U.S. Life Expectancy Falls as Rates of Death From Drug Overdose, Suicide Rise

Life expectancy among people living in the United States has fallen in recent years, driven in part by an uptick in deaths among young and middle-aged adults from drug overdose, alcohol consumption, and suicide, according to areport published today inJAMA.“The implications of increasing midlife mortality are broad, affecting working-age adults and thus employers, the economy, health care, and national security. The trends also affect children, whose parents are more likely to die in midlife and whose own health could be at risk when they reach that age, or sooner,” wrote Steven Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., and Heidi Schoomaker, M.A.Ed., of Virginia Commonwealth University.Woolf and Schoomaker analyzed life expectancy data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and cause-specific mortality rates listed in the U.S. Mortality Database from 1959 to 2017.The analysis revealed that from 1959 to 2014, U.S. life expectancy increased from 69.9 years to 78.9 years. The rate of increase was greatest from 1969 to 1979, plateaued in 2011, and decreased after 2014, the authors noted. From 2010 to 2017, age-adjusted all-cause mortality rates increased by 6% in those aged 25 to 64 years (defined by authors as midlife adults). The authors noted several changes in rates of midlife mortality:From 1999 to 2017, midlife mortality from drug overdoses increased by 386.5%.During this same period, death rates from alcoholic liver disease increased by 40.6%.Similarly, the suicide rate...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: alcohol CDC drug overdose Heidi Schoomaker Howard K. Koh JAMA Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 middle-aged adults Steven Woolf suicide U.S. life expectancy young adults Source Type: research