Summary:
The article titled, “Worldwide Prevalence and Trends in Unintentional Drug Overdose: A Systematic Review of the Literature” is a compilation of data carefully selected from peer-reviewed articles with the purpose of recording the worldwide epidemic of unintentional drug overdoses in recent decades. These studies were essentially chosen based on the relevance of their themes regarding accidental drug overdose. The article concludes with a discussion stating that while existing studies give many key solutions to aid in reducing unintentional drug overdoses, more research is still needed to comprehend the discrete causes which lead an individual overdose accidentally.
Paraphrase:
The article begins by outlining its primary objective along with the four main points that would be used as a criterion in selecting relevant articles for this methodical overview on unintentional drug overdoses. According to the authors, “The aim of this study was to systematically summarize the peer-reviewed literature to document the global epidemiological profile of unintentional drug overdoses, and the prevalence, time trends, mortality rates, and correlates of drug overdoses from 1980 until 2013” (Martins et al. 1). The authors selected the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database to search for significant articles and used Medical Subject Headings or MeSH terms which are specialized terms used as keywords to aid in refining the search. However, because of the vastness of the topic, the authors restricted the search using only articles written in English and omitted articles that had included children, only focusing the study on adults.
As a result from this search, they were able to find 46 studies that reported on prevalence of overdoses, 34 studies that reported on trends overdosing and changes over time, 53 studies that focused on mortality rates from overdosing, and a few studies that reported on the correlates of overdose. The results were organized in spreadsheets with the intention of being easily compared and some of the observed figures were found to be of great significance. These results suggest that prescription opioids, cocaine, and heroin are the drugs that are most frequently associated with unintentional overdoes. The article also states that while deaths from illegal drug use has decreased, there has been a substantial increase of deaths from prescribed drugs. Additionally, it was found that unintentional drug overdose is not an issue that is limited to urban areas as rural areas have seen a rise in overdoses in recent years.
The end of the article contains a brief discussion that reflects on the findings generated from the selected peer-reviewed articles. It is here where the authors point out several limitations from their study. They note that “…most studies did not collect information on the sources of drug used, which can provide insights into the ways individuals learn about and acquire drugs, and can thus inform prevention opportunities” (Martins et al. 17). Furthermore, they state that “…if we are to identify potential avenues to prevent drug overdose, more concerted investment needs to be made…” (Martins et al 17). From the authors’ arguments, it is apparent that despite the existing collected material, investing in more research is still essential for better comprehension on the topic of unintentional drug overdose. Finally, the authors conclude by encouraging other nations to collect more data in a systematic manner on the worldwide epidemic of unintentional drug overdoses.
This is just a draft, but this particular essay proved very difficult for me to work on given the broadness and complexity of the subject. It uses a lot of professional jargon and statistics that the average person probably wouldn’t understand.