Minneapolis St. Paul Mental Health Blog

Mental Health | Benzodiazepines Used to Treat Sleep Disorders Associated With Heightened Overdose Risk for Teens.

Teens and young adults who are treated for sleep...

Mental Health | Over the past decade, the rate of benzodiazepine exposures and overdoses among adolescents has significantly grown, and medical outcomes have become more severe.

Researchers published the findings online in Clinical Toxicology.

Mental Health Update | Heightened awareness of the dangers of prescription opioids has prompted a movement to limit use of opioid therapies for patients with acute or chronic pain.

Primary care practitioners stand on the front lines of this care shift, and many are curtailing prescribing opioids in response.

But is the solution to the drug epidemic this straightforward?

Benzo use is up | The drugs Clonazepam and Diazepam are both benzodiazepines;

they're better known by the brand names Klonopin and Valium. The drug class also includes Ativan, Librium and Halcion.

The percentage of outpatient medical visits that led to a benzodiazepine prescription doubled from 2003 to 2015, according to a study published Friday. And about half those prescriptions came from primary care physicians.

As attention remains focused on opioid abuse, another drug epidemic rages outside the spotlight: inappropriate prescription of benzodiazepines.

Long-term use of benzodiazepine and nonbenzodiazepine hypnotics grew significantly in the United States between 1999 and 2014...

Prescriptions for benzodiazepine and overdose deaths increased considerably from 1996 to 2013, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Marcus A. Bachhuber, MD, MSHP, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and colleagues examined data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and multiple-cause-of-death data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to describe trends in benzodiazepine prescriptions and overdose deaths among adults.