US mentally ill patients receive 50% of opioid prescriptions

According to a study in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, adults with mental illness receive 50% of the 115 million prescriptions for opioids in the US each year.

The study results prompted the researchers to say that making improvements in pain management techniques for people with mental health issues is vital to mitigating the current opioid abuse crisis in the US. Approximately 16% of the US populations suffer from mental health issues.

The study noted that almost 19% of Americans suffering from mental illness used prescription painkillers, compared to 5% with no mental health disorder.

The findings worried the researchers, who had expected to find that doctors took a more conservative approach to prescribing opioids to people with mental illness.

Dr Brian Sites, one of the study’s investigators, said that in his opinion, US physicians were writing too many prescriptions for opioids, resulting in a significant number of deaths. He noted that patients with mental health issues were very vulnerable, and were susceptible to abusing opioids and becoming addicted.

Dr Sites suggested that doctors should use a different criterion for deciding when to prescribe opioids to mentally ill patients. He recommended physicians consider acupuncture, behavioural therapy, physical therapy, and meditation as alternatives.

Statistics compiled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that US opioid sales increased by 400% from 1999 to 2015 without reducing the amount of pain experienced by adults. During the same period, 183,000 people died from overdosing on prescribed opioids.