Public health challenges affect all

Even in an age when years seem to grow increasingly more eventful, public health issues still find a way to charge to the forefront of public opinion.

That’s no surprise, given that their effect is felt far and wide, and even universally at times.

It’s hard to ignore, for example, that misuse of the class of drugs known as opioids has, so far, killed an astoundingly high number of 300,000 people since 2000. The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention writes about opioids on this page today, and addresses the urgent need to bring comprehensive tactics into play to attack a major public health crisis with roots in most any community imaginable. It’s a problem that knows no geographic or demographic boundary.

Suicide is another public health issue that has captured more Americans’ attention of late, due in part to recent deaths of high-profile celebrities by their own hand. The suicides of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion icon Kate Spade shocked many and showed that the phenomenon also crosses boundaries of wealth, class and gender.

An Atlanta psychologist examines suicide and related mental health issues triggered by traumatic stress on today’s page. She offers insights into the causative factors of such toxic stressors, the toll they exact on bodies and minds and explores strategies for treatment.

Few people in America, or even the world, would likely doubt that we humans are now enduring a particularly stressful time in our collective existence. Recognizing that such an environment is a life input that can itself help damage mental and/or physical health can be a first step toward more effectively managing and treating its ill effects, we believe.

DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES Notes, photographs and flowers are left in memory of Anthony Bourdain at the closed location of Brasserie Les Halles in New York, where Bourdain used to work as the executive chef. Bourdain, a writer, chef and television personality, was found dead in...