Please discuss the consequence of the potential anti-psychotic qualities of opiates

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Recently, recently, 23 psychotic heroin-dependent patients, at their first agonist opioid treatment, were compared with 209 nonpsychotic individuals. Findings showed that psychotic heroin-dependent clients presented for agonist opioid treatment demonstrating more severe psychopathology but a shorter, less severe addiction history than the nonpsychotic comparison group. Maremmani et al. (2012) reasoned that since the psychotic clients requested agonist opioid treatment earlier, and with a less severe addiction history, these clients primarily benefited from an opioid medication alleviating their psychiatric symptoms and not necessarily their heroin addiction. This finding supports earlier research regarding how methadone maintenance helps prevent psychotic relapses in clients with a history of psychotic episodes. Research involving heroin addicts admitted for inpatient treatment of manic and/or acute psychotic episodes found that regardless of the reasons for hospitalization, those receiving increasing dosages of methadone were found to be less in need of antimanic and antipsychotic drugs at discharge (Pacini & Maremmani, 2005). Interestingly, the proposed antipsychotic effects of methadone may make it challenging to effectively diagnose co-occurring disorders which are non-substance-related, such as schizophrenia. It may also dampen the psychotic features in some other disorders that commonly co-occur with SUD, such as severe major depressive disorder with a psychotic feature.