By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.
Acute or Chronic Illness?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Getting the right kind of treatment for your illness is important.
Whether it’s a physical, emotional, or mental disorder, getting the right treatment makes all the difference.
One of the problems we have in the behavioral health field is a tendency to treat chronic illnesses as if they were acute illnesses.
What is an acute illness?
Acute illness is something like breaking your leg. It happened suddenly, you go to the hospital and the Doctor sets it in a cast. Eventually, the broken leg heals and you walk normally. Another example of an acute illness would be a case of pneumonia. This can be quite serious and may result in a hospital stay. You may need emergency treatment. When that pneumonia goes away and you can return home. You may have some after effects, But at some point, you will be pronounced cured of your pneumonia.
How is a chronic illness different?
Chronic illnesses have to be managed not cured. Things like diabetes and heart disease are managed. With a chronic illness, the Doctor continues to provide care and monitoring to keep the disease from getting worse. In the past, acute illnesses were the main things doctors treated, today more than 75% of what doctors treat are chronic illnesses.
Mental health and substance use disorders are chronic illnesses.
For years we’ve made a mistake by thinking that we can treat mental and emotional illnesses as if they were acute. Someone is under the influence of a substance and are sent to detox for 72 hours. As if substance use disorders were the same sort of things as a broken leg or an overdose of poison.
The belief used to be that once the drugs were out of their system that person was cured. If the substance use disorder was an acute disorder, like poisoning, that would have work. It is common for people straight out of detox to pick up drugs again within a few days. Detoxification does not work to cure substance use disorders because they are chronic illnesses.
The person sent to the psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt might be released after two or three days when they no longer were feeling suicidal. Sometimes that person gets additional care after the hospitalization. But not always.
This is often another case of treating a chronic illness as if it were an acute illness. Without further treatment, after the brief hospitalization, there is a good chance that the depression and thoughts of suicide will return.
Mental health problems and substance use disorders require long-term treatment.
Repeatedly we have found that people with mental health problems who get treatment over a longer period of time are less likely to have a return of symptoms. Those people who continue to stay in treatment for up to two years after an episode of depression are less likely to have a recurrence of that depression.
With substance use disorders we find that those people who continue to stay in some form of continuing care are less likely to have a relapse. Staying connected to whatever program or treatment helped you to recover from your substance use disorder improves the chances that you will stay recovered. In drug and alcohol treatment this continuing care is often referred to as aftercare.
One thing that has been sorely missing in mental health treatment is some form of continuing care after the initial episode. Far too often mental health issues are treated as if they were acute illnesses rather than the chronic conditions they are. Providing some kind of continuing support, groups, or individual counseling, reduces the risk of relapse into an active state of mental illness.
One highly effective continuing care system is the development of a written wellness and recovery plan.
For more about aftercare see the post in the “What is.” series.
Staying connected with David Joel Miller
Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!
My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.
Story Bureau.
Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.
Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.
As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.
Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.
Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.
Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.
Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.
Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.
What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?
Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.
For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller
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