Conditions We Treat
Dual diagnosis treatment that stops making you choose.
Mental health and substance use are treated together here, in one plan with one clinical team. Six Colorado offices and online, starting with a free and confidential assessment.
Co-Occurring Disorders
Two conditions, one person, one plan.
Dual diagnosis is the plain name for a common situation: a mental health condition and a substance use disorder in the same person at the same time. You will also see it called co-occurring disorders. The two terms mean the same thing, and neither one means your case is unusually complicated.
It is closer to the norm than the exception. Citing the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 35 percent of U.S. adults who have another mental disorder also have a substance use disorder. In a room of people in outpatient treatment for drinking or using, the ones carrying a second diagnosis are not the odd cases. They are most of the room.
The substance side is most often alcohol, and increasingly opioids and fentanyl, though any substance can sit on either side of this. What makes it a dual diagnosis is not which drug is involved. It is that two conditions are present and both need treating.
Almost everyone arrives asking which one came first. It is the least useful question available. By the time someone sits down for an assessment, the two conditions are feeding each other in both directions: the anxiety makes the drinking make sense, the drinking makes the next morning's anxiety worse, and settling the original order changes nothing about what has to happen now. What matters is that both get treated, starting this week.
The Redpoint Center treats dual diagnosis on an outpatient basis. We do not run a detox unit or an inpatient psychiatric unit. When someone needs one of those first, we say so plainly, help them get there, and pick their care up on the other side.
What We Treat
The combinations we see most.
Any mental health condition can pair with any substance. These are the pairings that walk through the door most often, and in every one of them the two halves are doing something to each other.
Bipolar disorder and stimulants
Its own category rather than a form of depression. Stimulants and alcohol destabilize the cycle in both directions, which is part of why an accurate diagnosis has to come before a plan.
Personality disorders and emotional regulation
Borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder among them, where the pattern sits in how a person relates to themselves and others, and use often follows the crisis rather than causes it.
Seasonal affective disorder and the winter pattern
Depressive symptoms that track the calendar, arriving with the short days and lifting in spring. In Colorado the drinking pattern that grows alongside them often does not lift with them.
Sequential vs Integrated
Treating one and waiting on the other is where this stalls.
Care for the mental health condition tends to stall while the using continues. Sobriety that leaves the mental health condition untouched is a hard thing to hold on to. Both statements are true at once, which is the whole argument for treating them together.
Most people who reach us have already been treated for one half of this. That is the pattern we hear in assessments: a therapist who worked carefully on the depression and never asked what was in the glass, or a program that addressed the drinking and said the mood would sort itself out once the drinking stopped. Sometimes it is stated outright, and someone is told to come back with 30 days of sobriety before their mental health care can begin.
The evidence points the other way. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that integrated treatment leads to better health outcomes for people with substance use and other mental disorders, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration names integrated treatment the best practice for people living with both. The National Institute of Mental Health puts the definition in a single line: integrated care combines mental health and substance use treatment so patients can receive more convenient, coordinated care in one place.
The words doing the work there are "one place." Two good providers who never speak to each other will each write a sensible plan, and the two plans will quietly work against each other: one asks you to sit with the feeling, the other treats the feeling as a relapse warning, and you are left to referee. Integrated care removes the refereeing. One assessment covers both, one team writes one plan, and the connection between the two conditions becomes something you work on directly rather than something that falls between two appointments.
Being honest about the edges of that matters too. Some conditions travel with substance use and need more than any outpatient program can carry on its own. Schizophrenia, eating disorders, and an active episode of substance-induced psychosis are the clearest examples. We assess them, treat what our level of care can genuinely treat, and coordinate specialty or hospital care when that is what the situation calls for, rather than holding on to a case we should be handing off.
If you are thinking about suicide, or you are worried about someone who is, do not wait for an appointment. Call or text 988 to reach 988 Colorado, the state's mental health line, free and confidential, 24 hours a day. In an immediate emergency, call 911.
From Intake To Step-Down
What integrated care looks like week to week.
Integrated is a claim that is easy to make and easy to check. Here is what it means operationally at Redpoint, from the first phone call through step-down.
- 1
One assessment that asks about both
Free and confidentialA single conversation covering the substance use, the mental health symptoms, the trauma history underneath either, and how much structure your week can actually absorb. You do not need a diagnosis or the right words to start it.
- 2
One plan, written by one team
Both conditions land in the same treatment plan with the same clinicians, so nobody is waiting on a records release to find out what the other provider decided.
- 3
The same groups, the same week
PHP runs Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. IOP meets three to five days a week with morning or evening options. In either one, the mental health work and the substance use work happen in the same schedule rather than in two places.
- 4
Individual therapy aimed at the link
The one-to-one work goes after the connection specifically: what the substance is doing for you, what it costs by the next morning, and what has to be in place before it can be put down.
- 5
Medical support when it belongs in the plan
Our medical director evaluates whether medication has a role, on either side of the diagnosis. It is a conversation, not a prerequisite, and it does not gate the rest of the work.
- 6
Family, then step-down
Family support sessions run during the week for the people who want them. As things stabilize, care steps down to lighter outpatient work and alumni support rather than stopping at a discharge date.
Two Tracks
You will not be the only one carrying both.
The question people actually ask on the phone is not clinical. It is whether they will spend three days a week in a room where everyone else is talking about their drinking while the thing keeping them up at night is the panic attacks.
Redpoint is built for both answers. There is a mental health track for people whose primary struggle is not drugs or alcohol, and a co-occurring track for people carrying both, so the group you land in is matched to what you are actually dealing with. Which one fits is something the assessment settles, not something you have to decide before you call.
Inside either track, treatment teams are age and gender specific, trauma informed, and experiential, and the clinical work is integrative by design rather than by referral. The same clinicians who run the substance use groups run the mental health groups, which is why a plan here can treat the link between the two instead of treating them in sequence.
The medical side sits inside the same plan. Our medical director, Ryan Hashem, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist who oversees medical and psychiatric care here, so medical evaluation and medication management are part of the plan when they belong in it and are never a condition of starting.
- Individual therapy
- Group therapy
- Family support sessions
- Medical care and medication management
- Case management and recovery coaching
- Alumni support
Two diagnoses do not mean two deductibles.
Integrated treatment is billed as the level of care you attend, not as two separate courses of treatment. The fastest way to know what your plan covers is to let us check it. Verification is free, takes a few minutes, and commits you to nothing.
Accepted insurance
Employer and EAP partners
Don’t see your plan? Call us and we will check it, including out-of-network benefits.
Clinical Approaches
The therapies that do this particular work.
In Person And Online
Where dual diagnosis care actually happens.
Every office treats co-occurring conditions. If getting to one is the obstacle, virtual IOP delivers the same integrated structure anywhere in Colorado.
Common Questions
Dual diagnosis questions, answered.
What is dual diagnosis?
Do I have to be sober before I can start mental health treatment?
Which came first, the mental health condition or the addiction?
Is PHP or IOP better for dual diagnosis?
How much does dual diagnosis treatment cost in Colorado?
Do you prescribe medication as part of dual diagnosis treatment?
Where in Colorado can I get dual diagnosis treatment?
Not sure which level of care fits both.
View All ProgramsDual diagnosis care runs at every level we offer, so the question is structure rather than diagnosis. Pick the one that matches the week you actually have, and the assessment will confirm or adjust it.
Intensive Outpatient
IOPStructured therapy three days a week while keeping your daily rhythm.
Learn MorePartial Hospitalization
PHPFull-day clinical care, five days a week, for those who need immersive support.
Learn MoreVirtual IOP
VirtualSame clinical rigor, accessible from anywhere in Colorado.
Learn MoreSober Living
HousingSupportive housing that reinforces recovery skills between sessions and beyond treatment.
Learn MoreMedical Model
MedicalMedical and psychiatric care built into treatment, led by our Medical Director.
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