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CENTRAL COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) – Researchers at Penn State University are studying what happens to overdose cases when an opioid epidemic meets a global pandemic.
“The overdoses were pretty high in 2018 and then started to go down in 2019 due to various measures,” said Brian King, professor of geology at Penn State University.
However, King said they were losing ground on that progress and Pennsylvania is seeing a significant increase in overdoses due to the pandemic.
As the CDC highlights strictly fatal overdoses, this team of researchers is looking at both fatal and non-fatal overdoses to grasp just how inclusive the epidemic is. They interviewed public health providers in the PA to obtain qualitative information.
“They’ve been telling us for over a year now how worried they are,” King said.
Moreover, in these conversations, they learned that there were a greater number of relapses. All of this can be a side effect of the pandemic.
“What is telling is that the mental health pressures, the economic pressures, the disruption of traditional treatment services like face-to-face counseling if you are in treatment, have been very disruptive,” King said.
In their findings so far, the communities most affected have been white and black populations between the ages of 30 and 40.
“We don’t yet know if the pandemic has extended the scope of the opioid epidemic in the United States, or if it has simply intensified it,” King said.
The rise of telehealth has made it possible for some people to have access to advice that they did not previously have.
“Before the pandemic there were more restrictions on the provisions for certain types of drugs the way you would see a drug treatment counselor and then due to the pandemic they had to relax that,” King said. .
For others, the technology used to receive telehealth treatments was a barrier.
“For people who were already really vulnerable to certain types of conditions, who were very actively pursuing drug treatment and then completely changed in so many ways during the pandemic, this was really heartbreaking,” King said.
King said it was not clear at this point whether the same telehealth access would remain in place after the pandemic is over.
Their research is ongoing.
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