This morning on KQED's Forum, guests discussed addiction in the wake of the apparent heroin overdose of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
During the show, Stanford's Keith Humphreys, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, noted that addiction is a disease:
Addiction is like other chronic disorders that are not curable - I mean, they can be managed, but we can't eliminate them. Just like diabetes or low back pain or high blood pressure, you can go through treatment periods and recover your function, but that doesn't mean that it can't come back. And people are particularly prone to relapse in times of stress, in times of deprivation. Sometimes in also very good times people haven't learned to celebrate and be happy without reaching for their drug or alcohol.
Humphreys, who recently served as a senior advisor in the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, outlined two common barriers to receiving treatment: "Not having enough money, and being stigmatized." But he also shared good news on how addiction is being viewed by the American public – and treated as a medical condition worthy of health insurance coverage.
"Several hundred million Americans, although they might not know it, just got better coverage for addiction treatment in their insurance," Humphreys said. "The Affordable Care Act defines substance abuse for the first time as an essential health-care benefit. So all new plans must offer benefits, and they must offer them at parity."
Previously: We just had the best two months in the history of U.S. mental-health policy, Is it damaging to refer to addicts as drug “abusers?”, “Brains are unmentionable:” A father reflects on reactions to daughter’s mental illness, Breaking Good: How to wipe out meth labs, How police officers are tackling drug overdose and Addiction: All in the mind?
Photo (modified from original) by vmiramontes
