Posted on 06/27/2017 6:09:30 AM PDT by Mariner
Adults with a mental illness receive more than 50 percent of the 115 million opioid prescriptions in the United States annually, according to a study released Monday. The results prompted researchers to suggest that improving pain management for people with mental health problems “is critical to reduce national dependency on opioids.”
People with mental health disorders represent 16 percent of the U.S. population.
The findings are worrisome, the researchers reported. They had expected that physicians were more conservative in prescribing these painkillers to people with mental illness.
“We are prescribing way too much opioids,” said Dr. Brian Sites, an anesthesiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire and one of the study’s researchers. “And that prescription behavior is resulting in significant morbidity in the country.”
snip...
Dr. Andrew Saxon, director of the Addiction Psychiatry Residency Program at the University of Washington, said that “most people with chronic pain who end up on opioids do have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder.” Yet too often the drugs don’t provide lasting relief, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at khn.org ...
I’m confused.
Someone please enlighten me as to how a ^mental illness^ cause pain severe enough for an opiod. Thanks.
Everyone over 20yrs old has had periods of extreme pain.
Not everyone ends up addicted.
Self medicating to treat the illness, not the pain. Same reason people with mental illness often abuse other drugs. Trying to feel “normal”.
I have a friend who is bipolar, and in the past had this pattern.
Mental Pain. It makes them happy.
1) And just WHO is paying for this ? You and me.
2) And who is profiting ? aka Drug Cos.
At a recent medical conference I attended, they explained that the same neural pathways in the brain for physical pain also carry transmissions for emotional pain.
these legal drugs killed 40,000 Americans last year
PTSD is a mental disorder. Most soldiers who experience PTSD also have extreme back pain. That is the reason that the stellate ganglion injections used to block the pain also block PTSD symptoms.
Hello, Veterans Administration!!!
““It actually turns out … that the best treatment for chronic pain is going to be behavioral interventions, not medications,” he explained. That involves teaching people to understand the underlying cause of their pain and skills to better cope with it, the psychiatrist said.
“Sites said alternatives to opioids could include cognitive behavioral therapy, acupuncture, meditation techniques [does that include Bible study?] and physical therapy.”
Since you aren’t terribly bright about this ( I blame the schools not you) then I will.set you straight.
Injuries to the brain cause not only pain, but impaired thinking at the same time.
The reporter (and evidently a good sized portion of the posters on this thread) was never taught this.
One thought in the opposite direction. Folks who have real pain chronically, from some underlying problem that can’t be resolved, will in many cases become depressed from the chronic pain. The depression could then be counted as a mental illness although the arrow of causality would be reversed. I have no idea as to the relative size of the population with pre-existing mental illness who develop chronic pain vs. the size of the population initially without mental illness who develop chronic pain and secondarily develop mental illness. But both deserve to be considered. We want to minimize folks getting unintentionally hooked on narcotics, minimize suffering in folks with real pain for which narcotics are often the most effective treatment and also minimize recreational narcotic usage, all at the same time.
I rarely get them prescribed, but they always make me feel really, really good.
Remember when simply stating the truth got folks sent to the gulags...
Back in the U.S.S.
Back in the U.S.S.
Back in the U.S.S.R.?
Perhaps opioids are a self-medication of last resort after being “treated”/tortured as a cash-cow for the profit of the pharmasurrance syndicate.
“It actually turns out … that the best treatment for chronic pain is going to be behavioral interventions, not medications”
The best treatment is to address the underlying cause of the pain. Sometimes (often?), this is beyond the analytical skills of the doctor in charge of treatment. Laziness or lack of competence would lead them to paint over the problem with painkillers, or assert that the pain is imaginary.
Damn, Edd!
I asked nicely and you insult my intelligence without cause.
Hey, Edd...fuck-off and die.
The VA leads the way in getting folks hooked on dope, and ALSO leads the way in getting them off of dope.
Irony of the highest order.
Someone please enlighten me as to how a ^mental illness^ cause pain severe enough for an opiod. Thanks.
Opioids stimulate the Endorphin system, the “Feel Good” areas of the brain. They also relieve, temporarily, the symptoms of Depression. Unfortunately, that effect is subject to Tachyphylaxis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyphylaxis
The rapid development of decrease in response to a drug after its administration. The patient initially feels much better, but the finds themselves taking more and more, chasing “Effect”.
Additionally there is a parallel loss of the brains innate ability to modulate pain and mood, making them more dependent on the drug, just to restore their prior baseline.
It's a trap, and a particularly vicious one
Could opioid addiction wipe out the Democrat party?
I would bet that a high percentage of the opioids are prescribed for cancer and hospice situations. I question the statistics as they don’t mention co-morbidity factors.
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