Suicides among Americans aged ten to twenty-four increased by more than 50 percent between 2007 and 2017. The suicide rate for all ages rose by nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2016. This is not an isolated trend. Life expectancy in the United States is falling, a shocking trend for a rich country. The downward slide is driven by declines in life expectancy among working-class whites. They are not dying of workplace accidents, wartime fatalities, or communicable diseases. They are dying from “deaths of despair,” as economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case put it: drug overdose, suicide, and liver disease caused by alcoholism. Significant populations in the United States are experiencing an epidemic of self-destruction as dire as the one that overtook Russia in the 1990s.
The negative trends seem likely to accelerate. A February 2019 Pew report indicates that 70 percent of teens think anxiety and depression are major problems for their peers. Around 50 percent identify alcohol and drug addiction as major problems. Worries about mental illness and self-destructive behavior among the young run through all sectors of society, not just the poor. This foretells a dark future.
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