DUAL DIAGNOSIS
JellyPics
MINDED TO
Are people being asked to get well before they can access help, ask Lisa Ogilvie, Stephanie Ash and Bernard Shaw
A t the latest Greater Manchester Recovery Network( GMRN) Spotlight event people with lived experience joined services, LEROs and people from the local and re cov ery communities to explore the challenges people face when seeking support for both mental health and problems with drugs or alcohol – and what needs to change.
GMRN Spotlight provides a space where people affected by issues in addiction and recovery can come together and speak for themselves. This time the focus was on accessing mental health support while experiencing active addiction, and whether they’ re effectively being asked to get well before they can access help.
Participants divided into three groups to explore different parts of the problem. They looked at trying to get mental health support while using drugs or alcohol, what happens when mental health and drug and alcohol services don’ t join up, and what people would like to see change. What emerged was not a call for one service to solve everything. It was a call to recognise that people’ s lives cannot always be separated into neat categories.
THE FIRST THING THAT’ S SEEN The first group looked at what happens when somebody seeks mental health support while using drugs or alcohol. A recurring concern was that substance use can become the first thing services see, while the mental health difficulty behind or alongside it receives less attention. Participants spoke about the complexity of mental health and substance use and how difficult it can be to separate one from the other. For some, drugs or alcohol had become a way of coping with mental distress they did not yet understand. Others described experiences of drug-induced psychosis and serious thoughts or actions relating to ending their lives. Across these different experiences was a shared concern that substance use could affect whether, or how, mental health support was offered.
One participant described asking mental health services for help while experiencing druginduced psychosis and being unable to access the support he felt he needed. His experience raised a difficult question – how unwell does somebody have to become before their substance use stops being seen as a reason not to help? Another participant reflected on recognising, only later, that she had been using substances to cope with mental distress she did not understand at the time and being told that support could not be offered until she was free from substances.
These experiences reflected a wider contradiction discussed by the group. If somebody is using drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with poor mental health, what happens when that same substance use becomes a barrier to accessing
20 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • NOVEMBER 2026 WWW. DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS. COM