seeking help for addiction receive integrated treatment through psychiatry and psychotherapy.

The Benefits of In-Home Psychotherapy and Psychiatry

At Kinkaid Private Care, we strive to provide the best in science-based addiction medicine in ways that actually work for our clients. In-home psychotherapy and psychiatry remove many of the barriers to care for people who prioritize convenience, professionalism, and privacy. While the reasons that our clients choose in-home care are endless, some of the key benefits include:

• Making the treatment process as convenient as possible by bringing providers to you
• Allowing our clients to receive treatment in the place they feel most comfortable
• Providing flexible options for those with busy lives and schedules
• Total privacy for people who don’t want to be seen attending a clinician’s office

Our in-home psychotherapy and psychiatry options are offered to all our clients who complete an in-home detox or are available to anyone who is looking for convenient and effective mental health treatment in their personal journey towards recovery. These services can be combined with any number of our other services, from medication-assisted treatment to in-home detox doctors, to health care services coordinated and more.