Dr. Joe Mathias, the director of outpatient addiction services at Emory Healthcare, understands the layered intersection of substance use disorder and mental health in adolescents. He says it’s often said that “the opposite of addiction is connection.”
Mathias, an addiction psychiatrist and an associate medical education director for the Addiction Alliance of Georgia, works directly with youth and their parents to figure out the best treatment plan.
Georgia Department of Health data from October 2025 shows an almost 2%, year-to-year increase in the number of kids between the ages of 10-14 being taken to the emergency room for drug overdoses.
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