Treating The Whole Person

Pregnant people who struggle with substance abuse face an uphill battle getting the care they need for their pregnancy and the care they need for their recovery. Caitlin Martin’s OB MOTIVATE clinic believes that caring for the whole person--pregnancy, addiction, and everything else--in one place is the best way to truly help patients. And: The criminal justice system has the highest concentration of people with opioid use disorders in the US. If you’re in the justice system, you are 400 times more likely to abuse opioids than the general population. And yet, says Faye Taxman, the justice system is not at all equipped to handle addiction services. Later in the show: Since 1999, opioid overdose deaths in this country have increased more than six times. What’s driving that incredible rise? Barbara Blake Gonzalez has looked at many different factors that contribute to overdose deaths, from commute time to the number of pharmacies in a town. Plus: Long before today’s opioid crisis, there was a crisis of Civil War veterans addicted to drugs like morphine and laudanum. Jonathan Jones uncovers the toll addiction took on the lives of Civil War veterans and their families and the surprising parallels between the 19th century opioid crisis and the one of today.