Only one-third of mental health facilities offer medications that can help people kick opioid addiction Such medications are vastly underutilized Facilities were more likely to offer medication treatment if they had programs to treat addiction and mental illness together WEDNESDAY, June 19, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Only a third of outpatient mental health facilities offer medications essential for treating opioid addiction, a new study finds. Standard care for treating people with opioid use disorder involves drugs like buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone, which help suppress cravings and blunt the effects of narcotics. But most front-line mental health facilities don’t offer these , researchers reported June 18 in the journal .
“Outpatient community mental health treatment facilities can be an important part of the treatment ecosystem for individuals with opioid use disorders,” said lead study author , a policy researcher at RAND Corp. For the study, researchers surveyed 450 clinics located in 20 states with the highest opioid overdose death rates in the nation -- Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. More than 80,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2021, researchers noted in background notes.
Unfortunately, medication treatment for opioid addiction remains vastly underused. A recent.