Posted on: 19 August 2022
Dr Jeffrey Fehler, Clinical Director in CNWL’s Addictions directorate recently joined a webinar as a panellist focusing on recent trends in the use of benzodiazepine. This involved the harms, challenges in providing effective management and what represents best practice. Benzodiazepines are sedative and hypnotic medications that help people manage anxiety and insomnia, although they often pose long term difficulties as they may result in addiction (dependence).
The webinar was hosted by Collective Voice, a national alliance of drug and alcohol treatment charities and was set up in response to the rise of benzodiazepine related deaths in in recent years. Latest data reveals that deaths involving benzodiazepines increased by almost a third in England & Wales since 2019. Speakers included Steve Taylor, Programme Manager for Alcohol & Drugs Treatment and Recovery at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID, previously known as Public Health England) and Dr Roya Vaziri, Executive Medical Director at Humankind charity.
Dr Fehler highlighted to the audience that CNWL has significant experience of the complex nature of benzodiazepine use - from prescribed drugs to newer illicit ‘benzos’. The webinar explored how services like ours (in Addictions but also in our Mental Health and Health and Justice services) are tackling these challenges. Dr Fehler also informed the audience of the outcome of a scoping exercise that has been completed by the Addictions directorate at CNWL, which aimed to better understand the extent of the problem in our services, current practice relating to management and factors that inform this.
The audience had an opportunity to ask the panellists questions, focusing on a variety of topics including screening for newer ‘benzos’, the evidence base for substitute prescribing, recovery versus harm minimisation and various challenging clinical scenarios.
After the event, Dr Fehler reflected on how much he enjoyed having the opportunity to start this conversation with colleagues.
He said, “Benzodiazepine use presents significant challenges in the clinical setting. In view of the lack of research, services address dependence very differently. We know from our own data that the problem is increasing and national data clearly demonstrates that deaths caused by benzodiazepine overdoses are rising. The advent of newer (and often potent) benzodiazepine analogues compounds this problem. At CNWL we are engaging our services (both within and outside of Addictions) to find ways to most effectively manage this. Having a conversation about this both internally and with a wider audience with an interest in this topic seems to be a very good place to start!’’