HealthDay (2/17, Mozes) reports, “More than a quarter of all opioid overdoses in the United States involve teenagers, and a full fifth of those cases were likely suicide attempts,” researchers concluded after performing “an in-depth analysis of nearly 754,000 American opioid poisoning cases that occurred between 2005 and 2018,” all of which “had been reported to the U.S. National Poison Data System.” Nearly “208,000 of those cases involved children 18 years old or younger.”
MedPage Today (2/17, Boyles) reports that one “particularly troubling finding in the adolescent data was the high percentage of teens who were using opioids to attempt suicide.” The findings are scheduled for presentation this week at a meeting of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
Related Links:
— “1 in 4 Opioid ODs Involves Kids and Teens, “Alan Mozes, HealthDay, February 17, 2020