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March 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) — Iraq and Afghanistan war
veterans who have psychiatric disorders, especially post-traumatic stress
disorder, are more likely than mentally healthy vets to use prescription
narcotic painkillers, a new study finds.
Use of these opioid pain medications, such as OxyContin, Percocet and
Vicodin, can become addictive and cause more serious problems, researchers
say.
“Veterans using these narcotic painkillers had worse clinical
outcomes,” said lead researcher Dr. Karen Seal, from the San Francisco
Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “Those outcomes were wounds and injuries,
alcohol and drug overdoses, opioid overdoses, violent injuries and even
suicide. This was particularly true in the group with PTSD [post-traumatic
stress disorder],” Seal explained.
In the study of pain patients, those with PTSD, an illness marked by
disabling anxiety, were more than twice as likely to receive opioid
painkillers as those without mental health problems. Seal said these
veterans are more likely to look for pain relief than seek mental health
treatment.
“We are trying to change that situation,” Seal said. Primary care
physicians should screen patients for mental and drug or alcohol abuse
problems and first offer alternatives to opioid pain medications, such as
referral for mental health or pain care, she noted.
The report was published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
For the study, Seal’s team looked at the association between mental
health problems and unfavorable results — including accidents, overdose
and self-inflicted injury — with use of prescription painkillers in more
than 140,000 veterans treated for pain at VA hospitals from October 2005
to December 2010.
Almost 16,000 patients received prescriptions for painkillers covering
20 or more days, the researchers found.
About 18 percent of veterans with PTSD and almost 12 percent with other
mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, received narcotic
painkiller prescriptions compared with less than 7 percent of those
without mental health problems, the results showed.
Vets with PTSD were more likely to take higher doses and more than one
painkiller than mentally healthy vets. They were also more likely than the
others to take sedatives and to refill their prescriptions early, the
researchers noted.
“This indicates to us that they may be using their pain medication
faster than prescribed and be self-medicating,” Seal said.
Also, veterans with PTSD who also abused drugs were much more likely to
be prescribed narcotic painkillers than those without mental health
problems, the study found.
Jennifer Vasterling, chief of psychology at the VA Boston Healthcare
System and professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of
Medicine, said that this study highlights the potent combination of PTSD
and pain.
“The paper reinforces that the detrimental effects of war-zone trauma
and PTSD are far-reaching, extending beyond emotional symptoms to
negatively impact other aspects of health and functioning,” Vasterling
said.
The poor results associated with increased prescription painkiller use
have “significant implications for the clinical management of pain in
military veterans with PTSD and pain,” Vasterling added.
Another expert, Simon Rego, director of psychology training at
Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said the study findings are
troubling. “Veterans with PTSD are also known to have high rates of
substance use disorders, and treatment with opioids among patients with
mental health problems is thought to exacerbate substance abuse and worsen
mental health problems over time,” he said.
It’s possible that veterans with mental health problems, particularly
PTSD, find barriers to mental health treatment and often use VA primary
care, where doctors may lack specialized training in the management of
pain and PTSD, he said.
“Clearly, further efforts are required to improve the care of these
patients with pain and PTSD, and extra care should be taken when
prescribing opioids to relieve their distress,” Rego said.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, acknowledging concerns about
prescription drug abuse, said in a statement Tuesday that it welcomes this
study. “While this research acknowledges that VA is a leader in providing
therapy for PTSD and pain, we recognize that more work remains,” the
statement said.
That work includes teaming up primary care physicians with nurses,
mental health providers, pharmacists and social workers, the VA said.
More information
For more information on PTSD, visit the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.
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