LibGuides: Adult Upgrading English 80 Winter 2024: Substance Addiction

In the News

A housing remedy for Canada’s hard-hit ERs As a small number of homeless patients make thousands of emergency room visits, hospitals grapple with how to better treat people with nowhere else to turn
Last year, at only two Toronto emergency rooms – in Toronto Western Hospital and the Toronto General Hospital, both of which are part of the University Health Network (UHN) – the 100 most frequent ER users recorded as having no fixed address made a collective 4,309 visits.

Canadian Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CADS): summary of results for 2019

Canadian Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CADS): summary of results for 2019
Understanding Canadian trends in alcohol and drug use is vital to the effective development, implementation and evaluation of national and provincial strategies, policies and programs. The Canadian Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CADS) is a biennial general population survey of alcohol and drug use among Canadians aged 15 years and older. CADS is conducted by Health Canada, in partnership with Statistics Canada for data collection.

British Columbia Centre for Disease Control

BCCDC - Unregulated Drug Poisoning Emergency Dashboard
This dashboard reports the magnitude of the unregulated drug poisoning emergency and progress on selected interventions. Data are available at the provincial or regional heath authority level, broken down by age and sex where possible.
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This website content is considered to be academic Cite as Webpage in MLA.

Battling Addiction

Homeless people in Edmonton are dying at 8 times the rate as pre-pandemic
Data provided by Alberta Justice shows that over the past five years, the number of homeless people who die annually in Edmonton has increased dramatically — from 37 in 2019 to 302 in 2023. In Calgary, that number has risen from 51 to 294 in the same time period. The ministry would not release the causes of death, citing privacy legislation.

National Institute for Health - National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts
Many people don't understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They may mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. Fortunately, researchers know more than ever about how drugs affect the brain and have found treatments that can help people recover from drug addiction and lead productive lives.
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This is website is consider to be an academic source. It is part of the U.S. based National Institute Health. NIDA mission is to is to advance science on drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual and public health.

Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) was created by an Act of Parliament in 1988. It is a non-governmental organization (NGO) charged with providing leadership on substance use and to identify solutions to address alcohol and other drug related issues in order to reduce substance use harms.

Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA)
The CCSA provides guidance to decision makers through harnessing the power of research, collecting and organizing knowledge, and bringing together diverse perspectives. The organization holds a unique position through developing different partnerships with not-for-profit associations, government agencies — especially public health and law enforcement — and industry.
Life in Recovery from Addiction in Canada: Technical Report
This report the first of its kind produced in Canada, provides information, statistics and data on the impact of Life after going through a substance recovery program.

DSM-5

Addiction Policy Forum - DSM-5 Criteria for Addiction Simplified
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, or DSM-5, is the American Psychiatric Association’s goldstandard text on mental health that was crafted by hundreds of mental health experts. The DSM-5 has eleven criteria, or symptoms, for "substance use disorders" (SUD) based on decades of research. The DSM-5 has helped change how we think about addictions by not overly focusing on withdrawal.
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This source is a Website published on August 17, 2020 and Updated on October 19, 2002.

Understanding Addiction - Seven Myths of Addiction - Dr. Gabor Maté

In the realm of hungry ghosts : close encounters with addiction by Mate, Gabor
Call Number: Kelowna Circulating Collection RC 533 .M38 2009
ISBN: 0676977413
Publication Date: 2009
"A “thought-provoking and powerful” study that reframes everything you’ve been taught about addiction and recovery—from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Myth of Normal (Bruce Perry, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog). A world-renowned trauma expert combines real-life stories with cutting-edge research to offer a holistic approach to understanding addiction—its origins, its place in society, and the importance of self-compassion in recovery. Based on Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with people with addiction on Vancouver’s skid row, this #1 international bestseller radically re-envisions a much misunderstood condition by taking a compassionate approach to substance abuse and addiction recovery. In the same vein as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts traces the root causes of addiction to childhood trauma and examines the pervasiveness of addiction in society. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout—and perhaps underpins—our society. It is not a medical “condition” distinct from the lives it affects but rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs and behaviors of addiction. Simplifying a wide array of brain and addiction research findings from around the globe, the book avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting a thorough and compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness. Dr. Maté argues persuasively against contemporary health, social, and criminal justice policies toward addiction and how they perpetuate the War on Drugs. The mix of personal stories—including the author’s candid discussion of his own “high-status” addictive tendencies—and science with positive solutions makes the book equally useful for lay readers and professionals." -- provided by publisher.

New NIH study reveals shared genetic markers underlying substance use disorders
By combing through genomic data of over 1 million people, scientists have identified genes commonly inherited across addiction disorders, regardless of the substance being used.

Statistics Canada

Understanding the socioeconomic profile of people who experienced opioid overdoses in British Columbia, 2014 to 2016
In 2016, British Columbia’s (B.C.) Provincial Health Officer declared a public health emergency in response to increases in illicit-drug overdoses and related deaths. Between 2011 and 2016, the number of illicit-drug toxicity deaths in B.C. totaled 2,788, having increased from 295 in 2011, to 991 in 2016. These deaths were largely related to the use of illicit fentanyl and its analogues. In 2019, these substances were detected in 87% of illicit-drug toxicity deaths. In 2012, this proportion was 5%. Although the opioid crisis is national in scope, B.C. continues to experience a disproportionately higher rate of deaths attributed to illicit drug overdoses, at 20.7 per 100,000 population (age-adjusted), relative to 8.4 per 100,000 for the whole of Canada.

Indigenous People

FNHA Releases 2022 Toxic Drug Poisoning Crisis Data
The year 2022 was the most devastating to date for First Nations people, their families, friends and communities. There were 373 toxic drug-poisoning deaths among First Nations people, a 6.3 per cent increase compared to 2021. First Nations people died at 5.9 times the rate of other BC residents in 2022. A disturbing trend is the impact on First Nations women, who died at 11.2 times the rate of other female BC residents in 2022, an increase from the 2021 data.
First Nations people in B.C. continue to be hit harder by toxic drug crisis, statistics show
First Nations people died at six times the rate of non-First Nations people from January to June 2023 while the number of First Nations people who died from toxic drugs increased by 24.7 per cent compared to the same period in 2022.
Wilk, Piotr, et al. “Residential Schools and the Effects on Indigenous Health and Well-Being in Canada--a Scoping Review.” Public Health Reviews (2107-6952), vol. 38, no. 1, Mar. 2017, pp. 1–23. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-017-0055-6.
The history of residential schools has been identified as having long lasting and intergenerational effects on the physical and mental well-being of Indigenous populations in Canada. Our objective was to identify the extent and range of research on residential school attendance on specific health outcomes and the populations affected. Methods: A scoping review of the empirical peer-reviewed literature was conducted, following the methodological framework of Arksey and O'Malley (2005). For this review, nine databases were used: Bibliography of Native North Americans, Canadian Health Research Collection, CINAHL, Google Scholar, Indigenous Studies Portal, PubMed, Scopus, Statistics Canada, and Web of Science. Citations that did not focus on health and residential school among a Canadian Indigenous population were excluded. Papers were coded using the following categories: Indigenous identity group, geography, age-sex, residential school attendance, and health status. Results: Sixty-one articles were selected for inclusion in the review. Most focused on the impacts of residential schooling among First Nations, but some included Métis and Inuit. Physical health outcomes linked to residential schooling included poorer general and self-rated health, increased rates of chronic and infectious diseases. Effects on mental and emotional well-being included mental distress, depression, addictive behaviours and substance mis-use, stress, and suicidal behaviours. Conclusion: The empirical literature can be seen as further documenting the negative health effects of residential schooling, both among former residential school attendees and subsequent generations. Future empirical research should focus on developing a clearer understanding of the aetiology of these effects, and particularly on identifying the characteristics that lead people and communities to be resilient to them.
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This an example of a Peer-Reviewed article from a Journal.