Mental Health Co-Morbidity

The Co-occurrence of Substance Abuse and Mental Illness:
Thomas Burns
Springfield College School of Human Services

According to the National Institute on Drug Addiction “comorbidity occurs when there are interactions between two disorders or illnesses and the interactions may happen simultaneously or sequentially in the same person” (2008, p.1). Europeans turn to the International Classification of Disease (ICD) in order to define comorbidity. This definition is reported through the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), who reports that comorbidity means “the presence or coexistence of additional diseases with the reference to an initial diagnoses or to the index condition
According to European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction ( EMCDDA) in reference to the relationship between substance use and mental health disorders, they define a general level of co-morbidity as “the coexistence of additional diseases and the reference to an initial diagnoses” (Baldacchino and Corkey,2006). The World Health Organization does not differ much in definition from most other organizational studies but they seem to individualize “mental health” and “substance use” in terms of referring to the co-occurrence of two “psychiatric disorders” not involving “psychoactive substance use” or the co-occurrence of two diagnosable substance disorders (WHO,
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