Doctors started the opioid epidemic, and they can help solve it
In the 1980s, doctors and health experts made a crucial misstep. Following reports that opioids were a safe and effective way to treat pain and that addiction was rare, health care providers started treating pain much more aggressively, including prescribing more opioid pain medication.
“Our health professionals’ well-intentioned approach to treating people’s pain can sometimes lead to unintended consequences and exposing an individual to the risk of addiction or overdose,” Dr. Hillary Kunins, assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, previously told HuffPost.
Doctors aren’t the only ones to blame. Drug companies aggressively marketed opioids to doctors for two decades before the halo finally burst. In 2007, the company that makes OxyContin pleaded guilty to making false safety claims and misleading regulators, offenses that cost the company more than $600 million in fines that year.
Still, Murthy thinks that if doctors helped fuel the epidemic, they can help stem it, too.
Reframing addiction with compassion
In his letter, Murthy stressed that physicians need to shape how the country sees, talks about and treats addiction ? and emphasized that doctors need to reframe addiction as the chronic condition it is, rather than a moral failing.
“It’s something where you’re going to have remission and you are going to have relapses, just like multiple sclerosis, just like other problems,” Dr. Nitin Sekhri, the medial director of pain management at Westchester Medical Center, previously told The Huffington Post. “At times, it’s going to be poorly controlled. You have to fight through those times. It’s a very difficult, lifelong struggle.”
Of course, solving such an overwhelming epidemic requires a group effort that extends beyond doctors.
“We right now have more than a million patients in America who need treatment and can’t get it. We need to close that gap. And that gap is not solely up to clinicians to close,” Murthy said, citing important instruments for change including investments from policymakers and open conversations among families about substance-use disorder.
“We need everyone in our country to help change how we think about addiction,” he said. “For far too many people, the stigma around addiction prevents them from stepping forward for help.”