A recent study done about the correlation between discrimination and drug abuse has been published online in the Journal of Urban Health to give local residents of Arlington Heights and of the greater Chicago area in general an idea as to just how deeply the substance abuse issue here goes and just how intensively it affects so many residents there.
In the study titled, “The Relationship between Perceived Discrimination and Psychotherapeutic and Illicit Drug Misuse in Chicago, IL, USA,” it is portrayed that it was found that more experiences of discrimination by a person are related to higher levels of drug use. To come to this conclusion, a whole, massive plethora of data and information was analyzed from the 2001 Chicago Community Adult Health Study, summarizing a random sample of 3,105 face-to-face interviews with African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian adults living in Chicago and questioning them as to their experiences.
The data from these various intricate studies and examinations was then used to examine the various relationships among lifetime everyday discrimination too, and to essentially see the occurrences of major discrimination and the use of illicit and psychotherapeutic drugs for non-medical reasons as well. It was found out from all of this that approximately 17 percent of the respondents reported using one or more illicit drugs and/or misusing one or more psychotherapeutic drug. Marijuana was found to be the most frequent drug reported by far, as marijuana is the most commonly used and abused drug in the nation. The drug rehab Arlington Heights knows that marijuana is the most common and widely abused drug in the nation and individuals think it’s harmless which is false. At the drug rehabilitation Arlington Heights, they are in place to give advice, educate and especially for drug treatment for addicts. So many individuals think that marijuana is harmless but in fact the drug rehab Arlington Heights can tell you otherwise.
Discrimination and Drug Abuse
By far, in Arlington Heights the drugs that people who are discriminated against turn to the most are prescription drugs. The very non-medical use and abuse of prescription drugs is a growing health problem in the United States and there is no denying this simple truth and it is only made worse by people treating others unfairly in Arlington Heights. Annually, more people die from prescribed opioid pain relievers than all other illegal drugs combined. Having legal access to the drugs, combined with a modern culture in the United States of simply implicitly trusting a doctor’s opinion, have booth together led to a sharp increase in emergency medicine visits attributable to prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse may soon be the largest substance abuse problem in America with ER visits due to prescription drug abuse approximately doubled in the short, six-year period from 2004 to 2009.
It was also found out from this very same study that various kinds of stress have negative impacts on a person’s overall health, and discrimination produces stress for those individuals experiencing it, and drug abuse, stress, and discrimination often go hand in hand. Arlington Heights could benefit a lot from one very simple and very, very basic change. Mental health and substance abuse providers should consider treating experiences of unfair treatment and discrimination as a very plausible and very likely risk factor for drug use as they do other experiences of stress, such as the death of a love one. Essentially, discrimination, sexism, racism, and general cruelty towards others is a big factor in the greater Chicago area and in Arlington Heights specifically that has now boosted addiction statistics, and if it is not handled soon then it will totally go out of control.