Dr. Brian Sites: New study discusses links between mental health and the opioid crisis

More than half of all opioid medications distributed each year in the United States are prescribed to adults with mental illness (i.e., those with depression and anxiety) according to new research by Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the University of Michigan.

The study, published in the July issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, is among the first to show the extent to which the population of Americans with mental illness use opioids.