From the Editorial Office / El Diario
Thursday, August 20, 2020 | 21:20
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The coronavirus pandemic and its restrictions at the economic and social level have not affected drug use, as it still registers an increase in confinement and has a direct relationship with mental and even physical health conditions, reported the director of the Integration Center. Juvenile, Ramiro Vélez Sagarnaga.
He stressed that the creation of a comprehensive detention center by the Ministry of Health has become imperative to counteract this underlying problem. “Starting in April, we noticed an increase, especially in the consumption of depressant drugs such as alcohol and tranquilizers, sedatives, which are not prescribed by doctors.
We also noticed an increase in marijuana use. Unfortunately, this upward trend also continues regarding the consumption of crystal and methamphetamine ”, he explained.
Regarding alcohol, he explained that the economic crisis has pushed people to resort to cheaper products given their addiction but the impossibility of paying for it, such as the consumption of ethyl and also adulterated alcohol, which cause health problems such as blindness and even death.
In addition to the physical health problems that addictions entail, mental health is another problem that parallels drug use, he added.
“This speaks precisely of the fact that a greater case of anxiety disorders, a greater number of cases of depressive disorders and many more cases of mental health disorders are paired in this issue of the pandemic, which of course lead to a greater increase in substance use ”.
He explained that substance use disorders should also be treated together with mental ones, due to their direct relationship known as dual pathology, which as treatment is specialized in youth integration centers.
“Here at the juvenile integration center we are dealing with this dual pathology condition, but we call on the authorities so that they can help not only multiply preventive work, but also offer treatment services in terms of internment.
Chihuahua requires a professional, multidisciplinary internment unit like Ciudad Juárez has together with the CIJ, that is why we are looking for an approach with the Ministry of Health precisely so that we can begin the construction of the hospitalization unit, because the problems due to consumption are very wide, the prevalence according to the official data of the last national survey of addictions presented Chihuahua in a statistic of 13 percent of people who had consumed an illegal drug during the last year ”, he explained.
He also highlighted that the alarms have been set off regarding the consumption of new drugs such as fentanyl, an opiate that is 50 times stronger than morifine and that produces respiratory depression that ends up taking the lives of users, he explained.
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