Abstract
Dear Editor:
We request your attention for the use of terminology related to dependence and dependence-producing medicines. There is evidence that choice of language can impede access to medicines both for the treatment of pain and opioid dependence.
We are six medical organizations in the field of pain medicine, palliative care, treatment of substance use disorder, and policy on psychoactive substances, most of them international organizations. We request the Journal of Palliative Medicine to use always neutral, precise, and respectful language.
Our organizations called on medical journals to eliminate all imprecise, biased terminology, and terminology not respectful toward patients on the British Medical Journal website. 1 Further to this official call, presidents and board members of our organizations and an international expert on terminology published a comprehensive article in Public Health that helps to bring the recommendations of this call into practice. 2
Imprecise, biased terminology and terminology not respectful toward patients may result in misunderstanding of the nature of pain treatment and the management of substance use disorder.
In turn, politicians and administrators may establish irrational public health policies, and patients may decide not to take their medicines. The two publications already mentioned provide examples of terms that are not neutral, precise, or respectful, together with further explanation and suggestions for alternatives.
We request that the Journal of Palliative Medicine implements policies that require the use of neutral, precise, and respectful terminology for all articles accepted for publication.
Footnotes
Author Disclosure Statement
No external funding was provided for this article. W.S. provides consulting services as an independent consultant on regulation of and policies related to psychoactive substances. Examples of these include conducting workshops on availability of pain management, providing an overview of importation and exportation rules, providing information on controlled substance policies, the review of cannabis, and the application of the International Nonproprietary Name. This has included work for the World Health Organization, Pinney Associates, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Grünenthal, Mundipharma, and DrugScience. He is a member of the board of International Doctors for Healthier Drug Policies. O.S. is president of the CoRoMA (Collège romand de médecine de l'addiction) and a board member for the Swiss Society of Addiction Medicine (SSAM): both organizations are funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. I.M. served as a board member for Indivior, Molteni, Mundipharma, D&A Pharma, Lundbeck, and CT sanremo. L.R. serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care and as president of the German Association of Palliative Medicine. C.W. is president of the European Pain Federation, EFIC. Now retired from clinical practice, he does some consultancy and speaker work for Grunenthal, GSK, Indivior. None of these impinge on the submission in any way. He is a member of the EFIC task force on cancer pain. R.H. is president of the Swiss Society of Addiction Medicine (SSAM), which is partly sponsored by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), member of the Swiss Task Force for Cannabinoids in Medicine (SACM) and the expert committee for the Limited Medical Use of Prohibited Narcotics (BmAB/AmIS). In the past, he was independent expert for Indivior, Mundipharma, Lundbeck, and Opopharma, but has no actual contract. After his retirement from the University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Bern, he works in private practice. J.K. is a former president of the American Psychological Association, Society of Addiction Psychology and has received funding from the United States National Institutes of Health to conduct research. None of these are presumed to present a conflict of interest regarding the current article.