Our study’s principal investigator Dr. Stefan Kertesz recently offered a popular blog post for Sensible Medicine on a new scientific paper arguing that prescription opioid reductions were likely to reduce suicides at the regional level. The new paper by authors at Columbia University suggested that analyzing prescriptions and suicides at the regional level will help clinicians better understand the risk of suicide for any particular individual. Dr. Kertesz criticizes the piece in an article titled “Suicide and Opioids: No Easy Answers, No Sweeping Conclusions”. Read it, or listen, here.
May I ask why the medical community deems it necessary to reduce opioid doses for patients with chronic pain? We know that pain patients do NOT get addicted but become dependent on these types of medication. Pain medication allows them to have a quality of life. There is inherent bias with pain and most certainly stereotyping. As a pain patient myself, I have undergone the most hideous forms of bias and cruelty by medical “professionals.” I would like to help anyway that I can. Please feel free to reach out to me at cthlcrn@gmail.com
We must put a stop to this ideology and treat the pain properly. The ongoing unethical torment of patients by the medical establishment must come to an end. Millions suffer from chronic pain with no cure for these various ailments. Pain IS WHAT THE PATIENT STATES IT IS, let’s listen to them and stop accusing or projecting. Please help stop this bias and superstitious behavior by unmerciful individuals who practice pseudo medicine.
Thank you.
Thank-you for offering a reflection and a question that is quite serious. It’s not part of our study explicitly, but some members of our study team have spoken and written about preemptive reactions from health professionals. One type of preemptive reaction Dr. Kertesz has addressed in a podcast is called “medical gaslighting” – that episode has a rather colorful title, and is available here as part of the On Becoming a Healer series: https://pod.link/healer/episode/47ab4e6b2fc4802db7925c86fdca46eb