Assessing your Loved One Disorders

One of CRAFTconnect goals is to help you find more effective ways of coping that improve the quality of your life while helping your loved. To help you effectively respond to the stressors associated with your loved ones disorder it is important that you understand their current level of functioning. As a Concerned Significant Other (CSO), you probably know more about your loved one’s behavioral health challenges than you think. Understanding the extent and nature of these challenges, as early as possible, is helpful to their healing – and yours. This understanding begins with screenings and assessments. Screening is a process for evaluating the possible presence of particular problems like anxiety, depression, drug or alcohol abuse. To ensure that important information is obtained, standardized tools are used to ask carefully designed questions that help determine whether a more thorough evaluation of a particular challenge is warranted. Many people with mental illness are drawn to drug or alcohol abuse in an effort to rebalance their brain chemistry. The opposite is also true; unbalanced brain chemistry due to drug or alcohol abuse can aggravate a pre-existing mental illness. The most common of these co-occurring mental health disorders with substance use are anxiety and depression. Screenings provide a quick index of problem areas.

If you are unsure if your loved one has a substance use or mental health disorder pretend you are your loved one and try and answer the questions in these three surveys on their behalf.