Two Diagnoses, One Person: Treating Co-occurring Disorders

Most clients don’t arrive with one clean diagnosis. A depression sits next to a drinking problem. An anxiety disorder shares the room with a habit that grew during a hard year. When mental health and addiction show up together, counselors call it co-occurring, and Dr. Kathie Erwin has watched it walk through the door for nearly two decades.

In this one-hour course she shows what the counselor actually does when two diagnoses live in one person: how to aim with the DSM-5 without reducing the client to a label, how trauma and culture and the client’s spiritual life belong in the plan from the first session, and how a whole-person, Catholic-Christian approach keeps the counseling ordered to the good of the person rather than to a single symptom. You’ll leave able to explain what co-occurring disorders are, why accurate diagnosis comes first, and how to build one integrated plan instead of five separate problem lists.