Depression Moderates the Relationship Between Pain and the Nonmedical Use of Opioid Medication Among Adult Outpatients

Abstract

Background: The nonmedical use of prescription medication among US adults is a growing public health problem. Healthcare providers should proactively address this problem in outpatient encounters.

Objective: We sought to understand the interactive effects among prescription drugs, pain, and psychiatric symptoms among adult outpatients to build an empirical foundation for comprehensive screening.

Methods: We screened 625 adult neurosurgery and orthopedic patients at a suburban satellite clinic of an urban academic medical center. A convenience sample was screened for psychiatric and substance use disorder symptoms using the American Psychiatric Association's recommended screening protocol. We tested whether psychiatric symptoms moderated the relationship between pain level and nonmedical use of prescription medicine.

Results: Patients reported average levels of depression, anxiety, and pain symptoms, within 1 standard deviation of the screeners' normative data. However, patients reported highly elevated levels of nonmedical use of opioids and benzodiazapines compared with national data. Controlling for age, sex, and race, pain level predicted nonprescription use of opioid and benzodiazapine medications. Patients with high levels of depression and pain were more likely to engage in the unprescribed use of opioids. Likewise, patients with reduced levels of depression and pain were protected against the unprescribed use of opioids.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of examining unprescribed medication use even with patients at moderate levels of psychiatric symptoms and pain.