Study: Americans becoming more self-destructive with fatalities rising
Researcher calls trends ‘almost nightmarish’
While it’s no surprise that some people drink themselves to death, get hooked on lethal drugs or end their own lives, the rate of such behavior is increasing dramatically, according to a report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust, both policy and advocacy nonprofits.
And while rates of drug abuse and suicide among whites have long outnumbered minorities, the gap is closing fast.
Death rates from alcohol, drugs or suicide grew by 11 percent overall between 2015 and 2016, with drug-related deaths among blacks jumping 39 percent, the report found.
“What we’re seeing with this data are trends that are almost nightmarish,” said Benjamin Miller, a study author and chief strategy officer with the Well Being Trust, which aims to advance mental, social and spiritual health.
Miller said he does not see these numbers tapering off anytime soon. “These trends if anything are only going to increase,” he said. “What are we going to do about that?”
The study only looked at the numbers – not the causes behind these trends.
But a few triggers are obvious, experts said, namely: opioids, which have spread to a national crisis, and the lack of social and economic supports. “People do the type of self-destructive behavior and engage in it to the point of death and despair when their lives are hopeless,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, a professor of law and public health sciences at the University of Virginia Law School.
“When the criminal justice system, the employment system, the economy, the housing system and people’s safety nets are broken, they are in despair,” Matthew said. “Whether you’re black, white or purple, people turn to selfmedicating with drugs.”
Kelly Clark, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, which represents more than 5,000 addiction specialists, said the drugs themselves are a big part of the problem.
Based in Kentucky, she said she saw the opioid epidemic begin in rural Appalachia a decade ago, with mine workers being prescribed opioids so they could work through their pain.
“We see many people who became addicted with opioids or had problems who would not have addictive disease until they were prescribed these medications,” she said.
“People took the medications in order to do the work they needed to do. But our brains were not built for these opioids.”
The report should be a call to action, said Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration, who is now a senior advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit Washington thinktank.
“Perhaps it’s one of these moments when for a variety of reasons people start paying attention to what’s going on,” he said.
With increased focus on mental health in the aftermath of the latest school shooting, the time is right to get Congress and the states to support expanding mental healthcare, Slavitt said. “This is a place we need to invest in.”