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U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further
- harveywi 8y agoIf you think it's bad now, wait until the last "A Song of Ice and Fire" book comes out. Life expectancy will plummet as people discover they have literally nothing to live for anymore.
- pc86 8y agoThat's not how life expectancy works. That's not how books work either, actually.
- tashoecraft 8y agoHis comment is silly, but if enough people did kill themselves after the book came out then it could affect life expectancy.
- xxs 8y agoI guess that was supposed to be a joke as many expect no more books (of the series) are to be published
- AlexandrB 8y ago> That's not how life expectancy works. Well, actually, the linked article highlighted an increase in suicides as a factor in the declining life expectancy.
- StevePerkins 8y agoreddit.com
- ArrayList 8y agoHahahahaha. That's amazing.
- rolal 8y agoIf you can't read the original article: https://outline.com/nzuAst https://outline.com/nzuAst
- exprA 8y agoYou can also prefix any WSJ links (among others) with “facebook.com/l.php?u=” to receive content reserved for users arriving from Facebook; that is, if you don't mind Facebook tracking.
- budu3 8y agoCan someone explain the link of the lowered life expectancy to flu and pneumonia? I thought that these were deceases that were only fatal for people with compromised immunity.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoWow, maybe (not being sarcastic) eating a monocultured food diet and living as sedate humans in sterile environments has a bigger effect on our immune systems than we'd like. This must have been measured? Compare immunity in farmers vs office workers or some such?
- consp 8y agoI think you underestimate the amount of bad health environments there are in cities (anecdotal evidence only). I would not call most cities or working environments anywhere close to sterile.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoNor anything close to a spoonful of soil on the bank of a pond outside a city?
- consp 8y agoActually: lots of people bring a lot of diseases with them, so it you judge by germs, I would argue a city with buses, train stations, airports and harbors would be worse than any soil outside of it. Though it says nothing about food, can't argue there. Though (from experience) "farmers" tend not to be too broad in their nutritional uptake and eat mostly the same where I come from as people in the cities. Might be different in the states though.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoIts immunity before you're exposed that at issue. How did you grow up? What routine exposures did you experience? I grew up muddy and dirty, eating anything I found in nature that was mostly edible (apples, ground cherries, berries, chewing bark and grass), as well as organic beef and pork (before we knew what that meant) and garden vegetables. That was closer to historical experience.
- narrator 8y agoI think we've reached the point of diminishing marginal returns to health care spending. That means when we spend more money on healthcare as a percent of GDP, life expectancy starts to fall. We are already at 16% of GDP spent on healthcare. That's double the amount that any other country spends on healthcare. We also have worse life expectancy vs. countries that spend much less as a percent of GDP than we do. One of the most disturbing trends in American healthcare, IMHO, is that the suicide rate has been steadily rising since 2000. It's now back to where it was in the 1980s before SSRIs.
- cheschire 8y agoThat's an odd causal link to draw. For all we know, the increase in healthcare spending is what has caused the life expectancy to fall less than it otherwise would have.
- azmodeus 8y agoThe United States is a unique outlier due to its special healthcare structure: https://ourworldindata.org/the-link-between-life-expectancy-and-health-spending-us-focus https://ourworldindata.org/the-link-between-life-expectancy-... I think a better conclusion would be that life expectancy can be hardly increased with further spending in the current healthcare system.
- thomasfedb 8y agoIt's not how much you spend, it's what you get for it.
- rsynnott 8y agoUS healthcare outcomes in most areas aren't actually particularly good, though (iirc, it does reasonably well on cancer, but is under par on most other stuff). The US healthcare system is expensive because it's inefficient.
- avgDev 8y agoI would argue that it's expensive because it is private and unregulated. The amount of anger the healthcare system can cause in the US is unbelievable. Example, I had a surgery that was pre-approved. Then, I received a bill for $20k. I called the insurance and they said the company wanted to charge them to much and they could not come to an agreement, therefore, they are not paying. So, I call the surgery place and told them there is no way I am paying that bill. I kept getting bills for 4-5 years, till they settled with insurance company and send me a bill for $500. At that point, I decided just not to pay it, because it angered me so much. Doctors are under pressure now too. There is pressure to see many patients in a day. Push drugs, vaccinations and so on. It is terrible for everyone involved except companies who benefit financially from it.
- dmschulman 8y agoThe decline is mostly the product of an increase in drug overdose deaths and suicides (likely also related to drug abuse[1]). Cancer mortality is continuing to decline which is nice to hear: "Earlier this century, the steady and robust decline in heart-disease deaths more than offset the rising number from drugs and suicide, Dr. Anderson said. Now, “those declines aren’t there anymore,” he said, and the drug and suicide deaths account for many years of life lost because they occur mostly in young to middle-aged adults. While progress against deaths from heart disease has stalled, cancer deaths—the nation’s No. 2 killer—are continuing a steady decline that began in the 1990s, Dr. Anderson said. “That’s kind of our saving grace,” he said. “Without those declines, we’d see a much bigger drop in life expectancy.” Drug-overdose deaths skyrocketed between 2015 and 2017, particularly for adults between ages 25 and 54. The main culprit was fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that became pervasive in illicit drug supplies in the U.S. around that time. Deaths from synthetic opioids rose 45% in 2017, while the death rate from heroin, which had risen sharply after 2010, was flat." [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499285/
- mrweasel 8y ago> The decline is mostly the product of an increase in drug overdose and suicides The US is pretty much also the only country where suicides are increasing.
- thrower123 8y agoAre there other countries where the news media is as hell-bent on stoking the fires of craziness and painting the world as a horrible, horrible place full only of strife and despair?
- mbroncano 8y agoIt’s remarkable how much of the article narrates a tale of opioids and suicide, whereas the obvious elephant in the room seems the be the poor, or lack thereof of a public health care system.
- refurb 8y agoMore money is spent on public healthcare in the US than private healthcare.
- vivekd 8y agoI dont disagree that public healthcare would improve life expectancy but it wouldn't cause a decrease in life expectancy as healthcare is not any less accessible today than in the past
- mbroncano 8y agoCitation needed, if only because of the increased expense. Also, public heath care plays a massive role in opioids treatment and suicide prevention, at least in developed countries. What seems to be clear is, unless the issue if acknowledged, the US will continue to slide literally to developing countries life expectancy levels.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI wonder if I should be concerned. If I simply avoid opioids and suicide, I'm safe?
- mbroncano 8y agoIt depends. Do you attend a high school in America?
- jeffreyrogers 8y agoIs this a reference to shooting deaths? If so, you should be aware that there are ~100 mass shooting deaths a year despite the sensational coverage they get in the media. America does have many more gun deaths than other countries, but the majority of those deaths are suicides and a majority of the homicides are in high crime areas. This is a problem that we can address, but mass shootings, though tragic and terrifying, are not a large public health issue.
- vivekd 8y agoThis seems like a case of temporary circumstances and statistical creating a doomsday picture. The temporary circumstances seem to be the suicide rate brought on by the still recovering economy and glib life prospects. Partly related to this is a new deadly drug that is gaining popularity. Add to this the statistical factors like the anti smoking and healthy living campaigns hitting their peak effect a few decades after improvents in modern science hit their peak effectiveness. To me, it seems like life exectancy will improve again as the economy improves and governments find ways to fight fentynal. Improving life expectancy maked great advancements in healthcare and sanitaion and lifestyle in the past. As these improvements seem to have peaked I dont know that life expectany is still a good indicator of progress in rich nations
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago> To me, it seems like life exectancy will improve again as the economy improves and governments find ways to fight fentynal. I find this exceedingly difficult to believe in the rural areas of the US. The current expansion is almost the longest on record, going on since 2009. The structural forces that have hollowed out the economies of rural areas (widening inequality, e-commerce, globalization, etc.) are only increasing, not decreasing. The drug overdoses may be caused by powerful opiates like fentanyl, but the drug use is mainly a symptom, not cause, of despair.
- adventured 8y agoThe biggest problem in the overdose spike is that fentanyl is killing very large numbers of people that otherwise might not have died of overdoses from heroin a decade or more ago. The US is being blasted from outside by huge quantities of fentanyl, primarily by China. It's bordering on an act of war (Opium War style). The notion that China can't stop the fentanyl pouring out of their country toward the US is ridiculous. It's going to end up killing hundreds of thousands of Americans over ten years. Imagine if the roles were reversed and US was pumping that kind of drug into China in such quantities, killing a million Chinese every decade, and pretending it couldn't stop it.
- 8y ago
- nonbel 8y agoI would like to see this correlated to access to "health care", which need not necessarily translate to improved health. From personal experience, I have a strong suspicion that much of this "care" is actually harming people. In particular I am concerned about over-prescription of anti-pain/anxiety/depressant medications and incorrect dietary modifications (eg, to eat a low-fat/salt/cholesterol diet). EDIT: Very roughly, there is a link to "obamacare". From TFA: >"The U.S. has lost three-tenths of a year in life expectancy since 2014, a stunning reversal for a developed nation, and lags far behind other wealthy nations." >"The ACA's major provisions came into force in 2014. By 2016, the uninsured share of the population had roughly halved, with estimates ranging from 20 to 24 million additional people covered during 2016." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...
- rjkennedy98 8y agoThe psychiatrist David Healy wrote an awesome, but poorly titled book called Pharmageddon just on this point. By some estimates up to 500K people a year are killed due to bad interaction with the medical system. Per a Johns Hopkins report they estimate around 180K. Its worth noting this is not just medical errors which are incredibly frequent, but much of it is due to side effects of correctly prescribed drugs.
- nonbel 8y agoThanks, not sure if I would read an entire book on it though. What source of data does he use?
- kauffj 8y ago(On edit: below comment is retracted. At least for 2015 to 2016, the decline is not attributable to Simpson's paradox. See Table 4 in the CDC report linked below.) This is either incompetence or maliciousness on behalf of the CDC, WSJ, or both. Life expectancy in the US is falling, but it's only falling due to Simpson's Paradox [1]. The CDC's own data [2] shows life expectancy increasing for all genders and races except black men, which decreased marginally over the last few years. The primary reason life expectancy is falling is due to changes in the racial composition of the population, not because of opioids or suicide. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05.pdf (see Figure 5)
- vasilipupkin 8y agoFrom the document you posted: since 1990. • In 2016 compared with 2015, life expectancy decreased for non-Hispanic white males (0.2 year), non-Hispanic black males (0.4), non-Hispanic black females (0.2), Hispanic males (0.2), and Hispanic females (0.1). Life expectancy for non-Hispanic white females remained unchanged So, no, it's not just Simpson's paradox.
- kauffj 8y agoYou're correct. I edited the parent.
- pjc50 8y agoHow does that compare to other countries with changing racial composition? What has happened to black men to cause their life expectancy to fall?
- ArrayList 8y agoA sharp rise in police killing unarmed black men, I'd wager.
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- harperlee 8y agoThe world definitevely needs to move past GDP as key metric to evaluate success of a nation.
- tzfld 8y agoIt is a metric of success of an economy. And it's pretty good at that.
- jobigoud 8y agoMost natural disasters ultimately increase GDP and are good for the economy. It's a weird metric.
- refurb 8y agoDisasters increase GDP? How? The money spent rebuilding a country is money not spent on other things.
- selectodude 8y agoInsurance pays to rebuild, they’re using money that is not part of GDP and adding it to GDP.
- refurb 8y agoSure insurance money is a part of GDP. It’s either premiums paid or sitting as an investment that needs to be liquidated to generate funds.
- jobigoud 8y ago> The money spent rebuilding a country is money not spent on other things Money is created when needed (loans, etc.), it's not a zero-sum game. Money is invested in depolluting, rebuilding roads, etc. That contributes to the GDP, sometimes more than the destruction impaired production. For example rebuilding roads after an earthquake creates many jobs.
- beginningguava 8y agoThe opioid epidemic is an amazing example of human psychology and the power of a visual. More people die from it every year than Vietnam, yet there's been no large public outcry to resolve the situation because it isn't right in your face like a 9/11 or pearl harbor. Even ignoring the human impact and just going to economics, those lost lives will cost the US billions in lost productivity over time, yet nobody really cares. Honestly, somebody should make a Kony2012 style video about it. It was a sham but I can still remember how viral that thing went, because it hit all the buttons of human psychology.
- ataturk 8y agoThe US has 330 million people. Do we really care if a bunch self-select out of the gene pool? The only way I would care is if I found out that a foreign power was behind this, i.e. getting people addicted to deadly substances in order to undermine our country. If it's just jackass flunkies doing it because they're jackass flunkies, then I'm just glad they aren't on the highways.
- pjc50 8y agoPeople have gone to a lot of effort to convince their fellow Americans that those that die from opioids deserve it. I'm sure some will turn up in this thread.
- kauffj 8y ago"Deserve" is going overboard, but there's certainly a moral difference between something that happens due to one's own choices, vs. something that happens because it was compelled. It's reasonable have more sympathy for a conscripted soldier killed in a foreign war he had no desire to fight in than an opioid addict that died from a result of choosing to do drugs.
- stjohnswarts 8y agoIt's not going overboard. I've heard more than one person refer to it as Darwin at work or "they deserved it for being weak"
- ryanmercer 8y agoStress, cancer, inactivity, obesity, diabetes, prescription and street drug abuse... doesn't surprise me unfortunately :(
- inscionent 8y agoNicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy, and Alcohol ....C-c-c-cocaine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAXPUN2z2CE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAXPUN2z2CE
- pseudolus 8y agoIs there any indication as to whether life expectancy has fallen for all income groups? Are there any income related discrepancies?
- Leary 8y agoRich people's life expectancy is increasing just fine, it's the poorer people that are having trouble. Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2513561?utm_campaign=articlePDF%26utm_medium%3darticlePDFlink%26utm_source%3darticlePDF%26utm_content%3djama.2018.2521 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/25135...
- peteradio 8y agoDrug overdose and abuse seem to me to be a symptom of something way more troubling. I can't help but feel like there is a sense of uselessness felt by and toward a large population in the US and rather than lift them up we are letting them be snuffed out.
- tejohnso 8y ago> uselessness Also see anomie [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
- peteradio 8y agoNever heard of this but it definitely resonates.
- all2 8y ago> Drug overdose and abuse seem to me to be a symptom of something way more troubling. A general feeling of disconnectedness? Perhaps some existential dread in there. The United States (by and large) used to be lashed to religious moorings, which provided some sense of purpose and moral grounding, as well as fending off pesky questions like "what happens to me when I die?" The statistics that claim the US is still largely religious are hallow. People wear labels of their religion as a means to exclude or silently signal 'better-than-you', when the purpose and message of those religions has nothing to do with that. I don't mean to say lack of religion is the primary cause of our opioid epidemic, rather a significant contributing factor. I would venture a guess that things like easy access and over-prescription also play a role.
- akuji1993 8y agoI'm honestly shocked how American doctors seem to give out opioid prescriptions for any illness or pain. I've not once heard from somebody here (Germany) that was prescribed opioids by their dentist after a surgery. They usually tell you to take some tylenol and rest at home, I've never heard of somebody getting opioid for that. But I've heard it mentioned multiple times regarding american dentists. There surely are more examples where the docs seem to be a lot less careful about giving out these drugs. Also I think, and that's not only regarding the US, but all of the world, people should be getting way more education about what these drugs are, what they cause, how they should be taken and how you should stop taking them / what risks it bears if you don't.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoI can think of a few other causes like sickness being a potentially bankrupting event so people don't go to a doctor when they should or too late. This apparently is a risk, even if you have insurance because you are at the mercy of insurers not tossing you out over such whimsical reasons as pre-existing conditions or other bureaucratic tricks they use to kill their customers rather than getting them cured. There are also these mafia extortion schemes that are completely legal where you have to pay through your nose for insurance in exchange for the privilege of not being charged tens of thousands of dollars for completely routine stuff like broken bones or other things that can and will go wrong for most people at some point. This is not a thing in most modern countries other than the US. Even many third world countries tend to get organized on this front to the best of their abilities. Then there is the widespread obesity because of corn syrup being a heavily subsidized food ingredient (got to help those poor republican voting farmers). Also it seems there is a whole legislative game around shameless advertising on products where products that contain obscene amounts of corn syrup are advertised as "fat free" instead of "don eat this you stupid fat F*". The reason for the drug overdoses is decades of shameless attempts by big pharma to coerce the US government on not cracking down on their quite successful attempts at selling heroine disguised as pain medication roughly at the same time when the war on drugs was a big thing. This too is much less of a thing outside of the US where pain medication tends to be very strictly regulated and not advertised every 10 minutes on TV. In short, the above is the result of decades of misguided policies, failures to regulate, and greedy companies getting away with stuff they shouldn't get away with and lobbying successfully to get away with ever more.
- cpursley 8y ago> Then there is the widespread obesity because of corn syrup being a heavily subsidized food ingredient You forgot to mention that the US Gov't also subsides the other side via food stamps, which poor folks use to purchase corn syrup and cheap grain foods, further exasperating the obesity epidemic. It's true insanity.
- nonbel 8y agoIt gets more insane. I've also seen that in some places they instituted a "sugar-tax" but the federal government intervened and made an exception for people paying with food stamps: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-soda-tax-food-stamps-exemption-0610-biz-20170609-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-soda-tax-food-sta...
- myroon5 8y agoArticle: Life expectancy for Americans fell again last year, despite growing recognition of the problems driving the decline and federal and local funds invested in stemming them. Data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday show life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years, pushed down by the sharpest annual increase in suicides in nearly a decade and a continued rise in deaths from powerful opioid drugs like fentanyl. Influenza, pneumonia and diabetes also factored into last year’s increase. Economists and public-health experts consider life expectancy to be an important measure of a nation’s prosperity. The 2017 data paint a dark picture of health and well-being in the U.S., reflecting the effects of addiction and despair, particularly among young and middle-aged adults, as well as diseases plaguing an aging population and people with lower access to health care. “The continuation of this trend is a warning for all of us that our country has not found a way of addressing the profound needs of the people who are dying,” said Eric Caine, professor of psychiatry and director of the Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “While the economy may be recovering at the macro level, it’s very uncertain whether it’s affecting the lives of these people.” The U.S. has lost three-tenths of a year in life expectancy since 2014, a stunning reversal for a developed nation, and lags far behind other wealthy nations. Life expectancy is 84.1 years in Japan and 83.7 years in Switzerland, first and second in the most-recent ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. ranks 29th. “It’s significant,” Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality-statistics branch of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said in an interview. “It doesn’t seem like a lot, but in terms of human cost you’ve got a lot of life that’s not being lived.” White men and women fared the worst, along with black men, all of whom experienced increases in death rates. Death rates rose in particular for adults ages 25 to 44, and suicide rates are highest among people in the nation’s most rural areas. On the other hand, deaths declined for black and Hispanic women, and remained the same for Hispanic men. “These sobering statistics are a wakeup call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable,” said CDC Director Robert Redfield. As drug and suicide mortality has risen, deaths from heart disease, the nation’s leading killer, went down only slightly, failing to offset the increases in mortality from other causes and prolonging another worrisome trend. A decadeslong decline in deaths from heart disease—brought about by antismoking and other public-health campaigns, along with medications to control blood pressure and cholesterol—has stalled in recent years, with heart-disease deaths even increasing slightly in 2015. Earlier this century, the steady and robust decline in heart-disease deaths more than offset the rising number from drugs and suicide, Dr. Anderson said. Now, “those declines aren’t there anymore,” he said, and the drug and suicide deaths account for many years of life lost because they occur mostly in young to middle-aged adults. While progress against deaths from heart disease has stalled, cancer deaths—the nation’s No. 2 killer—are continuing a steady decline that began in the 1990s, Dr. Anderson said. “That’s kind of our saving grace,” he said. “Without those declines, we’d see a much bigger drop in life expectancy.” Drug-overdose deaths skyrocketed between 2015 and 2017, particularly for adults between ages 25 and 54. The main culprit was fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that became pervasive in illicit drug supplies in the U.S. around that time. Deaths from synthetic opioids rose 45% in 2017, while the death rate from heroin, which had risen sharply after 2010, was flat. Methamphetamine and cocaine use is on the rise in the U.S., but deaths from those drugs weren’t broken out from the total. Those statistics will be released in mid-December, in a separate report, said Holly Hedegaard, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC and lead author of the reports released Thursday on drug overdoses and suicide. There is some hope the decline in life expectancy won’t be prolonged. The rise in drug-overdose deaths was slower in 2017 than the previous year. Total overdose deaths for the preceding 12 months dropped slightly between late last year and April, though they remain high. “We may have reached a peak in regards to the drug-overdose epidemic,” Dr. Anderson said. “I’m hopeful, given what we’ve seen in recent months.“ But, he cautioned, “This might just be a lull.” More federal and local resources have been devoted to the opioid crisis. States began accessing nearly $1 billion in federal grants in 2017 to combat the opioid crisis. In addition, opioid prescriptions are monitored more tightly, and medication to reverse opioid overdoses has become more available, among other factors possibly behind the tentative improvement. Suicides rose 3.7% in 2017, accelerating an increase in rates since 1999, the CDC said. The gap in deaths by suicide widened starkly between cities and the most rural areas between 1999 and 2017, the data show. The rate is now far higher in rural areas. “There’s a much wider spread,” Dr. Hedegaard said. “This is extremely discouraging,” Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said of the suicide-rate increase. Studies show that traumas such as economic difficulties or natural disasters, along with access to lethal means including guns and opioid drugs, and lack of access to care can affect suicide rates, she said. More accurate recording of deaths may also have added to the numbers, she said. Scientific understanding of suicide and its risk factors is improving, Dr. Moutier said, and new prevention programs are being implemented. But their effects have yet to be felt, because they haven’t been scaled up yet, she said. “The science is growing tremendously,” she said. “We now have answers about how to prevent suicide.”
- elocinstr8t 8y ago"Life expectancy for Americans fell again last year, despite growing recognition of the problems driving the decline and federal and local funds invested in stemming them." If lack of awareness isn't the problem, then what is? What drives people to end their lives? Is it the way we live our lives? The people around us and our inner demons telling us it's the only way to stop the pain? And would projects involving life extension work and make them not go through their plan of taking their own lives?
- pasbesoin 8y agoYou want a clear sign that the U.S. is failing? Here's one. It's the short, statistical version of a thousand thousand tragic individual tales.
- femiagbabiaka 8y agoI’ve been re-reading the foundation series by Asimov lately. Without spoiling the plot, one common theme in the book is the decline of empire. It’s uncomforably germane.
- nonbel 8y agoWhat do they mean by overdose? The WSJ did not seem to properly cite its sources here, but I am guessing it is this: >"Drug overdose deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes from the Tenth Revision of ICD (ICD–10): X40–X44 (unintentional), X60–X64 (suicide), X85 (homicide), and Y10–Y14 (undetermined)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm#notes https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm#no... Accidental poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics Accidental poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics Accidental poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system Accidental poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2004/fr-icd.htm?gx40.htm+ http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2004... Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism and psychotropic drugs, not elsewhere classified Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2003/fr-icd.htm?gx60.htm+ http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2003... Assault by drugs, medicaments and biological substances http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005/fr-icd.htm?gx85.htm+ http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005... Poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics, undetermined intent Poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipyretics and antirheumatics, undetermined intent Poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified, undetermined intent Poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system, undetermined intent Poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances, undetermined intent http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2004/fr-icd.htm?gy10.htm+ http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2004... Overdosing on opiods is only one part of this category. Basically if you take too little/much of a medication (eg, blood pressure medication) you would be counted here. So I wonder if this increase is not just reflecting a general increase in taking medications.
- nyghtly 8y agoAs with many problems in the U.S., income and wealth inequality are largely to blame: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16860994/life-expectancy-us-income-inequality https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16860994/lif...
- taway314 8y agoA lot of premature deaths are not just a direct result of suicide or drug abuse, but a deeper result of despair and isolation. Improved healthcare would help, but I feel like it's a cultural issue as well. My grandfather died in his early 70's a few years ago. By any other measure, he should have lived well into his 80's. He had a comfortable middle-class life and was quite healthy when he was younger. But he spent the last decades of his life in rural Maryland with very little social contact. My family rarely visited him. For reasons I'm still unsure, my dad didn't talk to him for almost 2 decades. His physical and mental health really disintegrated. My wife is from India, and I'm convinced that this sort of thing is more rare there. There is a strong, almost sacred connection between family members. If your parent is sick or unwell, you bring them into your house and take care of them. No questions asked. For the most part, the culture in (white, middle-class) America looks at things very differently, and I'm not really sure what the solution could be.
- lurquer 8y agoMeasuring life expectancy from birth is more a measure of infant mortality. The data on life expectancy from 5 years old is remarkably consistent... mid to upper 70's. It's even more consistent when one looks at life expectancy from 21 years. I do not have links to the charts showing this. But, last time I checked, I was quite surprised at how a sensational story about life-expectancy from birth loses much of its significance when one disregards the deaths that occur in the first 5 years of life.
- GuyPostington 8y agoUSA #1! You can't kill yourself as good as we can!
- jartelt 8y agoNote that if you are in the demographic of well educated and high income Americans, your life expectancy is still quite high and you should assume you will live to your 90s when planning for retirement! The decrease in life expectancy observed is being largely driven by people on the middle to lower portion of the income spectrum. It's very unfortunate that it is happening and so many people are struggling. Hopefully our country can come up with solutions to help out people who are struggling with addiction and poor health. But, it's important to remember that if you are not in that demographic, you are still likely to live a very long life and need to plan for that.
- sorokod 8y agoThe article is about the trend - not the absolute numbers
- protomyth 8y agoAnd subtract 5.5 for Native Americans https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/ https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/ Native Americans on reservations have free health care from IHS https://www.ihs.gov/ https://www.ihs.gov/ https://www.ihs.gov/forpatients/faq/ https://www.ihs.gov/forpatients/faq/
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- alecco 8y agoHow is the obesity epidemic not affecting deaths? I remember clearly nurses saying hospitals are full of elderly and obese people.
- DigiMortality 8y agoMy little brother killed himself last month. My cousin OD'ed on heroin in 2016. My old classmate, 2 weeks after him - same church for the funeral. One of my best friends killed himself in 2015.
- rabboRubble 8y agoI am so very sorry for your losses.
- sunshinelackof 8y agoVisit the rural parts of the US and you'll see that see-destructive behaviors are way too common. There's no hope right now for half the country. Whatever wealth they had has been mined out.