There are speculations that limiting opioid prescriptions have contributed to the growing suicide rates in the US.

It’s believed that people who find themselves taken off the drugs grow desperate, which eventually instills suicidal thoughts in them.

Researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center sought to place the claims under scrutiny to attempt to establish if there’s indeed any direct link between opioid withdrawal with the U.S. suicide statistics.

The findings of the study were published within the American Journal of Psychiatry and presented a hypothesis that the suicide rate was higher in census regions where more high-dose, long-term opioid prescription took place.

As a part of the research, scientists checked out aspects like regional prescribing, rates of high-dose prescribing and long-term prescribing, and having multiple opioid prescribers. It was found that opioid prescribing declined for every of the measures from 2009 to 2017, and the suicide rates jumped from 13.80 to 16.36 per 100,000 individuals.

By evaluating the regional changes, experts concluded there was a superb likelihood the suicide rates would have risen even faster had opioid prescribing remained constant relatively than decreased, in keeping with Medical Express.

The study further stalked opioid-related death data across the age ranges of 10- to 24 and 25- to 44, and located that aspects like a single opioid prescription or three or more prescribers had been directly related to unintentional overdose deaths.

“The connection between opioid prescribing and suicide risk is a posh one. This is especially the case when people have their opioids tapered,” Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, professor of epidemiology at Columbia School of Public Health, and Elizabeth K Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told Medical Express.

“People can grow to be desperate if their pain is just not well controlled. Yet opioids also pose a greater risk of overdose than another drug class and roughly 40% of overdose suicide deaths within the U.S. involve opioids. At a population level, the national decline in opioid prescribing over the past several years appears to have reduced the number of people that died of suicide.”

The study referenced the 2009–2017 U.S. National IQVIA Longitudinal Prescription Database and National Center for Health Statistics mortality data to land a conclusion. Apart from the aforesaid aspects, the researchers also checked out the USDA-defined states and commuting zones data to perform research based on locations.

They focused on 4 age groups–10–24, 25–44, 45–64, and 65 years or older– consisting of each men and women, and checked their opioid prescription measures. Noting that the length of opioid prescribing is related to persistent opioid use, the team included a measure of the proportion of opioid prescriptions for long-term opioid prescriptions greater than or equal to 60 consecutive days.

The result implied that geographic regions where there was a major decline in people filing opioid prescriptions were directly proportional to declining suicide rates.

“Although the current population-level research cannot establish that opioid prescriptions cause deaths by suicide, the outcomes are consistent with the view that opioid prescription policies and practices should give careful attention to possible connections between prescription opioids and suicide risk,” said Olfson.

The FDA is requiring a “boxed warning” label for benzodiazepine medicines.
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