Responding to the Youth Fentanyl Crisis: Practical Guidance for Child Psychiatrists.

Deaths due to unintentional opioid overdose among youth living in the United States have risen at an extraordinary rate over the past 4 years.1 After remaining stable over the preceding decade, the rate of drug overdose deaths increased more than 2.3-fold from 2019 to 2021 to a record high of 5.49 deaths per 100,000 youth.1 This rise in fatal overdoses is largely due to increased prevalence of illicitly manufactured fentanyl in the drug supply. In 2021, fentanyl was identified in 77.1% of overdose deaths among US adolescents, a 23.5-fold increase from 2010, compared to 13.3% for benzodiazepines, 5.8% for prescription opioids, and 2.3% for heroin.1 Compared to other phases of the opioid crisis, fentanyl-related overdoses are characterized by extraordinarily broad geographic and sociodemographic reach.