Undetected Psychiatric Conditions Can Contribute to Medication Misuse
Doctors recently addressed the need to determine if a psychosocial evaluation of their patients to check for their risk of opioid misuse should be considered. The findings reported showed that such things as emotional instability considerably predicted patients' risk assessment scores.
According to Health 24, researchers were already aware that such undetected psychiatric conditions can factor into misuse of medications, but the study further showed that people with unstable emotions and traits related to such conditions as BPD may increase risks of misuse. Dr. Todd Sitzman, at the Advanced Pain Therapy treatment center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, said if, in fact, personality traits are related to abnormal behaviors and a risk for misuse of medications, he wants to know about it at his practice.
One doctor and her team evaluated almost 100 patients that had both an opioid risk assessment and also a psychiatric evaluation. The researchers adjusted for age, sex, duration of pain and number of pain sites, and discovered that psychiatric indicators were accountable for almost 43 percent of the discrepancies in their risk assessment scores. They found that emotional instability and a number of pain sites predicted their risk over some of the other psychiatric factors.
The doctor commented that she will have a heightened vigilance and will be much stricter in her follow up as a result of this study but it doesn't mean she won't prescribe medication to her patients. The team recommends setting up a guideline for patients with these high-risk profiles, especially those with BPD, or Borderline Personality Disorder, and that the doctors insist their staff members stick to those limits.
The evaluators stressed that in no way should a single psychometric or psychological test prevent prescribing a patient the medicine they need for pain therapy.
