The impact of childhood trauma and mental disorders among people with opioid dependence

Tom Santo Jr presented at the NDARC Webinar Series on Thursday, 16 February 2023.

How do childhood trauma and mental disorders affect health, treatment and social outcomes among people with opioid dependence?

Research has found that people who experience childhood trauma and mental disorders increase the risk of opioid dependence. However, little research has examined the impact of childhood trauma and mental disorders among people with opioid dependence. This webinar examines the health, treatment and social outcomes among people with opioid dependence.

Our speaker, Tom Santo Jr provides an overview of the evidence on childhood trauma and mental disorders among people with opioid dependence, using evidence from reviews on childhood trauma and mental disorder prevalence from his PhD thesis and describe how participant survey responses were analysed with more than one decade of data health, treatment and social databases. Finally, key results are summarised, and future directions suggested for the research of childhood trauma and mental disorders among people with opioid dependence.

About the speaker

Tom Santo Jr is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), UNSW Sydney. His research interests include the harms, risk factors, and treatment outcomes related to opioid dependence. He completed his PhD examining childhood trauma and mental disorders among people with opioid dependence in 2022. He has led multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses examining the prevalence of risk factors and treatment outcomes among people with opioid dependence.