Long-Term Opioid Use Is Common Among Teens With Mental Health Issues

Preexisting mental health conditions, such as anxiety or mood disorders, strongly influence long-term opioid use among adolescents, according to a new review.

To conduct their review, the researchers examined nationwide commercial health care claims data on 1,224,520 adolescents aged 14 to 18 years at first receipt who did not have cancer and were incident opioid recipients from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2014.

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Participants were matched with controls, who had not received opioids, based on sex, calendar year and years of age at first enrollment, and months of enrollment.

The researchers defined long-term therapy as a more than 90-day supply of opioids within a 6-month timeframe with no gaps in supply of more than 32 days.

Results showed that participants with mental health conditions such as anxiety, mood, or sleep disorders were significantly more likely to receive an opioid prescription.

After 6 months of follow-up on 1,000,453 participants, the researchers found that the cumulative incidence of long-term opioid use was 3 per 1000 participants within 3 years after receiving their first opioid prescription.

“Commercially insured adolescents with many types of preexisting mental health conditions and treatments were modestly more likely to receive any opioid and were substantially more likely to subsequently transition to long-term opioid therapy relative to those without, although overall rates of long-term opioid therapy were low,” the researchers concluded.

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Quinn PD, Hur K, Chang Z, et al. Association of mental health conditions and treatments with long-term opioid analgesic receipt among adolescents [published online March 12, 2018]. JAMA Pediatr. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.5641.