Achieving Remission and Favorable Outcomes in Patients with Depression/Anxiety and Substance use Disorders

Abstract

Given the frequency with which patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) and those with psychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), suffer relapses and recurrences, the issue of long-term treatment for SUDs warrants special attention. Faced with recommending long-term treatment, the clinician must discern the primacy of disorder, which may have been only obliquely addressed at the time of the patient's presentation and then solved by concurrent treatment. Establishing primacy relies on determining whether the psychiatric symptoms were induced by SUD or the psychiatric disorder emerged first and substance use was a means of coping with it. A third possibility exists—that the two disorders developed independently of each other, albeit becoming intermingled over time and serving to exacerbate each other. Clues to the temporal relationship of the disorders can be deduced from a meticulous history obtained from multiple sources, the effects that acute treatment has had on either condition, and the patient's willingness to remain abstinent from the addictive substance. Hasin and colleagues demonstrated the importance that a history of depression has on long-term remission and relapse outcomes in substance dependence (Slide 1).