According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (2014), schizophrenia is a chronic mental condition that interferes with a person's ability to think clearly, manage emotions, and make decisions. The cause of schizophrenia can be attributed to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Psychosis often accompanies schizophrenia and is defined as the loss of contact with reality. Schizophrenia often begins to appear in people during late adolescence and young adulthood. This time period in human development is critical when it comes to the propensity for substance abuse. Smith and Hucker (1994) found that an individual with schizophrenia was 47% more likely to have a substance use disorder than a population without schizophrenia. In addition to a greater propensity to abuse drugs and alcohol, people with schizophrenia are likely to use nicotine at a much greater rate than the general population (Sagud, 2009). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (2014), approximately 2.4 million American adults over the age of 18 suffer from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a non-discriminatory disease and affects men and women equally, regardless of socioeconomic status. Currently, the best treatment path for people with schizophrenia is a combination of antipsychotic medications combined with psychotherapy, behavior modification, and social rehabilitation. Green, Drake, Brunetta, and Noordsy, (2007) found that “Patients with dual diagnoses are highly prone to adverse outcomes in several domains: increased severity of symptoms; increased rates of hospitalization, infectious disease, violence, victimization, homelessness and non-adherence to medications. Concomitant drug use...... half of paper ...... patients with were abstinent, 68% reported no significant psychiatric symptoms, and 29% were employed, " (p.861). Dual diagnosis treatment is a relatively new innovation that has only become more important since the 1990s. The prognosis for treatment of this population suffering from schizophrenia and substance use disorder is improving. Although evidence shows that there are benefits associated with some sort of dual diagnosis training, a tremendous amount of research still needs to be conducted to determine the effectiveness of comorbidity treatment for schizophrenia patients. To better treat dual diagnosis patients, it is important to utilize an interdisciplinary collaboration between mental health and substance abuse experts to create an integrated treatment approach that addresses the needs of this special population..