“It’s such an overwhelming situation for a parent to be in,” said Tracy Swartley of suburban Portland, Oregon, whose 19-year-old Eagle Scout son survived a fentanyl overdose and was able to start buprenorphine while in a residential treatment program. “You realize the choice you make is going to make a massive impact on the success of your child.”
The survey was done last year, before a new law eliminated the need for doctors to get a special waiver to prescribe it. That change may improve access, said Levounis, who was not involved in the research. Residential care is not the only alternative, he said, and parents should start by getting an evaluation from an addiction specialist.as providing residential care for teens. They ran into wrong numbers, adults-only facilities and a few that didn't answer the phone.
Based on their results, the average parent would have to make nine phone calls to find a facility offering the medicine to a 16-year-old, said study co-author Dr. Caroline King, an emergency medicine resident at Yale University in New Haven.The “secret shopper” strategy may have missed some rehabs that provide the medication, King acknowledged. But researchers also heard misinformation about buprenorphine, said King who posed as a concerned aunt when she made calls.