Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal

Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal, Florida Says

From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it.

“You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley, a drug intelligence inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which co-sponsored the study. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”

Full story at the New York Times

See also;

• Abstinence from Heroin Addiction Works
• Alcohol & Medication Interactions
• Alcohol is a drug – TOO!
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Recovery Focused Approach to Tackling Drug Use in Scotland

Recovery Focused Approach to Tackling Drug Use in Scotland

Scotland’s first national drugs strategy The Road to Recovery: A New Approach to Tackling Scotland’s Drug Problem was launched on May 29, 2008. The Government believes that preventing drug use is more effective than treating established drug problems and that treatment services in Scotland should be based on the principle of recovery.

The key priorities are:

• better prevention of drug problems, with improved life chances for children and young people
• more people recovering from problem drug use
• communities that are safer and stronger places to live and work
• ensuring that children affected by parental substance use are safer
• improving the effectiveness of delivery at a national and local level

The Government’s vision for how drug treatment services in Scotland should be delivered is based on the principle that recovery should be the explicit aim of all services providing treatment and rehabilitation for people with problem drug use.

‘Recovery’ is the principle that people suffering from problem drug use should receive support which does more than just reduce the immediate risks and harms of addiction. Individuals become active participants in their own care, moving forward in the hope and belief that they will get better.

What do we mean by recovery?

We mean a process through which an individual is enabled to move on from their problem drug use, towards a drug-free life as an active and contributing member of society. Recovery is most effective when service users’ needs and aspirations are placed at the centre of their care and treatment. There is no right or wrong way to recover.

The Road to Recovery sets out the Government’s vision of recovery as an achievable goal for people with problem drug use and the actions it intends to carry out to promote a shared understanding of how to promote and support recovery. These include establishing and supporting a ‘recovery network’, building the capacity of services which can help services users choose the treatment that is right for them, and ensuring that the principles of recovery are reflected in the reform of delivery arrangements and in training and workforce development programmes.

Risky Partners and Domestic Violence

Risk indicators to identify intimate partner violence

Intimate partner violence against women is prevalent and is associated with poor health outcomes.

Understanding indicators of exposure to intimate partner violence can assist health care professionals to identify and respond to abused women. This study was undertaken to determine the strength of association between selected evidence-based risk indicators and exposure to intimate partner violence.

In this cross-sectional study of 768 women aged 18-64 years who presented to 2 emergency departments in Ontario, Canada, participants answered questions about risk indicators and completed the Composite Abuse Scale to determine their exposure to intimate partner violence in the past year.

Results: Intimate partner violence was significantly associated with

• being separated,
• in a common-law relationship or
• single
• depression
• somatic symptoms (pain, nausea, depression, dizziness or concerns for which no adequate medical explanation can be found. Somatic symptoms imply that psychological factors are a large contributor to the symptoms’ onset, severity and duration. The symptoms are serious enough to cause significant emotional distress and impairment of social and/or occupational functioning)
• having a male partner who was employed less than part time, or
• having a partner with an alcohol or
• drug problem

Each unit increase in the number of indicators corresponded to a four-fold increase in the risk of intimate partner violence; women with 3 or more indicators had a greater than 50% probability of a positive score on the Composite Abuse Scale.

Intimate partner violence was not associated with pregnancy status.

Specific characteristics of male partners, relationships and women’s mental health are significantly related to exposure to intimate partner violence in the past year. Identification of these indicators has implications for the clinical care of women who present to health care settings. (Source: Open Medicine

Heavy Alcohol Drinking Shortens Life

Heavy Alcohol Use Hastens Death by Up to 25 Years

Neuropsychiatric patients at great risk.

A history of heavy drinking cuts the life span by up to 25 years across all major chronic diseases, Hsiao-ye Yi, Ph.D., reported at the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism.

The effect seems particularly pronounced in women drinkers, who lose their survival advantage over men at an early age, wrote Dr. Yi, an epidemiologist with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The average years of life lost due to heavy drinking varied by disease, ranging from 25 years for neuropsychiatric conditions to 7 years for malignant neoplasms, and was generally much greater in women than in men.

More research at Clinical Psychiatry News

The Invention of Mental Illnesses

The Charcot Effect: The Invention of Mental Illnesses

For debate; I have seen this both privately and professionally. A healthcare worker decides before hand or assesses narrowly within their own training and experience what the patient/client will be treated for and how.

• What do you think?
• Have you any experience of this?

Abstract;

This article proposes the Charcot effect, in which clinicians describe what they themselves prescribe.

It is argued that the Charcot effect can be a critical instrument for exposing how mental illnesses are invented in the process of developing diagnostic systems and conducting psychopharmacological research.

We argue that the Charcot effect helps explain the expansion of depression to epidemic proportions, the promotion of social phobia as a pharmaceutical marketing strategy, the profile of panic disorder according to the available medication, and the worse prognosis of schizophrenia in developed countries than in developing countries.

The Charcot Effect: The Invention of Mental Illnesses. Marino Pérez-Álvarez a; José M. García-Montes. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, Volume 20, Issue 4 October 2007 , pages 309 - 336