cleanandsunny 183 points 3 years ago

To bring a slightly different perspective here: we’re not coping.

Our suicide rate has increased 60% since 2011 among youth and young adults. Rates of mental illness have doubled in young people. About 1 in 5 young people in this country will experience depression.

Our rates of overdose deaths have doubled since 2011. Over 100,000 people died from drug use in this country in 2021.

One in five of our kids go hungry. One in five Americans live with mental illness.

When you look at these data they are absolutely alarming and the opposite of most other countries, whose rates are falling. We are not coping, people are just dying these “deaths of despair.”

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RubberElectrons 50 points 3 years ago

Don't forget how lonely people are now. There's an initial 'weird guy' thing one has to get over when talking with someone unexpectedly here in the US.

"Hey, I like the style of that jacket, can I ask where you got it?" People are morose about how alone they feel, but struggle to escape the "rugged individualism" programming of this country, to where they default to feeling safer by shrinking back for a second, before realizing they can, and do, have space to honestly interact with someone else who doesn't actually want something from them. Well, other than pleasant acknowledgement of our short existence at the same place and time.

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cleanandsunny 14 points 3 years ago

For sure, the deaths are simply the final outcome of a vast amount of suffering that cannot accurately be measured.

The corrosion of community, friendship, and third spaces are all well documented sociological phenomena that our country has yet to sufficiently address. Part of this is due to the decline in religious worship, which, while not a bad thing per se, does reduce a historically large source of socialization for our country. Part of this is due to the urbanization of our country over the last 30-50 years, and the hollowing out of many small towns. And of course part of it is due to the increased toxicity of our political systems, workplaces, and economic realities that limit our participation in society.

I guess all of that to say - none of this is an individual issue, it’s all systemic and part of the same sociological story. Feeling like a weird person for interacting with a stranger isn’t an isolated incident. It’s more a testament to how much has changed about our social world in the last 30-50 years.

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Cocodapuf 1 point 3 years ago

Exactly.

And also, thanks a lot for bringing it up, it's not a touchy subject or anything.

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cleanandsunny 3 points 3 years ago

I can’t tell if you’re joking, but apologies if this should have had a TW.

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Lucidlethargy 1 point 3 years ago

They're dying quietly, but they aren't going unnoticed. That's the best any of us can do...

...But I don't think the rest of the world is doing a whole lot better.

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Thorry84 -2 points 3 years ago

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ilmagico 9 points 3 years ago

Well, you need a prescription for those, so people do take lots of tylenol (aka acetaminophen, aka paracetamol) or ibuprofen. The problem is, it's too easy to get prescription for opioids, and they get prescribed for relatively little things (but not for just e.g. a headache).

That said, I feel things are changing, people and authorities are openly admitting we have a opioid crisis, and there's more awareness of the risks, which makes me think (hope) that doctors will be a bit more concerned before prescribing them. That said, I never got prescribed one, and probably won't use them if I did.

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breakfastburrito 4 points 3 years ago

Policy on prescribing opiates had gotten a lot tighter in the last 7ish years. It’s unlikely to get prescribed those drugs for small pains. People got addicted before this tightening, weren’t allowed to wean off them, and now turn to street drugs instead of pharmaceuticals. Also they cutoff people with chronic pain. OD deaths actually have steadily increased despite an enormous drop in prescriptions and it’s mostly fentanyl. Fentanyl is also much cheaper than pharmaceutical opiates.

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cleanandsunny 3 points 3 years ago

Yes. This is the result of a privatized health system where the only outcome that matters is profit. Doctors write enough opioid prescriptions each year for 46% of Americans to receive one. (Source: https://drugabusestatistics.org/opioid-epidemic/)

It’s absolute madness, but I do think the prescribing is getting better slowly. Unfortunately, the massive jumps in ODs seem very related to fentanyl taking over an illicit drug market that used to be primarily heroin and rx opiates. When I worked on national drug use surveys ~8 years ago, fentanyl was not a part of the landscape at all. Things have changed so quickly.

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