Deaths of despair rise but don’t have to
The predictability of Columbus exceeding its annual homicide record this year doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Nor should we abide the steadily rising numbers of fatal drug overdoses and suicides.
How closely these deaths – all preventable – are related to the relentless strain of 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic is debatable.
What is not open to argument is that too many people are dying needlessly and these trends must not be allowed to continue unabated.
How appropriate that the new homicide record reached on Friday the 13th was a dozen dozen, also known as a gross. It is beyond gross that more people have now died of homicide in Columbus than in any previous year. The last record, set in 2017, was 143, and that has been exceeded with nearly seven full weeks remaining to push the toll even higher.
While Columbus police were facing the new homicide count set on Nov. 13, Franklin County Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz reported the next day that five people died of drug overdoses in the previous 24 hours.
That is a lower number than on other weekends this year. The first weekend in May, Ortiz reported 28 drug fatalities – a month that ended with more than 530 Ohioans dying from drug overdoses. Ortiz reported 32 drug ODS in Franklin County over 24 hours of a mid-september weekend.
Suicides already were rising across the country before the pandemic was predicted to exacerbate that tragedy considerably. A study released in July found 37 of Ohio’s 88 counties had suicide rates higher than the national average of 14 per 100,000 people for the decade before 2018. Ortiz reported last month that suicide deaths in the first six months of 2020 were up about 4% from the same period in 2019, at 75 compared to 72.
To reiterate: These are all preventable deaths, and far too many of them could also be considered deaths of despair.
So, what to do about it? As we have previously stated, The Dispatch endorses steps being taken locally to reduce violence, including new city of Columbus initiatives and grants.
Work to recognize and combat racism, such as that being led by Franklin County commissioners, also is a move in the right direction. In a 2017 study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that homicide was a leading cause of death for women, with Black women dying at significantly higher rates than other women.
According to an August report from Harm Reduction Ohio, “For the first time since the 1980s, Ohio’s Black population had a higher overdose death rate in 2019 than for our state’s white population. This trend has continued in the first half of 2020.” And a year ago, the Ohio Department of Health reported that suicide deaths by all Ohioans rose 45% from 2007 to 2018 but increased 54% among Black males.
In this pandemic-restricted world, human connections – which can help to ease the tensions, frustrations and despair too often linked to killings, overdoses and suicides – are frayed and in incredibly short supply.
It must, therefore, become the goal of each of us to find ways to reach out to others in need, however that can be accomplished without employing the healing touch of hugs or holding the hand of someone who just needs a friend. Maybe a well-timed and sincere text, email or call can be the difference in helping another human being live to see a new day.