Dr. Marta Torrens is Head of the Addiction and Neuropsychiatry Program. Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

In his lecture, he pointed out that important progress has been made in recent years, when the concept of Dual Diagnosis was unknown, and that the term is now commonly used, and it has been accepted that there is a comorbidity between mental disorder and substance abuse. However, research, treatment and its diagnosis need further research.

He indicated that to consider the presence of dual pathology presents a clear clinical importance since when comparing drug users without psychiatric disorder with those who do have it, there is a greater number of emergencies, more need for treatment and an increase in suicides, up to 14%, a situation that appears masked in the overdose category. The subjects with dual pathology make up a population with an aggravated problem, both in social and health marginality and consequently with greater social expenditure. Therefore, more prevention, diagnosis and treatment are needed from the clinic.

In their studies they have focused on the detection of the presence of dual pathology, using the analysis of dopamine levels or the response to depression. Its results have even changed the treatment of many of its patients with dual pathology in which the drugs used did not have the result obtained in patients without dual pathology. Therefore, they have also focused on the importance of diagnosis, a field in which they are developing new tests.

He noted the new challenges facing clinicians, advocating the need for a powerful body of research since the existing body is small and in many studies the sample is not representative of the dual pathology population. In this sense, it is necessary to introduce indicators of the presence of dual pathology, which must be reliable and easy to use. To this end, he presented the recently published clinical practice guide for the treatment of dual pathology, in which the recommendations for the use of drugs when there is a dual pathology are systematized. All this seems to open a new door to the treatment of dual pathology using the concept of "dual drugs" referring to known drugs that could be useful in patients resistant to other treatments.

She concluded her intervention by raising the issue of dual pathology from a gender perspective. In this area, the gender differences observed are even greater than those that appear when there is only one disorder, either addiction or psychiatric. If the incidence of women with addiction, depression, anxiety, etc. is three to one compared to men, in women with dual pathology the incidence increases from five to one. These women have less accessibility to treatment and many more complications, so even a new service and treatment design is required for women with dual pathology.

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