Drug addiction is a major global public health issue. South Korea has also witnessed the continuous growth of drug offenders, who amounted to 16,044 in 2019 and had a high re-use rate of 48%. Drugs cause their users to develop physical and mental dependence on them, which explains why drug users develop tolerance easily. When drug administration is suspended, users experience withdrawal symptoms, which makes it difficult to quit drugs. This study set out to investigate how many drug users visited emergency rooms in hospital, where it is easy to encounter drug users, based on the problematic consciousness of drug addiction and examine the characteristics and problems of patients to understand their reality. The study also aimed to examine overseas cases about the reporting duty of healthcare professionals for illegal drug users and review a need for their active interventions to improve the treatment of patients.
For this purpose, the investigator collected data from the Seoul Addiction Analysis Office from February, 2019 to June, 2020. The data covered drug addiction patients that visited emergency rooms in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon. The data examined the patients'' age, gender, change of consciousness at the emergency room, mental disease, suicidal attempt, and mixed use of drugs to analyze the characteristics of the patients.
The findings were as follows: first, 50.8% of drug addiction patients that visited the emergency room used drugs, all of which were psychotropic drugs except for one case. Of them, methamphetamine, an illegal drug, ranked sixth place.
Secondly, methamphetamine patients accounted for 9% of all patients.
Finally, the study examined the connections among the change of consciousness, mental disease, and mixed use of drugs in psychotropic drug users and methamphetamine users.
Based on these findings, the study raised a need to realize the severity of drug patients visiting the emergency room and make it mandatory for such patients to receive proper treatment and rehabilitation through the active intervention of healthcare professionals for illegal drug users. In conclusion, the study made practical proposals for healthcare professional''s report and intervention for illegal drug users.