Heroin addiction grabbed the national spotlight recently after famed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died on Super Bowl Sunday. He was almost certainly not alone that day — about 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. Can anything be done to stop this?
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
When I tackled the topic of loneliness as a 2013 National Health Journalism Fellowship project, I honestly didn't think it would be hard to find people who were lonely so that I could write about the issue. I was right and wrong.
Childhood cancers, behavior-impacting disabilities like autism, extremely brittle bones, or compromised immune systems are some conditions that may leave kids feeling lonely.
Two experts respond to evidence about the potential risk for a patient without a history of addiction to become addicted to opioid pain killers.
Reporting on Health Contributing Editor William Heisel set off a spirited discussion this week on Twitter on the risk of addiction to opioid pain medicine. What are the implications for chronic pain management and treatment?
As he tells it, Geronimo Garcia was on the path toward dropping out by the time he started school.
Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, NARA, offers inpatient and outpatient drug treatment and a 70-bed residential program in Portland, Oregon.
Research from across the nation shows that treating drug addiction reduces crime and medical expenses while boosting employment, meaning every dollar spent on treatment actually saves an average of $7.
Experts say it’s nearly impossible to compare the effectiveness of one drug-addiction treatment against another because so much depends on the needs of the addict — and there is debate about how well medication-assisted therapy works.
