If you’re living with more than one diagnosis at the same time—referred to as comorbidity—there’s support, treatment, and a hopeful future for you. Miramont Behavioral Health Hospital treats many of the disorders this article discusses in Middleton and Waukesha. Let’s dive into common mental health conditions, their most common accompanying comorbid conditions, and where you can seek help.
Anxiety
Anxiety disorders can fill your body with fear or tension that doesn’t really align with reality. You might avoid social events, replay conversations, or continuously brace for worst-case scenarios in your daily life. When you have to deal with anxiety on top of another diagnosis, symptoms can blend together in exhausting, exacerbating ways.
Almost 60% of people with anxiety also experience another mental health condition, which can commonly be:
- Depression. Emotional heaviness, deep hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and severe detachment from things you once loved are all typical of depression. Add that to anxiety symptoms, and life can feel hellish more often than not.
- Bipolar disorder. We’ll dive deeper into bipolar disorder in the next section, but in a nutshell, it causes extreme mood swings. Pile on anxiety, and you can feel totally defeated.
- Substance use disorder (SUD). You may use alcohol or other substances to calm your anxiety, but over time, that coping strategy can create new problems.
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder triggers intense highs and lows when it comes to your moods. You can swing from fantastic, impulsive, incredibly productive-feeling energy to profound sadness and hopelessness during bipolar disorder’s temporary characteristic depression. When another condition shows up alongside bipolar, those highs and lows shifts can become even more unmanageable.
Psychiatric research tells us that certain conditions may be more likely to appear alongside bipolar, and when they do, mood symptoms may become more severe or harder to manage. Here are some of the more common ones:
- Anxiety disorders. Clinical anxiety disorders can try to force you into a constant state of worry, tension, or dread, despite what’s actually going on in your life. The racing thoughts, restlessness, and panic attacks that these conditions cause can all complicate how you manage bipolar disorder.
- Eating disorders. These disorders can make your brain super strict about food, making behaviors like bingeing, purging, or intense body-image focus your norm. Bipolar disorder may worsen these behaviors.
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. You might struggle with focus, impulsivity, or restlessness when you have ADHD, making bipolar symptoms potentially harder to control.
- SUD. You may use alcohol or other substances in problematic ways that involve cravings, withdrawal symptoms, or an inability to stop using. In many cases, this type of substance use can severely worsen bipolar episodes, putting you in more danger.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia alters how you perceive reality, affecting your thoughts, feelings, and understanding of the world you live in. You may suffer from strong auditory or visual hallucinations, severe paranoia, or an inability to interact with others when your schizophrenia triggers catatonic-like symptoms. These symptoms, alongside bipolar, can feel like an impossible obstacle.
Psychiatric studies show us that anxiety disorders can commonly pop up in tandem with schizophrenia. Some of the more studied overlaps include:
- Panic disorder. Sudden intense waves of fear, a tight chest, or a deep sense of impending doom are all characteristic of panic disorders. These episodes can intensify the fear, reality distortion, and confusion that schizophrenic symptoms already cause.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD may force you to relive past trauma through flashbacks or nightmares. The hypervigilance and emotional numbness that may result can deepen schizophrenia symptoms.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD traps you in repetitive, unhelpful, and disruptive thoughts or rituals that temporarily ease anxiety. These cycles can consume time and energy you already need to manage your schizophrenia diagnosis.
Substance Use Disorder
Substance use disorder (SUD) can affect how your brain and behavior respond to alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, opioids, or other drugs. You might start using socially or to cope with stress, then notice you need more of the substance to feel the same effect. Over time, you may find it hard to stop even when you see the harm it causes.
SUD studies highlight common overlaps of substance misuse and other mental health conditions, intensifying symptoms on both sides. In some cases, co-occurring disorders may amplify SUD or make relapse more likely. Common secondary conditions that pair up with SUD can include depression, ADHD, schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders.
You might also struggle with one or more personality disorders when you have SUD. That might mean that you struggle with unstable relationships, intense or inappropriate emotions, or impulsive behavior, further tightening the grip that SUD may have on your brain.
Treat Comorbidity in Wisconsin with Miramont
You might carry two or three diagnoses and assume you’re beyond help, but with the right evaluation, therapy, inpatient treatment, and coordinated outpatient care, Miramont BH can help you determine what belongs where to build a plan that addresses everything.
Contact our care teams in Middleton and Waukesha to begin reclaiming your life.
