‘Deaths of despair’ rising

Suicide, alcohol, drug fatalities up 50 percent nationwide over 11 years

Deaths from suicide, alcohol and drugs jumped by 50 percent nationwide over 11 years and went up in every state, including Connecticut.

Labled “deaths of despair,” the demise data were among several upsetting findings from the Commonwealth Fund’s 2018 Scorecard on State Health System Performance.

The fund — a private foundation that supports independent research and grants aimed at improving health care — used recently available data to assess every state and Washington, D.C., on more than 40 measures of health care access, quality, efficiency, health outcomes and disparities.

Connecticut did fairly well, and was the ninth best state for health care access and quality overall.

But the state has also declined in the past few years in many areas, including the rate of deaths from suicide, alcohol and drugs. In 2016, the state’s death rate from these causes was 45.3 percent. Just three years earlier, in 2013, the death rate was 32 percent.

Experts said bumps like these are likely due to the nationwide opioid epidemic —

which doesn’t surprise Michael Werdmann, emergency physician at Bridgeport Hospital.

The bump “most likely reflects the increase in drug abuse,” particularly when it comes to opioids, Werdmann said. In 2017, accidental drug overdose deaths topped 1,000 for the first time in at least five years, and a large portion of those involved heroin, fentanyl or prescription opioids.

Nationwide, the rate of suicide, alcohol and drug deaths went up 50 percent between 2005 and 2016. Between 2013 and 2016 — the period studied in the scorecard — the average rate went from 32 percent to 43.2.

Opioid abuse is a growing crisis and a uniquely American problem, said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund. For instance, he said, the European Union, which has a population comparable to that of the United States, doesn’t have nearly as big a problem.

“Its opioid overdose is about one-sixth to onetenth of that in the United States,” he said.

It doesn’t seem to be an economic problem, Blumenthal said, as the EU’s economy is, in many cases, worse than that of the U.S. It’s possible that America’s issues with opioids have to do with prescribing rates or another problem, Blumenthal said.

But Werdmann said at least part of the overdose death data has to do with the kind of drugs people are using. He said many of the overdoses he’s aware of involve someone who has used heroin for a while, then gets a dose that’s laced with fentanyl, a much stronger drug. Indeed, fentanyl was involved in 677 deaths in Connecticut last year.

Werdmann also took issue with alcohol, drug and suicide deaths all being put under the same category, and felt the term “deaths of despair” was, to some degree, a misnomer.

“I guess some people would call drug abuse despair, but I’m not sure I agree with lumping all these (deaths) together,” Werdmann said.

The Commonwealth scorecard also found that premature deaths from treatable medical conditions increased nationally and in two thirds of states between 2012-13 and 201415. In Connecticut, there was no real change.

However, there was good news both nationwide and in Connecticut. Between 2013 and 2016, the adult uninsured rate declined by at least 5 percentage points in 47 states — including Connecticut, where 13 percent of residents were uninsured in 2013 compared with 7 percent in 2016.

Connecticut also had the lowest rate of adults who hadn’t visited a dentist in the past year and the lowest rate of adults who hadn’t had all their age and gender-appropriate cancer screenings.