Psychiatric and Substance Use Services

President Trump yesterday said the opioid epidemic was a national emergency, and he is instructing the administration to use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis. "The opioid crisis is an emergency and I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency," Trump…
More than 140 Americans die from a drug overdose every day – that’s more than from gun homicides and car crashes combined.  Most of these deaths are due to prescription painkillers, heroin and other opioids. The opioid crisis in our country is severe enough that yesterday President Donald…
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a map showing state trends and variation in opioid-related hospital stays between 2009 and 2014. According to a recent AHRQ report, opioid-related hospital stays increased 75% for women and 55% for men between 2005 and 2014, while…
The President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis yesterday urged President Trump to declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency. “With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks,” the…
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health yesterday awarded 16 organizations about $100,000 each to help prevent opioid misuse by women and girls in underserved communities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week will award 20 states and the District of Columbia a portion of $7.5 million to help track and prevent opioid-related overdoses, the agency announced yesterday. The states are Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,…
The Food and Drug Administration intends to update its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy requirements for extended-release and long-acting opioid analgesics, and extend the same requirements to immediate-release opioid analgesic products, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., announced this…
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine today issued a report recommending actions to contain and reverse the harmful societal effects of the prescription and illicit opioid epidemics.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations today held a hearing to examine how states are combating the opioid crisis. Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA) called for reforming 42 CFR Part 2, a 1970s law that limits the sharing of substance abuse treatment records…
The amount of opioids prescribed in the United States decreased each year between 2010 and 2015, according to a Vital Signs report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The amount of opioids prescribed per capita fell from a peak of 782 morphine milligram equivalents in…