June 30, 2016
Dear Dr. Frieden
Lives matter. Lives of people with chronic pain addiction or depression.
What happens to a large number of opiate
dependent patients left without their trusted physician due to allegations of drug trafficking?
Every year some 600 US physicians have been forced out of
medicine by special laws authorized by Congress under the criminalization of
psychiatry and pain medicine.
In Washington DC when a psychiatrist and
two pain physicians became under investigation more than 1900 opiate dependent
patients were left without appropriate
care. Within one year 14 patients committed suicide.
The
strikingly high number of suicides were consistent with previously reported
high suicide rates upon discontinuation of opiates 9Kakko et al). Furthermore
it resonated the special warning by Grant and colleagues in their classic study
– the largest epidemiological study of
mood and anxiety disorders and substance abuse in US – : beware of
suicide risk and do not interrupt treatment of stable opiate dependent
patients.
It will be a well educated guess that every
year some 600 physicians and some 3600 opiate dependent patients have been
adversely effected by the criminalization of psychiatry and pain medicine with
approximately 2580 patients committed suicide annually.
The US suicide epidemic with some 44,000 deaths (13 per 100.000
population in 2014 a significant jump from 10.5 per 100000 population in 2000 )
may represent a collateral damage from the war on drugs and the criminalization
of psychiatry and pain medicine.
Dear Dr. Frieden
CDC special warnings singling out prescription pain medications
(opiates) as a public menace is wrong and harmful.
Please do the right thing. Let us save some future lives.
Respectfully
Alen J Salerian MD
References:
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