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What’s Hidden in the Hallways: A Look Inside Teenage Opioid Use
Walking through the hallways of any high school in America, you will notice student cliques that have existed for generations. You will find your scholars, your athletes, your artists, your so-called “outcasts,” your musicians, your “popular” kids, and anyone and everyone else that falls...
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What Do We Know About Social Workers’ Use of Heroin?
Much has been written lately about the opioid epidemic in the United States. By and large, the vast majority of current opioid users are young, white males who use either heroin or fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid. But these opioid users are not only our clients, or potential clients. They are...
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WellLife Network Provides Vital Services to Stem the Tide of Opioid Addiction
Opium is an extract of the exudate derived from seedpods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. Cultivated in the ancient civilizations of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, archaeological evidence and fossilized poppy seeds suggest that Neanderthal man may have used the opium poppy over thirty...
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Veterans Heroic Battle with the Opioid Epidemic
How can we ever fully thank our veterans for their service? As a group of health care professionals, we have an obligation to provide outstanding clinical care to this heroic population. Every Veterans Day we celebrate the service of all U.S. Military Veterans. We know that this courageous group...
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Mental Health Services and Opioid Use and Dependence: A Non-Sequitur?
What does mental health have to do with mitigating the opioid epidemic? Isn’t it a problem for substance disorder programs, or addiction doctors? Well not really, if you consider the rates of opioid use and opioid use disorder (OUD) in patients seen in the community-based, non-profits in NYS...
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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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A Root Cause of the Opiate Drug Abuse Epidemic
An epidemic of opiate abuse and addiction continues to ravage communities throughout the United States. Approximately 183,000 Americans succumbed to opiate overdoses between 1999 and 2015, and countless more have suffered the ancillary effects of addiction that include the loss of employment,...
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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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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...
