Benzodiazepines: Class of drug used mainly as tranquilizers to control symptoms of anxiety. Like opioids, benzodiazepines depress breathing. Taking opioids and benzodiazepines together can increase the risk for overdose.
Buprenorphine: A medication used to treat pain and opioid dependence.
Evidence-Based Practice: An approach that uses a combination of current research findings, professional expertise, and patients’ views to offer the best health services.
Fentanyl: A powerful synthetic opioid pain reliever like morphine but stronger than both morphine and heroin. Sometimes mixed with street heroin or cocaine to increase euphoric effects, it is known as a possible cause for the increase in accidental overdose deaths.
Historical Trauma: Historical trauma is the result of hundreds of years of oppression, colonization, and systemic racism that continues to impact American Indian and Alaska Native lives today. It is the total emotional and psychological wounds over the lifespan and across generations that comes from large-scale group trauma. Unresolved grief is part of historical trauma and is defined by the length of the grieving and its interference with a person’s grief symptoms in their everyday life. Symptoms of unresolved grief can range in intensity and can contribute to high rates of suicide, homicide, domestic violence, sexual abuse, child abuse, substance abuse and addiction, as well as other social problems among American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Intergenerational Trauma: Intergenerational trauma is considered as the transmission of historical oppression and its negative consequences across generations.
Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT): Integrates medications (e.g., methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone) with behavioral therapies and medications to treat substance use disorders.
Methadone: An opioid pain medication that is used for maintenance therapy in people with opioid dependence
Naloxone: Medication (opioid antagonist) administered to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. Naloxone is commonly sold under the brand name Narcan®. It is available through injectors, auto-injectors, and nasal sprays.
Opioids: Class of drugs that includes heroin and prescription pain relievers. Opioids are often prescribed after surgery or injury, or to relieve cancer pain. Common types of opioids include oxycodone (OxyContin®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®), morphine, fentanyl, and methadone.
Practice-Based Evidence: Practice-based evidence represents practices that come from the local community.
Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs): Electronic databases that track and house data on prescriptions and dispensations of controlled substances with the purpose of preventing individuals from receiving medically unnecessary prescriptions that may be abused or cause overdoses.
Substance use: Use of alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription/over-the-counter drugs and any other psychoactive agents. A person who uses substances might be at risk for substance misuse or harmful consequences.
Substance Use Disorder (SUD) / Opioid Use Disorder (OUD): An SUD involves a pattern of symptoms caused by using a substance or substances that an individual continues taking despite its negative effects related to impaired control, physical dependence, social problems, and risky use. Likewise, an OUD involves patterns of negative symptoms caused by opioid use.
Person with an SUD/OUD: A person experiencing negative effects from their substance use. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) considers whether a person meets criteria for a SUD/OUD on an at risk-to-severe spectrum. We use person-first language to reduce stigma and to denote that a person with a substance use disorder is not defined solely by their use or diagnosis.
Wellbriety: A term that means to achieve sobriety and abstinence, to be substance use free, achieved by healing and finding balance (mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally). The mission of the Wellbriety movement is to “Disseminate culturally based principles, values, and teachings to support healthy community development and servant leadership, and to support healing from alcohol, substance abuse, co-occurring disorders, and intergenerational trauma.”