Opiates

Researchers investigate trends in opioid use, prescriptions, misuse, and access reported by adolescents and young adults.

Industry-funded continuing medical education (CME) influences physicians to prescribe more opioids, focus less on the consequences.

“Converging lines of evidence now suggest that depression—a common comorbidity in the setting of chronic pain—may in some patients represent an unrecognized yet potentially reversible harm of opioid therapy.”

Benzodiazepine prescription practices may be in response to an epidemic of distress, rather than being used to treat specific mental health diagnoses.

A new study examines the extent to which patterns in prescription drug misuse and substance use disorder symptoms can be predicted by education level

The quickest way to restore safe use of opioid prescription is to insist that the drug companies that promoted the overuse of opioids now create a pot of money to develop powerful TV, radio, and print ads, free continuing education offerings, and drug rehabilitation research.

Contrary to widely-held belief, a new rigorous trial finds that ketamine is ineffective for delirium and pain associated with surgery, and the drug carries harmful side effects.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School highlight the need for mental health clinicians to explore the meaning of physical symptoms and pain