Treating women with opioid use disorders poses unique challenges

August 14, 2017|Family Practice News

Unique challenges

Treating women with opioid use disorder isn’t just about identifying the best treatment approach. Social factors appear to play a larger role among women.

“Child care can be a huge barrier for engaging in treatment, which tends to be an additional challenge, more for women,” Hendrée Jones, PhD, professor of ob.gyn. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and executive director UNC Horizons, a drug treatment program for women and drug-exposed children, said in an interview.

“Another difference with women over men is the prevalence of sexual trauma, as well as being in unhealthy relationships where the women are more likely to be enticed into leaving treatment,” she added.

Trauma among women with substance abuse disorders is prevalent, with 55%-99% of women reporting experiencing some form of trauma, compared with 36%-51% of the general population, according to the OWH report.

Beyond exploratory research, there needs to be a major shift in the public perception of opioid substance use, which currently does not approach the disorder as a chronic disease, according to Dr. Jones.

“The treatment process cannot just involve a detoxification program and then send patients off because that will commonly just end in relapse.” Dr. Jones said. “We need to approach substance use disorders with a recovery-oriented system of care in order to create a true safety net they can rely on.”

ezimmerman@frontlinemedcom.com

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