Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier

Je prend ici des notes sur mes lectures. Les citations proviennent des articles cités.

  • Is it addiction or dependence? | Bloomberg American Health Initiative
    http://americanhealth.jhu.edu/article/it-addiction-or-dependence

    “Born Addicted: The Number of Opioid Addicted Babies is Soaring,” reads the headline of a recent news story on the dramatic increase in babies born afflicted by neonatal abstinence syndrome. It’s great that media outlets are reporting on the important public health issue of the national opioid crisis, but its terminology is not accurate. Babies cannot be born addicted.

    Unfortunately, there is often confusion regarding certain terms describing addiction, and such confusion can exacerbate widespread stigma.

    The DSM-5, published in 2013, attempted to assuage the confusion. ‘Substance use disorder’ is now the accepted term to describe what is commonly referred to as addiction, leaving dependence as the term to describe the physical tolerance that develops to alcohol and drugs, including opioids.

    With the appropriate vocabulary arsenal we can now return to the problematic “addicted babies” headline. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome is a group of medical complications that affect newborn babies when the mother has used addictive opiate drugs during pregnancy. This exposure results in infants sometimes being born in withdrawal. If untreated, the babies, exhibit a number of symptoms like excessive crying, diarrhea, vomiting, and irritability, among others. Fortunately, treatment for a few days to weeks eliminates these symptoms. The accurate terminology for these babies is that they are born dependent or in withdrawal, not addicted. An infant, cannot exhibit the uncontrollable, compulsive drug use that defines an addiction. Calling babies addicted feeds into the stigma surrounding addiction and can dissuade pregnant mothers who suffer from substance use disorder from seeking necessary care.

    #Opioides #Dépendance #Neonatal_abstinence_syndrome