Comorbidities of Psychological Disorders

Comorbidity in psychology means that someone is suffering from more than one mental health disorder at a time. This is quite common, as lots of people face different challenges originating from different life situations, genetics, and hormones.

For example, a person may have a lifelong anxiety disorder that is diagnosed and that they have been in treatment for. Following rough life circumstance, they may develop depression that has nothing to do with their anxiety disorder. Or, due to hormonal changes, they may develop that depression as a direct result of their anxiety disorder. 

Sometimes, a person can have two more separate diagnoses that were not caused by the other. A person may have both autism and ADHD, for example. They may have had these for all of their lives that causes different symptoms and issues in different ways. They will also like they need to be treated separately and differently for each of these. For the ADHD, they may need medication and an individual learning plan at school relating to attention, focus, and executive function. For the autism, they may need specific types of therapy, family intervention and support, and social groups. Neither of these things would have caused the other, so they would be comorbid disorders that a person would be diagnosed with for life. Neither one is a symptom of the other and both are primary disorders. For example, a person may have breast cancer and a broken arm. While both of those are diagnoses, neither are caused by the other and both must be treated differently. Fixing one would not fix the other.

Other times, these other mental health disorders are temporary symptoms that can be alleviated after treating the original and primary disorder. In other words, imagine that you are allergic to peanuts. That is your diagnosis and your problem, but you were not aware of that. You eat peanut butter almost daily. This causes headaches, stomach aches, trouble breathing. You go to your doctor and they diagnose you with headaches, stomach aches, and asthma. You are then treated for the those three things while the issues continue. They may slightly improve, but would still be present and bothersome. If instead you were to be diagnosed with a peanut allergy, you would know to remove that from your diet and all of the other issues would go away. You would still have the peanut allergy as a diagnosis, but the other symptoms that resulted from that would subside. 

Your mental health is the same way. If you have an anxiety disorder, sometimes this can cause issues focusing. It can also cause you to become depressed from time to time. This can also cause stress disorders, eating disorders, or even self injury. Treating each of those “symptoms” can be beneficial, but the most beneficial plan of action would be to treat the anxiety directly and most of those other things will take care of themselves with time. You would likely always have the anxiety disorder diagnosis to manage, but may not meet the criteria for other diagnoses as a result. 

If your therapist is not sure what the original issue is, they are not always able to accurately treat you, such as in the peanut allergy example. Sometimes this creates the need for assessments to be administered in order for treatment to be more effective. Certain forms of therapy are more effective for certain diagnoses.

PTSD, anxiety, depression, and ADHD often bounce off of each other and create a lot of life and mood problems for a person. This is why it can be helpful to have a full battery assessment to determine what your specific diagnosis is, and what it is not. These assessments can help determine the primary issue and if that issue is causing the other issues. Once that primary issue and diagnosis is identified, a treatment plan can be put in place to address that, which will also alleviate the other concerns. We offer these services here at Birch across the lifespan and can schedule a consultation or clinical interview to discuss that with you. Knowing which diagnoses you have, and which diagnoses you do not have but may have symptoms of currently, can better allow you to receive specific treatments and care.

Kyndal Sims

Birch Psychology