Commercially insured adolescents with many types of pre-existing mental health conditions and treatments were modestly more likely to receive any opioid and were substantially more likely to subsequently transition to long-term opioid therapy relative to those without, although overall rates of long-term opioid therapy were low. This according to a recent study that examined a cohort of 1,224,520 incident opioid recipients without cancer diagnoses, aged 14 to 18 years (51.1% female), extracted from nationwide commercial health care claims data from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2014. Researchers found:

• Adolescents with anxiety, mood, neurodevelopmental, sleep, and non-opioid substance use disorders and most mental health treatments were significantly more likely to receive any opioid.
• Among the 1,000,453 opioid recipients (81.7%) who had at least 6 months’ follow-up, the cumulative incidence of long-term opioid therapy was 3.0 per 1,000 recipients within 3 years after first opioid receipt.
• All pre-existing mental health conditions and treatments were strongly associated with higher rates of long-term opioid therapy.