As the drug-related death toll rises in the United States, communities are trying to open more treatment beds. But an ongoing labor shortage among drug treatment staff is slowing those efforts.
Each year, roughly one of every four substance-abuse clinicians nationally chooses to leave the job, according to recent research. And that's not just turnover ā leaving one job for another in the same field. As an Institute of Medicine report documented in 2006, there's been a shortage of addiction workers for decades. And the demand is only increasing; the Affordable Care Act and other federal laws have given millions more people insurance to help them pay for those services. If only there were enough counselors to treat them.
Amelie Gooding runs Phoenix House in Keene, New Hampshire, and says she's been short a full-time counselor for a year and half.
[For more of this story, written by Emily Corwin, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...d-by-opioid-epidemic]
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