Answer Addiction

Tag: opioid use disorder

  • Doctor Sentenced To Life In Prison For Patient's Opioid Death

    Doctor Sentenced To Life In Prison For Patient's Opioid Death

    The judge presiding over the trial said that the doctor had an established record of unscrupulous prescribing practices. 

    A Kansas doctor will spend the rest of his life behind bars after he was found guilty of writing prescriptions that led to the death of a man in 2015. 

    “I want this case to send a message to physicians and the health care community,” U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said in a news release. “Unlawfully distributing opioids and other controlled substances is a federal crime that could end a medical career and send an offender to prison.”

    Steven R. Henson tried in federal court and found guilty of conspiracy to distribute prescription drugs outside the course of medical practice and unlawfully distributing oxycodone, methadone and alprazolam, the use of which resulted in the death of a victim.

    He was also found guilty of presenting false patient records to investigators, obstruction of justice and money laundering.

    According to KOAM News Now, Henson wrote prescriptions to patients who paid him. He would ask if they were in pain and they would answer “yes,” but he didn’t ask any other questions or perform an exam. 

    In July 2015, one of Henson’s patients, Nick McGovern, overdosed on alprazolam and methadone that had been prescribed by Henson. The judge presiding over the trial said that Henson had an established record of unscrupulous prescribing practices. 

    “The defendant kept no medical records, performed no physical examinations or physical tests, gave massive amounts of opioids to patients with little demonstrated need, wrote unneeded, non-controlled prescriptions in order to defeat pharmacy limits on controlled substances, and knew that patients were traveling improbably long distances to receive opioids,” U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten wrote. “There was ample evidence that Henson was prescribing opioid medications in amounts likely to lead to addiction, and in amounts so expensive that the patients would likely be forced by economic circumstances to support their addiction by selling some of the drugs to others.”

    McAllister said that prosecuting doctors who abuse their ability write prescriptions is an important part of confronting the opioid epidemic. 

    “The prosecution of cases involving a health professional’s misuse of medical expertise and authority is extremely important to fight the opioid epidemic,” he said. “The vast majority of health care providers are people of integrity who follow their oath to help others, abide by the law, and do all they can to protect patients from becoming addicted. The evidence showed that is not what Dr. Henson did in this case.”

    KOAM reported that there was a gasp in the courtroom when the sentence was announced. Henson maintained his innocence. 

    “I only had one goal in life as a physician and that is to take excellent care of patients and increase functionality,” he said in a statement in court. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Treatment Specialists Struggle To Address Sexual Dysfunction In Patients

    Opioid Treatment Specialists Struggle To Address Sexual Dysfunction In Patients

    Addiction experts worry that people with opioid use disorder may stop medication-assisted treatment due to the side effect of sexual dysfunction. 

    People treating their opioid addiction with drugs like methadone and buprenorphine often struggle with sexual dysfunction, according to a report in Filter.

    All opioids lower the amount of free and available testosterone in the human body, and lower testosterone levels are directly associated with a lower sex drive and more difficulty achieving orgasm regardless of gender. However, the actual source of sexual dysfunction can be difficult to determine, and obtaining treatment can be even more challenging.

    According to Dr. Alan Wartenberg, former president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, 30 to 40% of individuals taking methadone and 20% of those taking buprenorphine experience sexual dysfunction.

    The chances of experiencing this problem increase, the higher the dose of the medication, but some patients may have a low sex drive and related issues due to other aspects of recovery such as stress, co-occurring mental illness, and other medications taken in addition to the methadone or buprenorphine.

    Regardless of the source of the problem, medical professionals involved in addiction treatment stress that sexual dysfunction in recovering individuals needs to be addressed. Some patients may leave treatment if the issue becomes intolerable. 

    Sexual functioning is considered a key aspect of one’s quality of life. Getting better might not seem worthwhile if a decent sex life is not in one’s future. Sexual dysfunction can also make it more difficult to get pregnant.

    “I remember as an administrator at the clinic, there were some patients that decided to end their treatment for a number of reasons, including the issue of having a lowered sex drive,” said President Mark Parrino of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence.

    In order to effectively address this problem, experts believe that people in addiction recovery need a comprehensive evaluation in order to discover the true cause of sexual dysfunction and determine the best treatment approach.

    In anyone else with issues relating to sex, a specialist would be seen and tests would be done to measure hormone levels and screen for depression and performance anxiety. Unfortunately, the social stigma surrounding addiction creates a barrier for those in recovery.

    “[T]he American attitude about addicts is that addicts are sick, they need help, but they’re also sinners so we shouldn’t help them too much,” said founding director of the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA, Dr. Walter Ling.

    At the same time, it’s difficult to find doctors who have a good understanding of both addiction and sexual dysfunction. There is also a general stigma around the issue of sexual dysfunction, and the problem is not well understood in women. This lack of understanding has resulted in a lack of effective treatments for female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

    Dr. Karen Boyle, a urologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, believes that the lack of treatment options makes it difficult for people to take FSD seriously.

    “The gender bias still exists,” she said in an interview with ABC News. “We have so many really good medical treatments for men. When the FDA approves a drug for the treatment of FSD it will give real credibility to the biological basis of this type of disease.”

    All of these issue combined makes it very difficult for women in recovery from opioid addiction to address sexual dysfunction.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Black Balloon Day Pays Tribute To Lives Lost To Addiction

    Black Balloon Day Pays Tribute To Lives Lost To Addiction

    Families and loved ones across the country are taking part in the growing Black Balloon movement which memorializes lives lost to addiction.

    Diane Hurley, a Peabody, Boston resident, lost both her son-in-law, Greg, and her son, Sean, to overdoses. Hurley wanted to find a way to both memorialize the two men and remind people that drug addiction is a crisis.

    Hurley, her son, and her two daughters hung black balloons outside of their homes on the first anniversary of Greg’s death. Greg was a father of four and 38 years old at the time of his passing. “I thought of death,” Diane Hurley told The Daily Item. “And then I thought of black.”

    The simple gesture turned into Black Balloon Day, a national movement every March 6th. Hurley and her children spread the word online about displaying black balloons in 2016, and over 42,000 people responded and joined the memorial.

    Every year on the 6th, families around the country send photos of the black balloons they have anchored to float outside, alongside the hashtag #BlackBalloonDay.

    “I had this vision that you wouldn’t be able to escape the balloons, just like you can’t escape this epidemic,” she told The Salem News, explaining how addiction doesn’t discriminate and touches everyone.

    “In one way or another, I feel like everyone I talk to has dealt with this pain,” Hurley said. “I work in a nursing home and, including myself, there are seven or eight women who have all lost a child or a sibling to addiction.”

    And this year, Hurley tragically lost her son Sean to addiction, after being sober for five years. The recent death of a friend had unmoored him and although he was doing well, according to Hurley, he overdosed and died at age 30. He’d had a second child on the way.

    Hurley wrote her son’s obituary transparently, hoping to spread awareness. “When he used to tell me he had a disease, I would tell him not to say that and not to compare himself to people who actually have diseases, like cancer. I never really understood it.” 

    “I learned that it wasn’t a choice, it’s a disease,” said Hurley. “When people say: ‘They made this choice, it’s their problem,’ most of them do not understand that many people who suffer with addiction have some sort of underlying health issues.”

    Hurley and the Black Balloon movement are now a nonprofit organization and will be raising money to put Narcan in public bathrooms, one of the most common places for overdoses to occur.

    “We can’t be ashamed about addiction,” said Hurley. “We need to talk about it. It’s killing a whole generation of people and we have to do something.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Does Restricting Prescription Opioids Save Lives In The Long Term?

    Does Restricting Prescription Opioids Save Lives In The Long Term?

    A new study found that over a five- to 10-year period, policies limiting the prescription of opioids would initially increase deaths as many individuals turn to heroin or fentanyl.

    Combating the opioid epidemic is complicated for a number of reasons—one of which, according to new research, is that cutting back on prescriptions may cause more deaths in the short-term, despite saving them in the long-term.

    This information comes from a simulation study recently published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study determined that over a five- to 10-year period, policies limiting the prescription of opioids would initially increase deaths as individuals may turn to heroin or fentanyl.

    The simulation study was led by Stanford University researchers Allison Pitt, Keith Humphreys and Margaret Brandeau.

    “This doesn’t mean these policies should not be considered,” said Humphreys, who was a former senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) during the Obama administration. “Over longer periods, they will reduce deaths by reducing the number of people who initiate prescription opioids.”

    Austin Frakt, director of the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center at the VA Boston Healthcare System, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that restrictions on prescribing opioids seem to be a logical response to curbing the crisis. As many as 80% of heroin users in the U.S. are estimated to have previously used prescription opioids.

    However, the idea of limiting prescriptions becomes more complicated when individuals who are truly in need of the medications for pain management are taken into account. 

    It’s a situation in which there has to be a trade-off of some sort, according to Frakt.

    “This is the fundamental trade-off opioids present, with which we have been battling for decades,” Frakt writes. “As the pendulum swung further toward treating pain, opioid-related deaths ballooned. Now to stem the deaths, it is swinging back, challenging us to treat pain in other ways.”

    According to the researchers of the simulation study, there is no one policy that would solve the crisis or even make a significant difference. The policy that could be most effective, according to the researchers, is increasing access to naloxone, an opioid overdose antidote. Even so, this would likely only bring the deaths down about 4% over the next decade. 

    “Expanding access to naloxone is inexpensive and saves lives,” Pitt said. “That’s an attractive combination, but we should be realistic that it will only save a small percentage of opioid deaths.” 

    As such, researchers note that combining policies such as increasing naloxone access, expanding treatment and more needle exchanges could help to save twice that number of lives. 

    “Policy interventions can prevent many deaths, as well as the other destruction that opioids bring to individuals, families and communities,” Frakt concludes. “But prescription opioids are neither all bad nor all good. Policies that sound sensible—potentially helping many people—could also cause a lot of damage, particularly in the short run.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Addiction Isn't Just A Rural Problem

    Opioid Addiction Isn't Just A Rural Problem

    While the epidemic has been framed as one that mostly affects rural America, new research shows that overdose rates are actually higher in urban areas.

    The common narrative of the national opioid crisis has been that this “disease of despair” has affected rural areas the most.

    However, a new working paper argues that economic depression and access to opioids are the biggest determinants of overdose rates in both rural and urban areas. 

    “I really do want to push back against this cliche that addiction does not discriminate,” Shannon Monnat, the paper’s author and a sociologist at Syracuse University, told Pacific Standard. “The physiological processes that underlie addiction themselves may not discriminate, but the factors that put people in communities at higher risk are are not spatially random.”

    Looking at non-Hispanic whites and controlling for demographics, Monnat found that overdose rates were highest in urban areas. The rate decreased the further one moved from cities, a trend that held true for all racial groups. Overall, urban counties had an average of 6.2 more deaths per 100,000 people than rural counties. 

    Interestingly, supply and demand interacted differently in rural and urban settings. In the city, supply of drugs seemed to have the biggest effect on overdose rates. In rural areas, economic distress was the stronger predictor of overdose rates.

    “A lot of what’s going on here are regional effects,” she said. “You get regional levels of despair and distress that seemed to reinforce and exacerbate the problem.”

    Monnat did find that some of the things associated with rural living were connected with an increased risk for overdose. For example, areas with an economy heavily dependent on mining or the service industries had higher rates of overdose. Controlling for how many drugs were supplied to an area, places with higher economic distress had higher overdose rates. 

    “What that means is that drug mortality rates aren’t higher in economically distressed places simply because they’ve had a greater supply of opioid prescribing there,” she said. “There’s something about economic distress in and of itself that helps to explain the variation that we’re seeing across the country and the magnitude of the drug crisis.”

    Places hardest hit by the crisis, like West Virginia, had both economic vulnerabilities and an excessive supply of opioids, Monnat said.

    “It’s no coincidence that widespread opioid prescribing first started in the most economically vulnerable places of the country—there was vulnerability there. These places had been primed to be vulnerable to opioids, which are drugs that numb both physical and mental pain, through decades of economic and social decline.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Top Doctor Details Opioid Addiction, Going To Rehab

    Top Doctor Details Opioid Addiction, Going To Rehab

    When she was caught stealing meds from work, a top anesthesiologist was taken to rehab to deal with her addiction and save her career.

    As a top anesthesiologist in Georgia, “Alison” had accepted a job as the medical director of the anesthesiology department and was the most-requested anesthesiologist by both patients and surgeons. Her addiction almost cost her that position.

    Alison gave an in-depth interview to Marie Claire, exposing the details of both her opioid addiction and undergoing treatment once she was found out.

    Alison explained that as a child growing up in a big family, perfection was the minimum expectation. All of her siblings are overachievers—three are physicians, one worked for the CIA, and one chaired a university department. Alison enrolled in medical school at 19 and went on to become a successful anesthesiologist, once administering to a sitting president.

    After a short affair with a nurse she met at work, her 11-year marriage ended. Alison married the nurse after a few years of dating him on and off. Their relationship was emotionally strained and combustible—another addiction, Alison realized, looking back.

    The second marriage wasn’t working. They fought often, and Alison learned that her husband was using the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, a drug that she regularly administered in her line of work. Her husband insisted that he wasn’t addicted, and Alison told Marie Claire he “was the first face I ever put to drug use, and I worshipped the ground he walked on at that point, so I thought: this person is not a loser, he knows what he’s doing, he’s good at what he does.”

    Alison began bringing home leftover fentanyl from surgeries for her husband to use, and one day—on an impulse—she shot a tiny amount into a vein in the back of her hand. “All of a sudden, everything was OK,” Alison said. “I would say it’s like immediately going from zero to the happiest buzz you’ve ever had.”

    After a year of increasingly heavy and disruptive drug use, in March 2016, Alison’s boss, Lindsay Dembowski, was notified that Alison was stealing narcotics from the hospital—sufentanil, which is 5 to 10 times stronger than fentanyl.

    She could hardly believe it. “I thought, There is absolutely no way,” Dembowski told Marie Claire. “Of all the people—Alison was my best doctor—she would have been the last one on my list of suspects.”

    Dembowski confronted Alison, and they embarked on a two-hour drive to a treatment center in Atlanta.

    Alison was taken to Talbott Recovery, established in 1989 by George Talbott, an internist with alcohol use disorder who created the first treatment program specifically for doctors like himself. Dr. Talbott wanted to not only help physicians, but also help them get their jobs back.

    Alison was at Talbott for 90 days of rigorous treatment.

    Opioids are the second most frequently abused substance among physicians, after alcohol. So many at Talbott were also physicians experiencing opioid addiction.

    Once home, Alison signed a five-year monitoring agreement with Georgia’s physician health program (PHP). A PHP allows physicians in recovery to continue to practice medicine as long as they maintain their sobriety, and agree to drug tests and support group meetings. If they do not comply or other negative events occur, the PHP may need to report the doctor to the medical board.

    In the U.S., every state has a PHP except for California, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. 

    The Journal of Substance Abuse published a national study in 2009 which found that of 904 physicians enrolled in 16 state PHP programs, 78% had no positive test for either drugs or alcohol during the five years of intensive monitoring, and 72% continued practicing medicine.

    Alison and her second husband divorced, but she remains clean and sober and working as an anesthesiologist in a new hospital 30 minutes from her home. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Nurses Speak About Risk For Opioid Addiction

    Nurses Speak About Risk For Opioid Addiction

    One nurse in recovery says that easy access to medications heightens the risk of addiction among people in her occupation.

    With long hours, stressful shifts and easy access to prescription medications, nurses are at high risk of opioid addiction, according to people who work in the industry. 

    According to a recent report by Fox13 Memphis, 114 nurses lost their licenses (or had them suspended) because of addiction issues over the course of one year in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. 

    “I would say 20 to 25 percent of nurses probably have an addiction problem,” said Deena Coleman, a nurse who has been in recovery for 10 years, and now helps other nurses connect with treatment. “I don’t know, 20 to 25 percent are seeking treatment. But it would be my guess.”

    Coleman said that with medications everywhere, it’s simple for nurses to cross the line. 

    “We are very bright people. We can figure out how to get what we want. And I think nurses see things lying around. They see how things go,” she said. “And it takes them a very short time to say, ‘Okay, that would be easy to pick up and put in my pocket.’”

    One nurse who spoke with Fox using the pseudonym “Sophie” said that a doctor she worked with got her started using opioids recreationally. Soon she was using them to get through her shifts. 

    “Eventually I took narcotics from work and was caught. And was charged with obtaining narcotic by fraud,” she said. 

    She said that she knows her drug abuse affected the patients that she was caring for. “I would be foolish to say no it didn’t. Yes, it did. It had to have. There was no way that I could use opioids,” she said.

    In Mississippi, nurses need to document a year of sobriety—proven by drug tests—in order to be able to regain their license. 

    “They make it difficult for you to get your license back. Yes, it is fair. You are taking care of people,” said Sophie. Now six years sober, she is hoping to return to nursing. “There is absolutely hope,” she said. 

    In Massachusetts, the Board of Registration in Nursing runs a Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program for nurses who are coping with addiction. Nurses who complete the program can keep their licenses after they complete the course. 

    David Kelly, a former registered nurse who became addicted to opioids said that he was lucky to be in a state with such a program. However, he said that opioid addiction needs to be talked about more openly among healthcare professionals. 

    “We have great recovery programs in this state, but our outreach needs to improve,” he said during a talk at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2017.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Small Town Tackles Opioid Crisis With Treatment, Compassion

    Small Town Tackles Opioid Crisis With Treatment, Compassion

    Despite its small size, Little Falls has taken control of their drug epidemic in by allocating $1.4 million in grants in the past five years.

    As a 25-year-old in Little Falls, Minnesota, Monica Rudolph would steal money from her parent’s savings, little by little, so she could support her heroin use. 

    Eventually, according to BuzzFeed News, the money was gone. Monica’s parents discovered the empty box in their home, and that’s when her mother began calling treatment centers. But she kept hitting head ends — treatment centers saying they were closed for the weekend, or that they could not take Monica for a few weeks. 

    That’s when her mother decided to call the local hospital—and it worked. Monica was connected with a substance abuse counselor and was told to come in the next day to begin treatment.  

    “My hometown of 8,000 people was the one place in the state that picked up the phone,” Monica said. “Think of all the people like me who don’t have that hometown.”

    Despite its small size, Little Falls has taken control of their drug epidemic in by allocating $1.4 million in grants in the past five years, BuzzFeed News reports. The money has been spent on limiting refills, increasing the access to medications to treat substance use disorder, putting treatment ahead of jail and taking basic public health measures. 

    The efforts paid off. BuzzFeed News reports that visits to the ER for painkillers—once the top reason for visits—isn’t even in the top 20 now. The hospital now has 100 patients on substance use disorder medications and has helped 626 people taper off opioids. 

    “One thing led to another,” Kurt DeVine, one of Monica’s doctors, told BuzzFeed News. “We realized we had to do a lot of things we weren’t doing, and that we had to do them together, or it wasn’t going to work.”

    Now, DeVine and his colleague, Heather Bell, lead online seminars about how Little Falls has tackled the opioid crisis. They help towns to think bigger than just one thing.

    “They get Narcan, or they get one little project and they think that is going to fix it,” DeVine tells BuzzFeed News. “There is no easy answer. It is a lot of work. If we were doing only one thing, just Narcan, our problem would be as bad as anywhere else. You have to do it all.”

    In Little Falls specifically, the hospital formed a “Care Team,” made up of a social worker, a nurse, two doctors, and a pharmacist. The team’s focus is to help patients like Monica. They have also changed their thinking from treating substance use disorder as a crime to considering it a disease. 

    “If you find a person’s urine has a bunch of meth and not their pain meds, you make the assumption they are selling their pain meds to get meth,” Bell told BuzzFeed News. “But we don’t kick them out of our clinic. We say, ‘OK, what is going on? Do you need help?’ Then we get them into treatment.”

    Now, Monica is taking the opportunity to give back to the community that helped her recover. Through training in a federal program, she will now serve as the hospital’s first “peer” counselor. 

    “My life has come full circle,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I’m really excited to give something back.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Is Asthma More Common In People With Chronic Opioid Dependence?

    Is Asthma More Common In People With Chronic Opioid Dependence?

    A new study examined whether asthma rates are higher in those with chronic opioid dependence.

    People with chronic opioid dependence experience asthma at nearly double the rate of the general population, according to a new study. 

    The study, published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, examined asthma rates among chronic opioid users in a New York City hospital. Researchers found that among people who were opioid-dependent, the asthma rate was 17.2%, compared to 8.3% in the general population.

    The results confirmed what researchers expected to see, study author Dr. Roshni Naik said in a press release. 

    “While some studies have shown that opioid medication can help with cough and shortness of breath in heart disease and advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, other studies have shown that opioids such as heroin worsen asthma. We hypothesized that there is higher prevalence of asthma among patients with opioid dependence who are addicted or dependent on prescription painkillers or heroin,” Naik said. 

    How opioids affect breathing depends on which opioids a person is using. 

    “The effects of opioid use on respiratory conditions are mixed—while licit opiates help with cough and the dyspnea of heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, illicit opiates may exacerbate asthma,” study authors wrote. 

    Naik explained in the press release how opioids can affect a person’s breathing. “Opioid drugs such as morphine can directly activate the release of a substance called histamine from cells, specifically mast cells, in our body. Histamine is involved in allergic reactions and contributes to itching, hives and swelling. Since more than half of asthma is allergic in nature, we postulated that opioids may be linked to asthma.” 

    Naik said that doctors and patients need to openly discuss opioid use (whether legal or illegal) and symptoms of asthma in order to make a comprehensive care plan.  

    “There is no current guideline on how to manage asthmatics on opioid medications. However, patients with severe asthma should follow up regularly with their primary care doctor or see an asthma specialist to maintain control of their asthma. Patients who are addicted to opioids should seek a healthcare provider in combating their addiction.”

    Researchers also found that there were gender-based differences in how opioid use affected asthma. In general, women experienced asthma at higher rates, with the condition affecting 9.7% of women and just 6.9% of men in the general population.

    Among people who are opioid-dependent, asthma affected 25% of females and 13.9% of males. This shows that women are more likely than men to have their breathing affected by opioid use.

    “This suggests that women may also be disproportionately affected with asthma in the setting of opioid dependence,” researchers wrote.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Recovery Housing Program For Rural Areas Launched By USDA, HHS

    Recovery Housing Program For Rural Areas Launched By USDA, HHS

    “The opioid crisis has hit rural communities hard, and we need to leverage all possible partnerships to support these communities,” said an HHS official.

    A new federal program will allow nonprofit organizations to purchase homes in rural communities for use as transitional housing for individuals in recovery from substance use disorder.

    The initiative is a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and aims to address the national opioid crisis by providing greater access and support to rural areas, which have shouldered a substantial portion of the epidemic’s overdose and death tolls.

    USDA Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development, Anne Hazlett, said in a press release that the program is part of President Donald Trump’s policy to address opioid dependency, which he declared a national public health emergency in late 2017.

    Through coordinated efforts between the USDA’s Rural Development and HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), non-profit organizations will be able to purchase USDA’s Real Estate Owned (REO) single-family housing properties in rural communities at a discounted price for use as housing, treatment, job training and other services for individuals in recovery for substance abuse issues.

    The initiative extends the two organizations’ collaborative efforts, which were launched in 2018, when SAMHSA supplemented USDA Cooperative Extension grants to help communities in the fight against opioid abuse.

    “We know that the opioid crisis has hit rural communities hard, and we need to leverage all possible partnerships to support these communities,” said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, HHS Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use. “Housing plays a vital part in the recovery process for those living with opioid use disorders.”

    The opioid crisis has cut a particularly devastating path through rural communities in America. As the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) noted, only 20% of the U.S population lives in areas designated as rural communities, but the rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in such locations is 45% higher than in metro counties.

    Studies have found that the rate of babies born with opioid withdrawal symptoms and teens who use opioids is much higher in rural communities.

    Adding to the problem is a lack of health care facilities—83 rural hospitals have closed since 2010—and access to mental health and substance treatment facilities. According to the NRHA, in 55% of all American counties, most of which are considered rural, there are no psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers.

    View the original article at thefix.com