A recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found emergency department patients who survive an opioid overdose are 100 times more likely to die of an unintentional overdose and 18 times more likely to die of suicide within a year than patients who visit the emergency department for other reasons. The study also found that patients who survive an overdose of sedative or hypnotic drugs such as barbiturates or benzodiazepines are nearly 25 times more likely to die of unintentional overdose and nine times more likely to die of suicide within a year compared with their peers in the general population.

Read more on the study: https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.pn.2020.8a7