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| Substance Abuse Programs for Teens Lacking in U.S. |
Few substance abuse programs in the U.S. offer high-quality treatment designed specifically for adolescents, a new study finds. Of the more than 700 treatment programs the study surveyed, less than one-third had specialized services for teenagers — with some excluding underage patients altogether and others integrating them with adult patients. |
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| Seattle Police Chief to be New US Drug Czar |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration plans Wednesday to nominate Seattle, Washington, police chief Gil Kerlikowske as the nation's drug czar. Vice President Joe Biden was expected to name Kerlikowske as chief of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a job that requires Senate confirmation, at a midday ceremony, an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made. |
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| What is Recovery? |
An essay on the subject of “What is Recovery” raises, for me, the question of what is Addiction. Since everyone of us has an idea, our own idea, of what Addiction is, we'll also have our own answer to “What is Recovery?” Since we don’t have agreement in our field on what Addiction is, I doubt that we can come up with an easy agreement on what recovery is. I could just tell you my definition of both but my goal is not for us to have a debate over which we can come to a resolution. My goal is that we all look at ourselves and how we got to this question. It may be, that after examining ourselves, we may choose to change the question we ask. |
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| New Strategies for Military Substance Abuse Treatment |
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| Written by Jenna Bensoussan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 08 January 2009 02:28 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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U.S. government experts are seeking new ways to treat a flood of American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with substance abuse problems compounded by conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.
"This new combination of moderate traumatic brain injury along with post-traumatic stress disorder and the substance abuse has been very difficult to treat," Dr. Thomas Kosten, who heads a Department of Veterans Affairs effort to improve substance abuse treatment, said on Wednesday. "We're seeing things that we, quite frankly, haven't seen before in terms of having to treat them," said Kosten, a psychiatry and neuroscience professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. National Institutes of Health, Pentagon, VA and academic experts met on Tuesday and Wednesday to consider recommendations on preventing and treating substance abuse among troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, hoped for final recommendations in two months. "Substance abuse disorders are much more prevalent among individuals that have been exposed to war environments, as are other psychiatric disorders. So the outcomes of these individuals, if not properly addressed, can be very poor," Volkow said in a telephone interview. Many troops coming home from the wars binge-drink alcohol, Kosten said. About 3 percent are hooked on opiate painkillers. And overall, the returning troops smoke cigarettes at levels more than double that of the general population, he said. A study by the RAND Corp. research organization estimates that about 18.5 percent of the U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan show signs of either PTSD or depression, conditions linked closely with substance abuse. PTSD can stem from wartime trauma such as being wounded or seeing others hurt or killed. Symptoms range from irritability and outbursts of anger to sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating, extreme vigilance and an exaggerated startle response. People also can persistently relive the traumatic event. Kosten urged a more uniform approach to treating them with their various problems. "There needs to be much more following of a protocol, so to speak, and less of a free-for-all kind of treatment that's provided -- and then monitoring the outcomes," Kosten said. "I think if you went to 10 different places to get your post-traumatic stress disorder treated, you could get 10 different treatments, it feels like. That would be including the VA," Kosten said. Source: Reuters
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 08 January 2009 02:31 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||