The Right Approach to the Opioid Crisis: Stigma Still the Biggest Hurdle in the Fight Against Addiction

December 28, 2018 – – Experts, analysts, and medical professionals agree that one simple idea can help fix the opioid crisis in the US: addiction must be treated just like any other medical condition. Along with this, addiction treatment should be approached just like any other form of health care. Many believe this would go a long way towards solving the opioid crisis.

The opioid epidemic is now the US’s deadliest drug overdose crisis in history. And yet addiction is not being treated like a medical condition.

There are plenty of solutions being offered to confront the crisis directly: reworking medical programs, changing insurance policies to accommodate addiction treatment, providing special training for doctors to get them into addiction care, etc. These are all centered on taking the right approach and breaking the stigma associated with addiction.

Solving America’s Opioid crisis one idea at a time. Once addiction is seen as a medical condition, health care services would then be considered a necessity. The solutions become more obvious from then on. Addicted people would have access to proven medications. And because the stigma is eliminated, more people would actually reach out and seek the required treatment.

Addiction has a social component to it, which affects people’s attitude towards the problem and therefore affects the way the crisis is handled. Addicted individuals should be able to access care in the emergency room and at a doctor’s office. Health insurance should cover their treatment.

The treatment is currently inaccessible or too expensive is the argument made by many. According to the 2016 surgeon general’s report, only 10 percent of people with a substance use disorder received specialty treatment for their addiction because of two reasons. One was because treatment options don’t exist, and the other was because the treatment options were unaffordable.

Some treatment options even have waiting periods of weeks or months in between. The opioid crisis is such a widespread problem and many people are dying of an opioid overdose. If this was true for another medical condition, the treatment options would be far more accessible. It would be a public health catastrophe.

Stigma is still the biggest barrier for people coming clean to loved ones. The overdose crisis breaks records for deaths year after year—and the core of the problem is the stigma surrounding addiction. There are plenty of misconceptions that plague the issue, preventing it from being seen as the medical condition that it is. Many people view it as a moral failure, rather than a physical problem that has genetic and environmental components. Some would even argue that people suffering from addiction “deserve” to die.

Culture and society play a role in how morality is being used to make it much harder for addicted people to get the help they need. With misconceptions that run deep, the opioid crisis will be much harder to tackle because of the resulting problems in the health care system.

If someone is addicted to an opioid or any other medication, look for a drug rehab facility nearby and learn more about how the treatment works. Behavioral therapy and medical detox can go a long way in the fight against drug abuse.

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