Prescription drug-related suicide attempts for older women have recently increased. Emergency room reports have gathered alarming data which shows narcotic pain relievers, insomnia, and anxiety drugs accounting for most of suicide attempts of women aged 50 years old and above.

According to Michael Dulle of the Odyssey House, a substance abuse treatment center at Salt Lake City, he has recorded five to eight female patients aged 50 and up in emergency room visits all for suicide attempts caused by drugs such as oxycodone and hydrocodone products.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration confirmed this by tallying a 49% increase in the said drug-induced suicide attempts for older women between the years 2005- 2009.

Among the women involved in such cases, feelings of hopelessness and depression, or having nowhere to go and abandoned by their families are the most common reasons they get into substance abuse. The fact that they have easily addictive prescription drugs within their reach, makes suicide an easy way out of the loneliness and misery that they experience.

When alcohol and prescribed drugs are mixed, they become more dangerous and can even cause death. This is why the federal SAMHSA administrator Pamela S. Hyde sees the abuse of pain relievers by elderly women as a matter that needs to be immediately addressed.

“We are now seeing the result of this public health crisis in our emergency rooms. Emergency rooms should not be the frontline in our efforts to intervene. Friends, family and all members of the community must do everything possible to identify women who may be in crisis and do everything possible to reach out and get them needed help,” Hyde said in a feature on ksl.com.

Most of the women in the mentioned age group are usually prescribed with psychotic drugs and pain relievers. When they feel the medicines working, this is usually the point where they start to abuse it and become addicts.

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