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Addiction's Impact on a SWFL Family

Mangionekd
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A therapist conducts a group intervention

The rise in opioid-related deaths in recent years has prompted Gov. Rick Scott and President Donald Trump to declare state and nationalemergencies.

According to Lee Health, opioid overdoses have increased by 800 percent in Lee County over the past four years. In the most recent data available, more than 5,700 people died from overdoses in the state of Florida in 2016.

 

Gulf Coast Live is going to explore an aspect of the crisis that might go overlooked: how addiction affects the families of addicts.

 

Dan Simmons is a licensed clinical social worker with Hazelden Betty Ford in Naples. He currently leads the Caring Families Group, which takes place at Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida. It’s a free program open to anyone who has questions about the disease of chemical dependency, whether they have someone in treatment or not. Simmons joins Gulf Coast Live with his more than 30 years of experience in the field of chemical dependency treatment.

 

Mr. and Mrs. B also join the show. They have been participating in the Caring Families Group because of their grown son’s addiction and are going to remain anonymous sharing their story.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.