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Lessons Learned: Tools to Treat Opioid Misuse
In the 20 years it took opioids to become the deadliest substance misuse epidemic in American history, the response from the public is overwhelmingly in favor of controlling access to opiates by limiting their use, supporting prevention education and prevention campaigns, and equipping first...
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Opioids and Homelessness in America
We will present five strategies behavioral health providers can use to help combat the opioid crisis among our national homeless population. Two catastrophic public health issues have become American epidemics: opioids and homelessness. The two are clearly interrelated—opioid use/misuse...
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Today’s Opioid Addiction and Overdose Epidemic: How We Can Make a Difference
The opioid addiction and overdose epidemic that has ravaged America for two decades now has left almost no one untouched. From 1999 to 2017, more than 400,000 people in the United States have died from overdoses related to opioids. According to a poll by the American Psychiatric Association,...
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Early Findings from a Tri-County Collaborative Approach to Addressing the Opioid Crisis
While the opioid crisis has captured the concern of public health officials and the public, the epidemic is not evenly distributed. Rural communities are especially hard-hit, particularly areas with a large working-class population where dim economic prospects have led to dramatic increases in...
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Opioid Epidemic and Partnerships: Working Together to Solve Problems
It feels like not a day goes by where the sheer scale of the opioid epidemic is not felt. The epidemic impacts nearly every American through our families, friends, loved ones, co-workers and classmates. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2017: On average, 130 Americans died...
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Pain and The Nation’s Opioid Epidemic: An Interview with Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS
The so-called “opioid epidemic” is a far more complex social phenomenon than it appears to be when politicians and pundits propose solutions to it. They work largely from a simplistic and only partially true narrative that lately concludes that the villains are the drug companies that promoted...
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Transformations at MHA Westchester: Integrated Services to Address the Opioid Epidemic
Current national trends indicate that each year more people die of overdoses—the majority of which involve opioid drugs—than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or any armed conflict since the end of World War II. Each day 90 Americans die prematurely from an overdose that...
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Funding for NYS Opioid Epidemic
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced more than $9 million in federal funding has been secured to expand opioid addiction treatment services across the state. This funding includes $5.7 million to expand access to medication assisted treatment, $2.1 million to develop new recovery centers in areas of...
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Understanding Co-Occurring Disorders: A Mother’s Journey To Turn The Tide On An Epidemic
Co-occurring disorders (COD) is the combination of one or more mental health challenges/disorders and substance misuse/addiction. My son Harris had COD and died by accidental overdose when he was 19. I am so grateful that Behavioral Health News is devoting attention to this topic because...
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Ensuring Evidence-Based Treatment for Substance Use Disorders
The use of heroin, other opiates, and inappropriate prescription drugs are currently a major public health problem in this country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), national death rates from prescription opioid pain reliever overdoses quadrupled during 1999 to...
