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Opioid deaths and suicides – twin tragedies that need a community-wide response
The health care community is struggling to create a unified plan to overcome the community damage done by the overlapping rise in suicide and...
WASHINGTON – , according to Alex Crosby, MD, senior adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of violence prevention at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Suicides increased by 25% during 2000-2015, and drug deaths – most notably, opioid-related deaths – have quadrupled since 1999. These increases strike the same groups: men, working-age adults, whites, Native Americans and Alaskan natives, and rural communities.
So consistent are the overlaps that primary care providers should view these demographics as red flags when such patients present with depression or pain complaints, Dr. Crosby said in an interview at an event sponsored by the Education Development Center and the National Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Vigilance in primary care settings is especially important, because many patients don’t have access to behavioral health specialists.
“As clinicians, we need to have a high index of suspicion, know what questions to ask, and to go a little bit deeper, beyond the presenting complaint,” he said. “Often, people with psychiatric illnesses [that predispose them to suicide and substance abuse] are going to their primary care provider first, because they don’t have access to behavioral health services. The family medicine practitioner, the internist, even the pediatrician, have to be aware of this. And clinicians need to have index of suspicion, and ask questions that go a little deeper than the presenting complaint was.”