Double jeopardy: a review of weight gain and weight management strategies for psychotropic medication prescribing during methadone maintenance treatment

AbstractMethadone maintenance treatment (MMT) is an important treatment tool for the opioid epidemic. One challenge is that many persons who present for MMT also have co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Individually, both methadone and psychiatric medications carry risk of weight gain. Therefore, concurrent prescribing of methadone and psychiatric medications places dual diagnosis patients at even greater risk. As a parallel obesity epidemic grows, results from clinical trials assessing weight gain and weight management strategies among MMT and psychiatric patients can both inform and guide clinical practice. This study reviews findings from a literature search for recent clinical trials that focused on weight gain and weight management strategies during MMT with concurrent psychotropic medication use. While several studies have documented weight gain during MMT and psychotropic medication treatment, this study failed to identify recent work that explored concurrent prescribing. Most weight management str...