AUTHOR=Cochran Phillip , Chindavong Peter S. , Edelenbos Jurian , Chiou Amy , Trulson Haylee F. , Garg Rahul , Parker Robert W. 

TITLE=The impact of civil commitment laws for substance use disorder on opioid overdose deaths

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=15

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1283169

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1283169

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=<sec id="sec1"><title>Objective</title><p>Our study analyzed the impact of civil commitment (CC) laws for substance use disorder (SUD) on opioid overdose death rates (OODR) in the U.S. from 2010–21.</p></sec><sec id="sec2"><title>Methods</title><p>We used a retrospective study design using the CDC Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) dataset to analyze overdose death rates from any opioid during 2010–21 using ICD-10 codes. We used <italic>t</italic>-tests and two-way ANOVA to compare the OODR between the U.S. states with the law as compared to those without by using GraphPad Prism 10.0.</p></sec><sec id="sec3"><title>Results</title><p>We found no significant difference in the annual mean age-adjusted OODR from 2010–21 between U.S. states with and without CC SUD laws. During the pre-COVID era (2010–19), the presence or absence of CC SUD law had no difference in age-adjusted OODR. However, in the post-COVID era (2020–21), there was a significant increase in OODR in states with a CC SUD law compared to states without the law (<italic>p</italic> = 0.032). We also found that OODR increased at a faster rate post-COVID among both the states with CC SUD laws (<italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001) and the states without the law (<italic>p</italic> = 0.019).</p></sec><sec id="sec4"><title>Conclusion</title><p>We found higher age-adjusted OODR in states with a CC SUD law which could be due to the laws being enacted in response to the opioid crisis or physicians’ opposition to or unawareness of the law’s existence leading to underutilization. Recent enactment of CC SUD law(s), a lack of a central database for recording relapse rates, and disparities in opioid overdose rate reductions uncovers multiple variables potentially influencing OODR. Thus, further investigation is needed to analyze the factors influencing OODRs and long-term effects of the CC SUD laws.</p></sec>