Pickens County testing Provigil to ease meth craving
Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County is expanding to a building across the street from its office on Main Street in Pickens.
The move comes as the agency begins work on a two-year clinical trial on the effectiveness of a drug – now used for patients with sleep disorders – on cravings and cognitive functioning for people who report methamphetamine use.
Elizabeth Chapman, director of research for Behavioral Health Services, said the agency’s research division will move into the new building with a grand opening scheduled for May 1.
Though it’s primarily a counseling service, Behavioral Health Services has been involved in research since 2000, Chapman said.She said her department has been working with the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston in providing clients for clinical trials on nicotine, opiate and alcohol addiction and is currently seeking participants for the two-year study on the effectiveness of the drug Provigil in methamphetamine addiction.
Chapman said the only treatment now available for methamphetamine problems is counseling and therapy. Margaret Garrett, research liaison for Pickens Behavioral Health Services, said for that reason the study is important.
“The problem of methamphetamine is particularly acute in rural and impoverished populations, which have borne the brunt of the methamphetamine epidemic,” she said in an email. “In our agency alone in 2008, we saw 15 times the number of people presenting with methamphetamine related problems than in 2000.”
In Pickens County as a whole in 2008, the number of people seeking treatment for methamphetamine use has almost quadrupled since 2003, according to statistics from the Department of Alcohol and Other Drugs of Abuse.
The Pickens office is currently circulating fliers in the county, seeking 60 people age 18 or older who are using or have used methamphetamine to participate in the research study.
Chapman said those selected for the study, receive medication, psychiatric and medical evaluations at no cost, and the information gathered is confidential.
“We don’t notify law enforcement,” she said.
Compensation is also available to all participants, Chapman said.
For more information call 898-2938.
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