SALT LAKE CITY — Financial troubles, chronic pain, substance abuse and mental illness are common factors among an increasing number of people who died over the course of a year from overdosing on prescription drugs in Utah, health researchers said Monday.
The state medical examiner’s office reviewed more than 2,000 deaths between October 2008 and October 2009. Of those, 430 were drug overdoses. More than half involved only legal painkilling narcotics known as opioids.
Utah Department of Health officials are trying to understand why prescription-drug overdose deaths have jumped more than 500 percent over the past decade. Utah residents are now more likely to die from drug overdose than in a traffic accident.
“Very little is known about why we are experiencing this epidemic,” said Dr. David Sundwall, director of the health department.
Death records offer few biographical clues about those who died. So researchers over the fall and winter interviewed relatives and friends of 385 people who overdosed on prescription drugs during that time. Of those, 63 percent were unemployed when they died, and 59 percent were having financial problems. About a quarter also lacked health insurance.
About 83 percent suffered from chronic pain.
The study also found half had been treated for substance abuse and about half also had been diagnosed with a mental illness.
Oxycodone was the drug most frequently mentioned as a contributing cause of death, health officials said.
“We’ve known this is not a simple problem to solve,” said Dr. Robert Rolfs, Utah’s state epidemiologist.
It will require educating not only doctors and patients but also patients’ families, Rolfs said.
The results released Monday could help health officials develop materials for physicians to consult prior to prescribing pain medications, Rolfs said. It might mean doctors need to take longer with patients to determine their risks for overdosing, Rolfs said.
