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"Dual Diagnosis" has been used to refer to the occurrence of Mental Illness in people with Mental Retardation (nowadays called Intellectual Disability, Learning Disability, Developmental Disability, etc) at least since the founding in 1983 of the National Association for the Dually Diagnosed: see their website at www.thenadd.org. This usage is generally not known to mental health professionals, who typically consider learning disabled people to be immune to mental illness. The anonymous editor who excised this meaning of the term from the main article a fortnight ago obviously shares that belief. NRPanikker (talk) 01:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Speaking of vernacular, how does this article's term differentiate from co-occurring disorders? Are they the same? JoeSmack Talk 21:46, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
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- No, in general it is not usual to speak of someone with two medical conditions as having a "dual diagnosis." However in psychiatry more pains are taken to bring all the phenomena observed under one heading. The term "dual diagnosis" can be used to refer to people with mental retardation who develop a mental illness. The expression seems to have been introduced because separate training leads many mental health workers to assume that the two conditions cannot coexist, or to be so struck by the presence of mental retardation as to be unable to see the mental illness: this is the converse phenomenon, known as "diagnostic overshadowing." It can be seen in the main article, where another editor removed the account of this condition, through inability to accept the existence of intellectual diability at all, and substituted the other use of the phrase, for the co-existence of mental illness with substance abuse. NRPanikker (talk) 23:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
