Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
 
CURRENT ISSUE:

Jan/Feb 2018Download PDF

FAMOUS INTERVIEWS

Directories:

SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS

HELP WANTED

Tutors

Workshops

Events

Sections:

Books

Camps & Sports

Careers

Children’s Corner

Collected Features

Colleges

Cover Stories

Distance Learning

Editorials

Famous Interviews

Homeschooling

Medical Update

Metro Beat

Movies & Theater

Museums

Music, Art & Dance

Special Education

Spotlight On Schools

Teachers of the Month

Technology

Archives:

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

1995-2000


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018

Wanted: Educators in Addiction Treatment 
By Richard Frances  M.D., Clinical Professor Of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School

 

The American healthcare system needs a major overhaul  in approaching  the huge national  crisis that is addiction. There is an enormous need to train all health care disciplines in the skills, attitudes and knowledge to  provide evidence based medication assisted and cognitive therapy to patients with opioids and other substance related problems. Generational failings in adequate training of healthcare professionals in  substance related disorders along with psychiatric comorbidities  has contributed to under diagnosis of substance problems and to over prescription of opioids for pain and benzodiazepines for sleep and anxiety disorders. Failings  in the healthcare system to regulate the pharmaceutical industry led to heavily industry funded systematic false advertising and marketing claims to doctors and  the  public and contributed to the epidemic over use of opioids and benzodiazepines. Reversal of progress toward providing well-funded universal access to quality prevention and health care generally, and for substance related problems, threatens any hope of facing up to the crisis. Additionally, inadequate public and private provision of insurance coverage, increasing legalization of marijuana use, inappropriate medical uses for marijuana, lack of parity in funding for mental health including addiction treatment and massive overuse of prison as a solution to the drug problem are public policy areas that will not be fixed by building walls or increasing police brutality. For anyone starting a career in healthcare seeking to choose an area with leadership opportunity, addiction and addiction psychiatry should rank high on a list that might include cancer and heart disease . It is a fascinating significant health problem causing huge and widespread suffering to children and adults at vast cost, and it is treatable.

The US Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the true cost of the opioid drug epidemic in 2015 was a half trillion dollars  and add to that the vast costs of tobacco,  alcohol, cocaine, marijuana and other addictions estimated by the National Institute of Drug Abuse at around $740 billion, and we have a national disaster. Approximately 64,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2016, mostly related to prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, with large numbers of adolescents, young adults and  especial young women among the victims. Unfortunately it is not widely enough known that  fentanyl, which is cheap and available, kills even if patients are taking Naltrexone  or buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction,   and it is hard to reverse these overdoses with naloxone. While there has been a recent study finding decreased use of opioids and some other drugs in adolescence, alarmingly marijuana abuse is growing among high school students  as a result of lack of awareness of risk and increased  availability. Marijuana is a gateway drug, contributes to mental illness, negatively affects motivation and is harmful especially to young minds.

Thus the need for knowledgeable and skillful teachers with positive attitudes in medical, social work, nursing, and counseling disciplines to battle for quality curriculum in addiction treatment has never been greater. The challenge of helping patients and their families get motivated for treatment starts with identifying addiction  problems, instilling hope, providing tools,  alleviating withdrawal symptoms, and helping patients to stick with a  program of recovery. Every student in healthcare should attend a 12 step meeting in order to learn about the optimism and hope of having role models in recovery and the value of patients having a sponsor.

Once clinicians master the necessary skills, few categories of patients are as rewarding to treat or as grateful in recovery as those with substance related illnesses. #

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Name:

Email:
Show email
City:
State:

 


 

 

 

Education Update, Inc.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2018.