Katie's Case Summary

Katie is a 35-year-old professional woman, wife and mother of two small children. Katie was first introduced to pain medications after a car accident left her with an injured lower back. The pain medications she took, began a neurobiological response in Katie’s brain that she had no control over. Narcotics take aim at the brains reward system, saturating it with dopamine, giving the user a feeling of pleasure (“Drug Abuse, Addiction, and the Brain,” n.d. p. 2). Katie’s brain began to acclimate to the dopamine surges. Which in turn, the brain generates less dopamine and or decreases the dopamine receptors. This made Katie use more and more drugs, to continually try and attain the dopamine high (“Drug Abuse, Addiction, and the Brain,” n.d. p. 2) Brain imaging studies show that areas of the brain that regulate judgement, behavior control, learning and memory are affected by drug addiction. These changes create the abuser to seek out and take drugs compulsively (“Drug Abuse, Addiction, and the Brain,” n.d. p.1). This began Katie’s addiction to prescription pain medications.
Using two of the Psychological models, cognitive-behavioral models and the learning model may help explain the etiology of her addiction. Cognitive
8). It has been shown that prescription opioid abuse is creating an escalating burden on society (Birnbaum, White, Schiller, Waldman, Cleveland & Roland, 2011, p. 662). Opiate addiction as a whole, produces increased health care costs. Costs related to prevention, treatments, and research. There are increased costs of the criminal justice system, correctional facilities and property lost due to crime. Opiate addiction is known to decrease workplace productivity. Not only are there lost wages and excess absenteeism at work, there is also excess disability costs (Birnbaum, et al., 2011, p.