‘Deaths of despair’: Report finds steep increase in suicide, drug and alcohol morbidity
By Forum News Service
May 2, 2018
The rate of “deaths of despair” has risen dramatically over the past decade in the United States, says an annual report released today.
Why that’s the case is a vexing question.
“Alcohol (abuse) is going up, suicide is going up, drug overdose is going up,” said Jon Roesler, epidemiological supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Health. “We’re changing as a society. Something is going on, which is bigger than I can wrap my head around.”
Nationally, the combined death rate from suicide, alcohol, opioids and other drugs — the so-called “deaths of despair” — increased by 50 percent from 2005 to 2016, according to the 2018 state health care scorecard released by The Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that specializes in health policy.
The report, in its 10th year, compares the performance of the states on a wide variety of health-related statistics, with both Minnesota and Wisconsin ranking in the top 10. Minnesota ranked third for the second year in a row. Wisconsin ranked eighth among the states, moving up four places from 2017.
It calls attention to substantial differences in health performance related to geography, with the top performers — Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont and Utah as well as Minnesota — faring about twice as well, overall, as the lowest-ranked states of West Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
But despair seems to know no geography. Injury mortality data from the Minnesota Department of Health from 2000-16 show deaths from motor vehicle crashes declining and from homicide staying about the same. But the numbers for suicide, alcohol and drug overdose deaths all rose sharply. That includes a 31 percent increase in the rate of alcohol-related deaths.
The term “deaths of despair” was coined by Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in a 2015 paper. In an update for the Brookings Institution last March, Case and Deaton made the case that increases in deaths of despair are accompanied by deteriorating economic and social well-being.
Roesler pointed out that the period of time in which the surge of suicide, alcohol and drug deaths was reported included the Great Recession from 2007-09. Alcohol-related deaths, which had been relatively flat until then, rose just as much as drug overdose deaths, he said.
But during the economic expansion since then, the deaths of despair numbers only have continued to rise, he said.
That might suggest that there’s more to despair than economic factors, Roesler said. He pointed to a study released on Monday by the insurer Cigna finding that nearly half of Americans sometimes or always feel alone or left out.
“Whatever this despair is, what we’re despairing of, it’s there,” Roesler said. “It’s happening.”