Addiction treatment decreases suicide risk among people with opioid dependence

Treating opioid use disorder significantly lowers the very high rate (eight times the general population) of suicide among people with opioid dependence, according to a study led by Glasgow Caledonian University.

The study of more than 45,000 patients in Scotland receiving methadone or buprenorphine for opioid use disorder reported this important result today (October 23), in the scientific journal Addiction.

There were 575 suicides among the group of 46,453 people with opioid use disorder, accounting for 1.2% of the group.

Although every member of the group received an opioid-agonist therapy (OAT) prescription at some point between 2011 and 2020, some of those suicides occurred during periods when people were not in receipt of an OAT prescription.

The study assumed that every suicide that occurred more than 60 days after the person received an OAT prescription would have happened while the person was not on drug treatment for opioid dependence.

When researchers divided the 575 suicide deaths into those occurring while the person was on OAT versus those committed while the person was no longer on OAT, they found that the rate of suicide for people not on OAT was more than three times higher than the rate for people on OAT.

Lead author and Glasgow Caledonian School of Health and Life Sciences (SHLS) researcher, Rosalyn Fraser, comments: “People with opioid dependence in Scotland are at much higher risk of suicide than the general population. But there is strong evidence that suicide rates are lower among people receiving methadone or buprenorphine.

“OAT helps people access other support services, stabilises drug use, and provides opportunities to build therapeutic relationships and reduce isolation. It’s very important to get people with opioid dependence into drug treatment to reduce their suicide risk.”

Senior author and Professor in Public Health Andrew McAuley, in the University’s SHLS and Research Centre for Health (ReaCH), added: “In Scotland, trends in suicide in people who are opioid dependent declined during a period where overdose deaths more than doubled.  Importantly, retention in opioid agonist treatment is a critical intervention both for suicide and opioid overdose prevention strategies.”

Read the report, entitled ‘Suicide in people prescribed opioid-agonist therapy in Scotland, United Kingdom, 2011–2020: A national retrospective cohort’, here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16680