The Importance Of Comorbidity

What is Comorbidity?

Comorbidity can be defined most generally as the co-occurrence of two or more mental or physical disorders together. This is one of the critical issues while examining the patient and became an important topic of research to understand the effects in detail. Comorbid indicates existence of different medical conditions within the patient which might be independent or dependent on each other. There is lot of criticism involved with use of term Comorbidity as psychiatrists argue using of these terms will demotivate patient further and can cause adverse effects so they argue use of comorbidity should be avoided.
Definitions
Feinstein defined comorbidity as “any distinct clinical entity that has co-existed or that may occur
Concurrent comorbidity is that in which two or more disorders are present at the same time, such as schizophrenia and alcohol dependence. Successive comorbidity is defined as comorbidity in which disorders may occur at different times in a person’s life, in ways that may or may not be causally related to each other.
Why study comorbidity?

Comorbidity is an important aspect of study for treating patients. Importance of comorbidity can be classified into categories namely importance for treatment, theory, research and prevention. All of these are interrelated like better research helps in treatment and prevention programs and research need to take into consideration the clinical outcomes
People with alcohol use disorders often have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, but they frequently do not receive specialized substance abuse treatment that addresses both conditions. Although pharmacological and psychosocial treatments for alcohol use disorders and psychiatric disorders can be integrated to help these patients, relatively few clinical studies have tested these types of treatments. As mental health and substance abuse facilities expand their services for patients with dual disorders, further research is needed to guide the treatment of this patient population.
Reasons for
Mental disorders are subjected to be causing substance disorders like alcohol and drugs. Also it is observed that substance disorders are causing mental disorders. It can be explained as use of cannabis leads to use of other illicit drugs which might influence a person a lot making him least interested in general activities or social gatherings and tend to stay alone which might finally lead to mental disorders like depression