PODCAST:
Dec. 3, 2025 ~ Dr. Tiffany Prout, a senior staff physician in psychiatry and addiction medicine at Henry Ford Health, joins Marie Osborne to discuss addiction in seniors and the subtle signs you shouldn’t ignore.
About one in 11 adults aged 60 and over had a substance abuse disorder in 2022, the last time this survey was conducted, with some people developing dependence late in life after being prescribed addictive medications. “The number of prescriptions rises as we age, and our current older population, the baby boomer generation, tended to grow up at a time when if you felt pain, anxiety, or stress, it wasn’t that people talked about their feelings, they took a pill for it,” Dr. Tiffany Prout, a senior staff physician in psychiatry and addiction medicine at Henry Ford Health, told WJR. “As they age and as those stresses pile up, as chronic pain piles up, they’re more likely to go to their doctor and get a prescription, which increases the likelihood that they may get addicted to these prescribed medications.”
