New Strategies for Heroin, Opioid Abuse among People with Addictions, Mental Illness

Heroin, krokodil, and prescription pain killers are opioids that are commonly abused by people with addictions and mental illness. The epidemic of abuse in Ohio presents numerous challenges for health and behavioral healthcare professionals. Attend our Center's trainings and enhance your clinical knowledge and skills. Improve recovery outcomes. Learn how to

  • Accurately assess for mental illness and opioid use disorders
  • Create an integrated treatment plan that uses a stages-of-change approach to recovery
  • Integrate medication-assisted treatment (MAT) into practice
    • Antagonists (naltrexone)
    • Agonists (methadone)
    • Partial agonists (buprenorphine)
  • Understand new laws, regulations, and guidelines for the prescription of opioid medications
  • Manage treatment for chronic pain
  • Much more

Supporting Materials | Resources & Tools

Project DAWN | Resource Page

Visit the Project DAWN (Deaths Avoided with Naloxone) resource page on the website of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

Recommended Reading

Yngvild Olsen, MD, MPH, & Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD (2014). Confronting the Stigma of Opioid Use Disorder—and Its Treatment. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). April 9, 2014, v311, n14, p1393-1394.


Editor's Note: This story was first published in January 2014. It has been updated to include new information about our Center's initiative to address the heroin and prescription-drug abuse epidemics in Ohio. 


Paul M. Kubek, director of communications, contributed to this story.