Without addressing social determinants, addiction will not go away
This post is part of a series of brief takeaways from working in the behavioral health space over the past year
According to recent CDC data, opioid overdose deaths remain exceptionally high. A consistent impediment to turning this trend around is poverty. The stressors of hunger, housing insecurity, and violence made it hard for clients to achieve sustained recovery. I saw a regular pattern of clients who would be in recovery until a loved one was shot and killed, triggering a relapse.
There was also the tug-of-war between a client choosing to come in for treatment versus finding food or getting in line at the shelter in time to have a place to sleep. In my experience shadowing people that were homeless, many of whom had opioid use disorder, I learned that their biggest concerns were fear of feeling cold, hungry, trapped, and hopeless, not finding access to addiction treatment.
Until poverty, racism, stigma and other upstream health drivers are addressed, our attempts to increase treatment access will only serve as bandaids to the hemorrhage of American lives lost to addiction.
