When addiction runs alongside a serious psychiatric condition — psychosis, bipolar disorder, or a personality disorder — each one tends to make the other harder to treat in isolation.
Dual diagnosis (sometimes called co-occurring disorders) describes exactly this overlap: substance use existing alongside a diagnosed psychiatric condition, each interacting with and often intensifying the other. Substances may be a way of managing unbearable symptoms; equally, substance use can trigger or worsen psychiatric episodes. Treating either half without the other rarely holds.
This work is done alongside your psychiatric care team, not instead of it — where medication, a consultant psychiatrist, or a community mental health team are already involved, therapy fits around that existing care rather than duplicating or replacing it. The focus is on the whole picture: how the addiction and the psychiatric condition feed each other, and what stability looks like when both are being addressed together.
This is genuinely complex work, and pacing matters more than usual. Sessions are structured around current stability first, with the underlying patterns addressed as and when it's safe to do so.
This isn't peripheral to my work — my background includes experience across a variety of psychiatric and addiction treatment inpatient facilities, and complex presentations like this make up a meaningful part of my ongoing caseload.
Sessions available in person in Cork, or online worldwide. If you're currently in crisis or experiencing acute psychiatric symptoms, please contact your psychiatric team or emergency services rather than waiting for a session.
