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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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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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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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New York State Office of Mental Health Using Medication-Assisted Treatment and Other Resources to Fight the Opioid Epidemic
Every day, more than 130 people die in the United States as a result of opioid overdose. The opioid abuse epidemic has become a national public health crisis with devastating economic, societal and human costs. People with mental illnesses served in the public mental health system have...
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Joint Senate Task Force on Opioids, Addiction and Overdose Prevention Testimony
In 1804, Frederich Serturner experimented with opium and created something new—morphine—named after the Greek god of sleep and dreams, Morpheus. More than 200 years later, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers fall asleep at night under the influence of an opioid. Every morning, a few of...
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The Case for Community Recovery Centers
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Every day, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.” In 2018 alone, opioids claimed the lives of more than 3,000 New Yorkers, according to the New York State Department of Health. The misuse of and...
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Taking Care of Our Recovery Professionals
Drug addiction is a disease that needs to be treated and talked about like any other disease. The devastating opioid epidemic that has left no community untouched has only heightened the conversation, as treatment professionals and advocates engage policymakers, researchers and communities-in-need,...
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Integration of Naloxone Distribution in a Federally Qualified Health Center
As the opioid epidemic has become a growing public health crisis in New York and the greater United States, it is incumbent upon health care centers to expand our ability to treat those in need. As of one the largest Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) in New York State, providing integrated...
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Peers and Recovery: Models for Success
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are provided with services by...
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Pharmacogenomic Testing in Pain Management and Behavioral Health: A Pharmacist Perspective
Pain, in its many forms (e.g., nociceptive, neuropathic, inflammatory, etc.), affects upwards of 100 million people in the United States resulting in costs reaching $600 billion per year.1 Treatment of pain symptoms through the inappropriate prescribing and use of opioids has fueled an opioid abuse...
