Drug-Related Suicides: A Preventable Death

Any instance of a person taking his or her own life is something that reverberates through the family, the community and even the nation. Families of the victims often wonder what led to such a drastic choice and how it could have been prevented. When it is discovered that a drug was related, the reaction can be even more heart-wrenching, knowing it could have been prevented.

In the case of a drug overdose, either intentional or unintentional, the drug has essentially poisoned the victim’s body. Data for 2005 reveals that 5,833 poisoning deaths, or 18 percent of the 32,691 the total poisoning deaths for that year, were intentional. Of those, 5,744 were suicides.

Those drugs that are used most often in suicides include psychoactive drugs, such as sedatives and antidepressants, followed by opiates and prescription pain medications. According to the Centers for Disease Control, those who committed suicide in 2008 by way of drug overdose were 1.3 times more likely to be men than women; were 3.6 times more likely to be white than black; and the peak age was 45-49 years old.

But drug-related suicides are not all a result of a drug overdose. The other risk lies in the suicidal tendencies that arise due to the impact the drug has on the mental state of the person. Research into this phenomenon published in the British J. of Psychiatry (BJP) determined that drugs such as psychotropic drugs increase the suicide rate in patients suffering from schizophrenia by as much as 20 times.

What You Need to Know about Vicodin

Vicodin is an opiate that is used to treat pain and severe coughs. Many different narcotic drugs have become popular for people to abuse in recent years, and Vicodin is certainly no exception.