The Addiction – Mental Health Connection

by Marianne Wylie, MSW, RSW

There are a lot of misunderstandings about addiction and mental health, especially about how the two relate. For #WorldMentalHealthDay, let’s take some time to get to know this relationship. 

​Addiction can be understood as the compulsion of engaging in a behaviour or substance despite harmful consequences or desires to avoid it.
 
Mental health is the state of our emotional, behavioural and psychological well being. A mental illness is a mental health condition that causes impairment in functioning (e.g., depression and anxiety). Addiction is a recognized mental illness that a person can be diagnosed with.  
 
“People with a mental illness are 2 times as likely to have a problem with substance use” and those “with a substance problem are up to three times more likely to have a mental illness” (CAMH: Mental Illness and Addiction: Facts and Statistics, 2019, www.camh.ca).
 
Clearly, addiction and mental health are vastly connected.
 
But how do they relate? The relationship between the two can be explained in part by the following.

• Self-Medicating – For some people, engaging in an addictive behaviour or substance is a way of coping with the symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mental illness. For example, using a drug to avoid difficult memories or negative thoughts.
• Some addictions can trigger an underlying mental illness – A person may have a vulnerability to a mental illness that surfaces with an addiction. For example, cannabis can trigger a person’s first psychotic episode if they have a genetic predisposition to Schizophrenia.
• Addiction and Mental Illness share a common cause – Some research has shown that there may be a common genetic susceptibility that can make a person vulnerable to addiction or mental illness. Environmental influences can play a large role in the development of a mental illness and/or addiction such as childhood neglect and abuse.

 
There is help and support for both. Addressing both addiction problems and mental illness together often increases the success rate of treatment. Providers of addiction and mental health services are recognizing this correlation more and more, and have been working towards incorporating programming to help those who experience both.
 
If you struggle with both addictions and mental health issues, you are not alone.
 
Resources:
Foundations Recovery Network: Dual Diagnosis. https://www.dualdiagnosis.org/mental-health-and-addiction/the-connection/
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. https://www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real/mental-health-statistics
https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/the-connection-between-substance-abuse-mental-illness/