A Whole Health Approach for Treating Opioid Addiction and Mental Illness
The mental health crisis in America collides with the opioid crisis in dangerous ways, worsened by social isolation and loneliness brought on by COVID-19. Among the millions of people with opioid use disorder, more than half have a mental illness, and up to 30% of deaths associated with opioid overdose are thought to be due to suicide: a leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 34.
The way we identify and treat mental health, substance use, and pain remains fragmented, even though these conditions have always been intimately connected. Although help is available to treat these individuals, only a fraction of people in need get help.
One reason is that effective treatment
often combines several components: medications, peer support, group therapy, and links to community services, such as access to food banks, housing services, employment counseling, and educational training.
Because this type of care can be difficult to access, scientists funded by the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, are optimizing it by breaking the treatment into parts and testing different combinations that may be effective and could be covered by insurance. Read the full story here on the HEAL NIH website.