428,000 Indiana Adults Have Addiction and Mental Illness

About 428,000 adults in Indiana had a mental illness and a substance use disorder in 2025, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Most of these folks know that they’re not getting dual diagnosis treatment that addresses both conditions together. In fact, they’re not receiving anything at all.

That gap is the subject of a National Recovery Month awareness campaign announced September 1 by an Indiana behavioral health provider. But the goal to raise awareness echoes across the country.

Linking Mental Health to Addictions

Substance use and mental health conditions go together often enough that treating just one by itself typically fails.

“People with untreated mental illness have an increased chance of developing a substance use disorder. The reverse is also true,” noted Dr. Michael Kane of Indiana Center for Recovery. 

The trend runs in both directions. Some people take drugs as a form of self-medication. Others develop or worsen their mental health because of prolonged drug use.

Approaching Dual Diagnoses

Dual diagnoses treatments matter because tackling drugs and depression at the same time gets at the underlying conditions of both. Someone who completes addiction treatment but not their anxiety disorder, the pressure that led to substance use still festers when they walk out.

Integrated behavioral health care puts one team in charge of both, coordinating medication management and follow-up rather than one team doing one thing and another going in the opposite direction, neither meeting in the middle.

The Hoosier State Falls Short

The treatment gap in Indiana is wide on both sides of a dual diagnosis.

According to Mental Health America, about 25% of Indiana adults with a mental illness, or 135,000 people, didn’t receive treatment.

The shortfall is larger on the addiction side. SAMHSA indicated that about 80% of adults in Indiana who needed substance use treatment didn’t receive care.

Barriers include stigma, cost, transportation, family and work consequences and simply not knowing how or where to begin.

But staying silent doesn’t work either. Families have to watch someone struggle without a clear idea of who to call.

Integrated Treatment

Providers describe the shift as treating the person rather than the diagnosis.

“Recovery is about more than stopping the use of drugs or alcohol,” argued Melissa Boyll. She’s the clinical director of Indiana Center for Recovery South Bend. 

That means one plan covering multiple conditions with psychiatric and addiction clinicians collaborating from shared information.

Behavioral health spans from psychiatric hospitalization and residential treatment centers to outpatient therapy. It depends on medical risk, psychiatric stability, whether medically supervised detox is needed and support back home.

Starting Care

Comparing mental health treatment facilities means considering stuff like group therapy and insurance. To get started, feel free to browse our listings of mental health treatment facilities and dual diagnosis programs by location, filterable by level of care.

You can also dial 800-908-4823 (Sponsored) to speak with an expert and get some local options.

Author

Courtney Myers, MS

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Courtney Myers has more than 15 years of experience in online writing and editing. Since graduating from N.C. State University with an MS in Technical Communication, she’s helped clients improve their visibility and reach through expert-level content creation. She specializes in addiction recovery and behavioral healthcare topics.

Editor

Peter Lee, PhD

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Peter W.Y. Lee is a writer and historian of American history during the Cold War. His primary focus is the relationship between youth and popular culture and its impact on U.S. society during the twentieth century. He has published widely on how the public has used popular culture as a mechanism to address political and social shifts throughout time