Drug treatment program admissions declined by 24% in 2020 due to the pandemic as overdose deaths have surged, a new study found.
The study, conducted by the RAND Corporation and released Thursday, found that admission cuts were the largest among people of color. The findings come as Congress is exploring ways to increase access to behavioral health and substance use disorder treatments and therapy.
“These declines in the number of Americans receiving treatment as especially noteworthy given the evidence of increases in substance use disorder and overdose death rates during the same time period,” said study author Jonathan Cantor in a statement.
RAND looked at national substance use disorder treatment admissions from 2017 through 2019 and compared those figures to the first year of the pandemic 2020. It found that admissions were relatively stable in the years before the pandemic. However, in 2020, treatment admissions declined from 66 per 10,000 in 2019 to 50 per 100,000.
“The decline was larger for men (88 per 10,000 to 67 per 10,000) as compared to women (45 per 10,000 to 35 per 10,000),” RAND said in a release.
The findings come as the U.S. has grappled with a surge in overdose deaths in recent years. In 2020, at least 93,000 people died from a drug overdose, a nearly 30% increase compared to 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study didn’t peg exactly why treatments declined so much in 2020. It could be a combination of bans on elective procedures instituted in hospitals to also shelter-in-place policies at the onset of the pandemic in March and April.
What else was particularly worrying to researchers was the impact of admission declines among racial and ethnic groups. It found that while all groups suffered a decline, it was highest among Native Americans, which went from 145 people per 10,000 in treatment in 2019 to 83 per 10,000. African Americans were the second highest group, declining from 86 per 10,000 to 63, and Hispanics with 55 per 10,000 in 2019 to 41 per 10,000 the next year.
It also found that the area with the highest decline in admissions was New Mexico, with a 61% decline from 2019 through 2020. Washington (45%) and Nevada (42%) followed with the second and third largest declines.
RAND found that only three states—Mississippi, Louisiana and Rhode Island—had an increase in treatment admissions for 2020.
The findings come as Congress and the Biden administration are trying to find ways to increase access to substance abuse disorder treatments and address a shortage of medical practitioners to help ease the crisis. The Department of Health and Human Services released a road map Friday outlining strategies for integrating substance abuse care and mental health into larger systems.