Addiction is Now the Leading Killer of Middle-Aged White Men
The media has recently focused on the country’s growing opiate epidemic. The majority of stories cover the countless number of young lives lost to prescription painkiller and heroin addiction, but a new study conducted by economists at Princeton University has found a surprising fact: young adults aren’t the only ones dying.
As drug rehab centers around the country face the exploding opiate problem, doctors are prescribing powerful opiates to middle-aged white men–men, who are dying at an unprecedented rate.
The study analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and compared health and mortality data across genders, age groups and races in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, France and Australia. Only in the U.S. did the researchers find a disturbing rise in death rates among white men aged 45 to 54.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), only 10 to 11.5 percent of all rehab admissions fall within this age category, but the true number of white men of that are struggling with opiate addiction is unknown. The number of addiction-related deaths, however, startled researchers. “This was absolutely a surprise to us. It knocked us off our chairs,” said Anne Case, a lead researcher on the study.
Case and her research partner, Angus Deaton, went so far as to share their findings with healthcare professionals, because as Case confessed, “We wanted to make sure we weren’t missing something.”
They weren’t.
Case and Deaton found that less-educated middle-aged white men (those with only a high school degree or lower) saw a fourfold increase in drug overdose and alcohol poisoning deaths. Suicide deaths in this group increased by 81 percent and liver disease and cirrhosis-caused deaths rose by 50 percent since 1998.
According to the study, the struggling economy, rising divorce rates and mental health issues may all contribute to the escalation in substance abuse-related deaths and suicides. Another corroborating factor, the researchers believe, is the surging opiate epidemic.
The NIDA reported that in 2011 only 11.2 percent of Americans who had a substance abuse problem received treatment at one of the country’s drug rehab facilities. With chronic pain and opiate abuse on the rise across the board, the ease at which middle-aged white men can obtain prescriptions only exacerbates the problem.
Case and Deaton noted in the study that tighter prescription patrols and drug rehab may be the only way out for these men. “This is not automatic. If the epidemic is brought under control, its survivors may have a healthy old age,” they concluded.
Alex Kirkwood is a health writer for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. Information provided by Odyssey House. Follow on Twitter