The Opioid Crisis in America

Introduction

The misuse, overdose as well as addiction of opioid, has skyrocketed to crisis levels in the United States. Additional to the abuse and misuse of opioid prescription, the dynamic illicit drug market is also contributing to the heightening number of deaths as a result of overdose (Florence, Zhou, Luo, & Xu, 2016).In the past two decades, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) statistics show that the number of deaths due to opioid overdosing has increased by more than five-fold from approximately 8000 deaths to over 40,000 (Weiner, Malek, & Price, 2017). Certainly, both illicit and prescribed opioids such as heroin are significant contributors to this rise, which entails synthetic opioid spiking in the recent past. Although prescription opioids have been the prop of pain management for millions of adults with chronic pain, safer treatment options are required to decline individual's overdependence on an opioid for pain relief.The core objective of this paper is to explore thecrisis caused by opioid in the United States such as the impact of opioid misuses on family, individual and the community, effective medication treatment for addiction and suggest ways on how to reduce the stigma that surround addiction and offer preventive measure on how to combat the opioid crisis.

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Background Information

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) reports have found that more than 4 million people in America take opioid prescription pain relievers for nonmedical uses (Rudd, Aleshire, Zibbell, & Gladden, 2016). As a result, this is has been a leeway facilitating over 500,000 million Americans getting into using heroin among other powerful opiate drugs.Therefore, many persons report misusing prescription opioids before commencing to use powerful opiate drugs like heroin. Statistics indicate that over 30,000 people in America die from an opioid overdose (Weiner, Malek, & Price, 2017).In particular, prescriptionopioidlike codeine, morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, among others, play a significant part in aiding many individuals in managing chronic pain effectively. Unfortunately, for many opioids has become a complex, tangled cycle of abuse and misuse leading to the increased number of death due to overdose of opiate.

Research Objectives

• The research paper will be driven by the following research objectives that will aid to find out more regarding the opioid crisis in the United States.
• To determine the impact of opioid misuse and abuse on family, individual, and the community.
• To find out ways on how to reduce stigma around opioid addiction and preventive measureput in place to combat the crisis.

Research Questions

• The research will use the following research questions with the intent to seek for solution to the opioid crisis.
• What is the impact of opioid misuse and abuse on the family, individual, and the community?
• What ways have been put in place to reduce stigma around opioid addiction and the preventive measure in place to combat the crisis.

Research Hypothesis

H1: The opioid crisis is caused by misuse and abuse of prospection of opioid for nonmedical uses.

Causes of the Opioid Crisis

In the last two decades, pharmaceutical firms reassured the medicinal community that the patient could not become dependent to prescription opioid pain relievers. Healthcare workersstarted to prescribe opioids at high rates, which subsequently resulted in theextensivemisuses and diversion of these medicinesbefore it came to be clear that could be extremely addictive.

The Impact of Opioid Misuse and Abuse on Family, Individual and the Community

The usage of opioid is addictive to the individual. Research has found that individuals who use opioids quickly become reliant on these drugs and begin to experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking the pills. Often the dependence is associated with tolerance, which means that a user of opioid will need to take increased doses of the drug for the same effect. Persons who become addicted to opioid find it expensive to maintain the prescription and end up switching to heroin because it is less costly.As a result, people, particularly a parent who is addicted to opioids, suffer from Substance Use Disorder (SUD)result in the children suffering as well.According toEpstein, Heilig, and Shaham(2018), approximately 10 million children below five years live with at least one adult with SUD disorder. The home setting for these families is, in most cases, not stable; hence, it exposes children to different experiences that lead to violence, secrecy, and fear. Since children who live with addicted parents stay in chaotic settings, they get affected by their parent's drug use; hence, they end up experiencing behavioral, emotional, and substance abuse problems. Consequently, the chances of children living with opioid-addicted parents developing substance abuse disorder are high. Moreover, opioid addiction is the cause of increased deaths due to overdoses.

Opioid misuse and abuse have significant financial repercussions to both the user and their family. For example, some of the related economic consequences related to opioid abuse include neglect of crucial responsibilities such as rental expenditures and healthcare bills only to mention a few at the expense to purchase additional drugs (Weiner, Malek, & Price, 2017). However, the inability to take care of these bills could end up, resulting in cases of homelessness. Research has shown that individuals suffering from opioid addiction could escalate to the extreme use in drug use to a point where they end up neglecting job responsibilities such as skipping work, arriving late to work, missing deadlines and low productivity (Florence, Zhou, Luo, & Xu, 2016). In the end, such people end up being fired from work because of such issues that further escalate financial problems.

Strategies Used to Reduce Stigma Around Opioid Addiction

Epstein, Heilig, and Shaham(2018) describe stigma as a negative and dominant perception that is related to substance abuse and dependence. Furthermore, stigma has the possibility to undesirably impact an individual's self-esteem, pervert those suffering from dependence from gaining access to medication and damage relations with loved ones.Since the abuse and addiction of opioid have become a prevalent crisis, the best way to help reduce and prevent it is through increasing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will play a significant role by speaking about the current opioid crisis by working together with the public to enhance the gathering of data to set up evidence-based avoidance strategies. Through CDC, it will be possible to provide up to date information to aid to prevent prescription and illicit drug overdoses to communities across the United States. On the same note, through CDC effort to addressing the ongoing opioid overdose crisis, it can be done by providing overdose prevention in States (OPIS). OPIS are agendas that train states with technical resources and expertise. As a result, these resource aid to fight against prescription opioid misuses as well as illicit use of opioid and overdose. Indeed, these programs are essential to ensuring that they end devastating opioid overdose epidemic, individuals, communities, and families across the country.

Also, the United States government should put data into action as a strategy for fighting against opioids. There is a need for the public health approach that has a more extensive and timely data in response to the opioid overdose crisis. Data is significant because it allows public health to know the extent of the crisis, offer resources where they are needed, and assess the success of the prevention efforts. Similarly, data is crucial because it will state to track the crisis and finance research to identify effective strategies to avert opioid overdose.

Conclusion

To conclude, the opioid crisis is a significant cause of deaths across the United States. The primary cause that has contributed to the increasing abuse and misuse of opioid has been facilitated by the medicinal companies reassuring the therapeutic community that patient could not become hooked to prescription opioid pain relievers in the 1990s. Unfortunately, that was true hence leading to the widespread diversion of the medication before it was realized that it is highly addictive. Nevertheless, to reduce the abuse of this drug, the US government should works with the CDCs in partnership with the community to help reduce and prevent the present opioid overdose.

References

Epstein, D. H., Heilig, M., &Shaham, Y. (2018). Science-based actions can help address the opioid crisis. Trends in pharmacological sciences, 39(11), 911-916.

Florence, C. S., Zhou, C., Luo, F., & Xu, L. (2016). The Economic Burden of Prescription Opioid Overdose, Abuse, and Dependence in the United States, 2013. Medical care, 54(10), 901-906. doi:10.1097/MLR.0000000000000625

Rudd, R. A., Aleshire, N., Zibbell, J. E., & Matthew Gladden, R. (2016). Increases in drug and opioid overdose deaths-the United States, 2000-2014. American Journal of Transplantation, 16(4), 1323-1327.

Weiner, S. G., Malek, S. K., & Price, C. N. (2017). The opioid crisis and its consequences. Transplantation, 101(4), 678-681.