An individual is in partial recovery when they try to recover from one illness and ignore or are unaware of the other illness.Some people may try to recover from their chemical dependency and will ignore their psychiatric illness. Some people may be unaware that they are also affected by a psychiatric illness. Frequently, the symptoms of their psychiatric illness will reoccur and the individual will be at a great risk for relapse. They will try to self medicate their symptoms by using alcohol or street drugs. When that occurs, they are experiencing a symptom related relapse.Some people may try to recover from their psychiatric illness and will ignore their chemical dependency. They may be following their treatment plan and be using psychiatric medications to manage their symptoms. However, when they combine alcohol or street drugs with their psychiatric medications they may experience unexpected side effects. They may experience an accidental overdose as a result of the combining the medications with the alcohol or street drugs. Some individuals may become heavily involved in alcohol or drug use and gradually ignore their psychiatric illness. As a result, the symptoms of their psychiatric illness may eventually reoccur.