Does The Number of Addiction/Mental Health Facilities Affect the Amount of Overdoses per State?
Written by Ana Duque and Jessica Reales
For the past 20 years, the data shows that the amount of drug overdose deaths in the United States have been regularly increasing, but when analyzing the data on facilities and deaths per state, it is hard in any situation to say for certain that the number of overdoses per state is directly related to the number of addiction/mental health facilities in the state.
We see that in Maine, they have the highest amount of facilities per 100,000 people, and their deaths due to overdose rate is number 9 in the country.
West Virginia on the other hand is number 1 in deaths due to overdose rate in the country and number 20 in facilitates per 100,000.
With something like addiction, it is very difficult to tell whether or not the options for recovery heighten the recovery rate if at all and recent clinical psychology graduate and treatment facility worker Anamaria Beltran tells us how this can be true.
Miss Beltran talks of her experience working in an addiction/mental health facility and gives her insights on how even when in a facility, a lot of recovery comes from an individual rather than the facility itself. She states:
A person who is at this treatment center is the one going through the entire process. And like I mentioned earlier, if the individual who is addicted to whatever it may be, if they don’t feel ready, or they just simply don’t want to be sober, they won’t. So if a family tries to enforce this treatment onto them, 9 out of 10 times, it doesn’t work, and the person will just fall back into whatever old habits they had after they leave the treatment center.
As we see above, the number of facilities per 100,000 people in each state is much less than the overdose related deaths per 100,000 people in each state. The amount of deaths have proven to be greater than the amount of facilities in each state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the amount of facilities affects the number of overdose related deaths.
When analyzing this data, we took into account that addiction is multifactorial. Although throughout the years the number of facilities in each state may change, it is clear that the number of overdoses per state is much greater, therefore striking the question of what exactly entails a client to feel ready to get better?
Miss Beltran tells us of the importance of these facilities saying,
The importance of these facilities is focused on the individuals themselves. And ensuring that there will be progress made in this person, of course, it’s kind of like a give or take situation, because it depends on the individual and whether they themselves want to get better.
When we asked her if this is something she has personally seen reflected in work experience, she says,
It’s a tricky question. Because in my experience, I have seen progress in those who are seeking it, and those who are not caring for their own progress, they just don’t put in the effort getting better. So specifically with the addiction clients, if they themselves are not seeking to be sober, they will most likely end up in treatment again.
Ideally, the number of facilities, higher or lower, per state would correlate to the number of overdoses and those states with more facilities would have less deaths, but because of the multifactorial component of addiction, to say that one directly affects the other would be hard to prove.
