Today, the well-read Pain News Network website published “Why We Need to Study Suicides After Opioid Tapering”, a column by study investigator Dr. Stefan G. Kertesz. “Prescription opioid reductions are not always good, and not always bad,” writes Dr. Kertesz, but he then lays out why it’s important to study the suicides that have happened, and how people can spread the word. Check it out online here.
Dr. Kertesz and Dr. Varley discuss Understanding Suicides after Prescription Opioids are Stopped: The CSI:OPIOIDs Research Study with the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association (RSDSA). You can view the presentation on FaceBook and YouTube here. Both investigators are behind the world’s only study to directly examine suicides that happen after prescription opioid reduction or stoppage. Their presentation introduces why this study needs to be done, how it is being done, and how people from the pain and RSDSA communities could join the effort.
On August 16, 2023, CSI:OPIOIDs team members Stefan Kertesz (lead investigator), Kate Nicholson (National Pain Advocacy Center) and Thomas Joiner (Florida State University) discussed CSI:OPIOIDs for an audience of over 300 people working to improve the 988 Crisis Lifeline response. You can watch the video below and check out slides from Dr. Kertesz by clicking here.
Dr. Stefan Kertesz will speak to the Yale Program in the Addiction Medicine Grand Rounds about our study on Tuesday July 25, 2023 at 11am (CT) in a talk titled “Studying Suicides after Prescription Opioids are Stopped: Let’s Move Beyond Statistics with the CSI:OPIOIDs Research Study”.
Registration is free and open to the public for this online presentation. Link to register here.
In a new “On Becoming a Healer” podcast episode, Dr. Stefan Kertesz speaks with Dr. Saul Weiner about the risk of suicide with opioid reduction, and how that should affect the patient-doctor relationship. The episode summarizes a controversial new study, and then focuses on how the power dynamic between doctors and patients affects the way they speak with each other. On Becoming a Healer streams on podcast platforms like Apple & Spotify and also at this webpage.
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.
Georgia native Danny Elliott suffered a debilitating electrical accident causing intense chronic pain, leading Danny towards opioids as a form of pain management. Following the harsh crack-down on opioid prescriptions by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Danny and his wife Gretchen Elliott struggled to acquire the necessary medications to alleviate his pain, ultimately leading the couple to take their own lives to end their suffering. Read more here
The husband of CSI:OPIOIDs study advisor, CaSonya Richardson-Slone, had suffered complex injuries in a 2011 car accident. After completing a course of rehabilitation in California, the New York Times reports that his Kentucky pain clinic “cut his pain medications by more than half overnight”. He tried to remedy the prescription by calling and even showing up in his wheelchair. Still, he was told he wouldn’t receive any refills until an appointment six days away. In agony, he texted Sonya: “they denied script im done love you.” He died by suicide in a local park. Read more here (Behind Paywall). STATnews also covered Slone’s story here.
