‘Doctors need to take stock of these alarming figures’
WA psychiatrist Associate Professor Mathew Coleman is calling for specialist addiction services as the state takes top spot for heroin-related deaths
A prominent psychiatrist has called for more specialist help to support WA doctors in containing the state’s rising death toll from drug overdoses — now the worst in the country.
Latest figures show regional and rural WA has the highest rate of unintentional drug-induced deaths (9.3 per 100,000 people) in Australia, followed by the Perth metropolitan area.
It has also overtaken Victoria to record the highest rate of heroin-related deaths per capita, according to the Penington Institute’s Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2020 released in September.
Nationally, there were 7.3 unintentional overdose deaths per 100,000 people in rural and regional Australia, and 5.8 per 100,000 in the capital cities, the report showed.
