Health Minister releases book on Standard Treatment Guidelines for SUD, Behavioural Addictions

Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan today released e-book on Standard Treatment Guidelines for the Management of Substance Use Disorders and Behavioural Addictions. The e-book aims to tackle substance abuse and behavioral addiction in the country.

The Minister spoke about the harmful association of Substance Use with non-communicable disorders like cardiovascular, cancer, road traffic injury, as well as mental health.  He also expressed his satisfaction that behavioural addictions like gambling, shopping, cyber-relational and cyber-sexual addictions has been included in the standard treatment guidelines.

On the importance of addressing challenges to addiction in the times of COVID-19, Dr Harsh Vardhan cautioned that the World Drug Report 2020 suggests that COVID-19 can have other fallouts just like earlier economic crises have caused.

This include users seeking out cheaper synthetic substances, a shift to more injecting, economic downturn causing the poor and disadvantaged to turn to drug use.

He also elaborated on the emerging evidence that smoking increases risk for COVID-19 as well as worsens the outcome in people who get infected with the virus.