Few Rehab Centers for Teens Offer Recommended Medicine

Only 1 in 4 residential treatment centers for teens offers a recommended medicine for opioid addiction, according to a study that exposes an important gap in care. Posing as an aunt or uncle seeking help for a fictitious 16-year-old who survived a fentanyl overdose, researchers called U.S. rehabs and asked if they offered the treatment medication buprenorphine. Of 160 facilities with care for teens, just 39 provided buprenorphine, also known by the brand name Suboxone. One hundred said they didn’t and 21 said they didn’t know. “As somebody who’s tried to promote the use of evidence-based treatments for addiction my whole career, it was jaw-dropping,” said Dr. Todd Korthuis of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, a co-author of the study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Teen drug use in the United States is stable or declining. But the drug supply is tainted with fentanyl, driving fatal overdoses higher and making youthful experimentation potentially deadly. Parents describe long, frustrating searches for help. Read More: What 3 Grieving Dads Want You to Know About America’s Fentanyl Crisis “It’s such an overwhelming situation for a parent to be in,” said Tracy Swartley of suburban Portland, Oregon, whose 19-year-old Eagle Scout son survived a fentanyl overdose and was able to start buprenorphine while in a residential treatment...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Addiction healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news