"Double trouble" phenomenon. Treatment of teens with both psychiatric and substance abuse problems poses a new...

Those in mental health services face a new, exciting clinical challenge for inpatient treatment: the dual-diagnosis mental health patient. The term refers to the presence of emotional disturbance and chemical dependency in the same patient. Only recently have hospitals begun to consolidate psychiatric and addiction treatment services into special units. Such a consolidation occurred in the creation of the Penrose Adolescent Treatment Services (PATS) unit at Penrose Hospital, Colorado Springs, CO. From the beginning, PATS was planned as a "dual-capability" treatment center to treat chemical dependency and psychiatric conditions in separate, distinct tracks in the same milieu. A third track was to focus on the needs of the dual diagnosis patient. Each youth was placed in a "primary" track of psychiatry or chemical dependency, with the dual-diagnosis patients borrowing the necessary services from the opposite track. To maintain the integrity of the preexisting psychiatric and chemical dependency programs, the unit adopted a case management model.