Psychoactive Substances

Report a reaction to a Psychoactive Substance

Although the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring has traditionally monitored the use of products used in a therapeutic context, the Psychoactive Substances Team at the Ministry of Health has requested CARM to function as a focal point for reporting adverse events that occur in the context of the use of psychoactive substances. Read more…Over the years CARM has had some limited experience through receiving occasional diverse reports for other recreational stimulant products for which as far as possible we have evaluated in a manner similar to our assessments for therapeutic medicines and vaccines. For each report received we convert the narrative of the adverse event into distinct standardised adverse reaction terms, determine their severity and identify as far as possible the relevant agent involved in the same uniform approach for therapeutic product causality assessment used globally by national monitoring centres such as CARM. The result of this process for each report is recorded in our database from which a regular report is provided to the Psychoactive Substances Team at the Ministry of Health. Reports take the form of summary statistics or line listings of the key features and substance involved from each individual report (anonymised for both patient and reporter). These findings are used by the Ministry of Health as part of their ongoing safety review of products that are under review in terms of the Psychoactive Substances Act.

Since the safety review at the Ministry of Health is focused on a particular licence, the brand name of the product is therefore critical in order that a decision around the safety of a particular product can be completed. We therefore encourage you to as best you can attempt to identify the particular product brand involved. It is also helpful to the assessment process to know as much about the patient’s comorbid medical or psychiatric history and medications as possible to assist in identifying those adverse events that are clearly new for the user and those that represent a potential worsening of an existing condition or exacerbation of previously stable state. Providing some history of insight into the user’s duration and/or pattern of psychoactive substance use will be additionally helpful.