Cross-Training, conducted for practitioners from different disciplines and systems, permits them to learn to function as part of an integrated treatment team whose members come from different treatment and prevention systems. When members of a multidisciplinary cross-trained team simultaneously provide services for clients with multiple disorders in a single setting, we call that "integrated treatment."

Reviews of the treatment literature indicate that integrated approaches are generally more effective than sequential or parallel treatments. Much has been written about dual diagnosis in the past 20 years, giving rise to an emerging consensus on the importance of treating each condition as primary, within a cross-systems approach, thus offering an individualized, comprehensive, and integrated range of services.