Fans of the TV show Girls will remember the moment this past season when one of the lead characters, Marnie, discovers that her eccentric husband has been addicted to OxyContin throughout the entirety of their marriage. Granted, it wasn’t exactly the longest of marriages, but still, it felt like a little bit of a preposterous plot twist. After all, how could anyone miss all the signs?
Well. It turns out that it’s a lot easier than you might think. In a new national survey, researchers from Michigan State University examined mental-health literacy across four major issues — including anxiety, depression, alcohol and prescription-drug abuse — and found that out of 4,600 respondents, a full 32 percent were unable to identify the signs of pill addiction. Men and urban dwellers were particularly bad at knowing when something was amiss.
“My sense is that people just don’t recognize the risk factor or take the necessary precautions to look at what’s happening,” says Michigan State economics professor Mark Skidmore, director of behavioral-health organization CAPE and a co-investigator on the survey. “Loved ones around may not be watching whether or not a prescription is being followed.”
Read more at: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/08/opioid-epidemic-addiction-mental-health.html
Source: MYMag.com – August 9, 2017
