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Psychiatric Conditions Of Drug Addictions

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People in today’s society have problems and criticize things that they don’t comprehend such as someone with a mental disease or disorder. They have a difficult time understanding what’s going on in someone’s mind which has been proven throughout the history of people suffering from mental illness. For example, the Christian church use to “…believe that those who display these symptoms are demon possessed” and the symptoms corresponded to someone suffering from schizophrenia ("Messiah's House of Yahvah"). Fast forwarding to modern society there are still some psychiatric conditions that till this day that receive negative judgment. One social psychotic condition that has been receiving negative criticism is people that have drug addictions. The term drug addiction can be defined as a “…chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences” (National Institute on Drug …show more content…

A professor from Brown University, Rich, said that “…by refusing or neglecting to provide treatment to these addicts, many U.S. prisons are missing the best chance to cure them…” (Carmichael) and that if we invest in treatments it would likely decrease future crimes. Therefore, clinical treatment would be more proactive in treating the psychiatric conditions of a drug addict than if they were to be punished. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime held a session discussing the problems of drug addiction and how society should “[shift] the problem of drug abuse and addiction from the legal (or moral) sphere to that of science and medicine…” (National Institute on Drug Abuse). This also proves that the society should realize drug addiction as a disease and that we should provide clinical treatments because drug addiction is a compulsive disorder that the patient has trouble

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