USA. After Opioid Overdose, Most Young People Aren’t Getting Addiction Treatment
USA. After Opioid Overdose, Most Young People Aren’t Getting Addiction Treatment
Drug overdoses continue to take far too many lives, driven primarily by the opioid crisis (though other drugs, such as methamphetamine and cocaine, are also major concerns). While NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative is taking steps to address this terrible crisis, new findings serve as another wake-up call that young people battling opioid addiction need a lot more assistance to get back on the right track.
In a study of more than 3,600 individuals, aged 13-22, who survived an opioid overdose, an NIH-funded team found that only about one-third received any kind of follow-up addiction treatment [1]. Even more troubling, less than 2 percent of these young people received the gold standard approach of medication treatment. (National Institutes of Health, USA, 28.01.2020)
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/01/28/after-opioid-overdose-most-young-people-arent-getting-addiction-treatment/