There's a really interesting result buried in this.<p>"about half of US counties saw increases in suicide and violence"<p>The separation of perceived and actual violent crime rates is a pretty infamous thing. Violent crime has been declining for decades, but at least since ~2000 perceived rates have failed to track that result. People toss around lots of theories, from "the media scares us" to "bigots are scared" to "perception can only go so low".<p>This implies that we might be missing a better answer: people give national answers using local assumptions. If your county and all of the ones nearby have steadily rising rates of assault and homicide, it looks an awful lot like violence is on the rise (and for you, it is). This is especially true since you'll hear about every murder in your town, but only a few from NYC regardless of how many happen there (or don't happen).<p>So violent crime rates have dropped steadily, largely because they're power-law effects and the deadliest regions have gotten much safer. But there are a lot of people looking around at rising violence where they and their families live, and that's getting buried by the data from a handful of cities.
It seems that they are unable or unwilling to separate deaths due to mental disorders from substance abuse. Probably due to the thinking that anyone who dies from a substance abuse issue is dealing with a mental disorder. While this may be true some of the time, I'm not sure that it's clear that it is always the case. And even if it was, substance abuse deaths would just be a subset of deaths from mental disorders, still would seem misleading to lump them together.
Nobody seems to address the elephant in the room which is that the death rate from substance abuse and mental disorders was possibly underreported in the past
Not mentioned in the article, but I suspect some of this is due to the closing of most state run mental hospitals, which ramped up starting in 1972.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation</a><p>Edit: More in-depth article on the topic: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/specia...</a>
Is it reasonable to assume that substance abuse deaths are far greater than mental health disorder deaths?<p>As for the increase: no shit. Alcohol, one of the most damaging drugs, plays a central role in our contemporary marketing economy that can scientifically manipulate into engaging with alcohol on a massive scale. On the pharma side, we shove extraordinarily dangerous drugs like Oxy, Klonopin, SSRIs and Adderall on under the guise of them being medication. Thanks to the industry surrounding all these things, people don't even know they are engaging in dangerous, life-threatening drugs until it's too late.
I don't know how US death certificates and coroners work.<p>But things like death by suicide have tricky stats. In the US a death after self injury with the intent to die is counted as suicide. That intent to die bit is hard to know, so some deaths are going to be counted as something else. (Accidental death, maybe.) And because of the strong stigma and taboo around suicide historical data may undercount it.<p>Also, in the UK, for a coroner to rule a death as suicide it has to meet a higher burden of proof. The coroner has to be satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the death was suicide. For other deaths (but not murder) the burden of proof is the balance of probabilities.<p>So it's easier (in England) for a coroner to rule something is an accidental death than a death by suicide.<p>I guess the researchers are aware of all of this, and that they'll have mentioned how the cleaned up the data.<p>But it's something to be aware of when reading it.
By my count around a third of Americans die from drug misuse and drug-related causes:<p><a href="http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2014/05/the-one-statistic-you-never-hear-about-drugs.html" rel="nofollow">http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2014/05/the-one-sta...</a><p>And that was written before this study came out, which estimated that there may be an additional 60,000 annual tobacco-related deaths that are not being counted by the CDC:<p><a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa1407211" rel="nofollow">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa1407211</a>
My pet theory is that we are isolated and there are less ways to feel connected to society (suburbs, too much TV) and the over importance of image, wealth, and status. Too many McJobs and lonely suburbs and people start to get depressed and other forms of mental illness. Naturally these people self medicate when their needs are not met anywhere else.<p>Corporations used to feel more obligated to the society that they were in. Churches used to be more popular. Even if the Catholic church did evil things and controlled people, it did/does provide a place for people to feel like they belonged somewhere.
It would be interesting to see how these morbidity rates correlated with losses in wages and job security, since that magical year 1980. Particularly among middle-aged white males -- which are a pretty large group; and for whom stark rises in suicide rates have been observed by others, e.g.:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/insider/more-white-men-die-from-suicide-and-substance-abuse-why.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/insider/more-white-men-die...</a>
Whoah the quantity of subscribe popups, notifications and ads plastered all over the page is a huge turnoff. All this JS interaction seems to have somehow broke the animated gif as well.<p>Protip for publishers: one prominent entry point into "subscribing" with multiple choices is sufficient. I get that you want me to subscribe, but if I don't want to you're surely getting negative returns by creating such an obnoxious UX.
I do wonder if they accounted for statistical bias.<p>Death rate is 3x larger, but US population was ~60% of what is was now. That alone means that the death rate is actually only <i>1.8x times bigger</i>.<p>Additionally, it's been shown that doctors have been bribed and has caused vast over-diagnosis.<p>Why was this clickbait, masquerading as a study, linked on HN?
Regardless of how you feel about legalization, policy, etc, this should prove, at the very least, that we aren't winning the "War on Drugs."
Make drugs illegal. Lock up drug users in prison with other drug users who get drugs into prison because it's not as hard as you think. Teach prisoners no employable skills. Dump them back outside with the most damming scarlet letter in American society. Give them no public assistance because of drug conviction. Reduce life options to selling drugs or becoming full-blown addict to escape the painful reality. Observe drug use or sale. Arrest again. Change nothing.<p>What a surprise.
While these subjects are connected for some individuals - it's not wise to pile them up together into the single stat number.<p>Wrong stats.<p>Which drugs? Top 5-10?<p>Which mental disorders? Top 5-10?
I believe this is connected to stagnant wages (which starts in 1970s for Americans), with a catch.<p>My hypothesis:<p>1. Counterintuitively, bad economic circumstances don't lead to chronic stress. People in countries with objectively terrible economic conditions are not more stressed or unhappier. It is simply: 'life'.<p>2. Caveat: Bad economic conditions <i>do cause</i> chronic stress where the media is projecting an illusion of rising success and wealth for the average person. This is because large numbers of people begin to feel left behind, even though most of their 'successful' peers are probably in debt to their eyeballs. Chronic stress is caused by the constant reminders in the form of fraudulent statistics, advertisements and social conditioning by fictional television shows that cause them to compare their circumstances to largely imaginary ideals.<p>My solution, which sounds drastic but I believe it to be meritorious, is to ban television (but we can keep the Nature channels). I believe a large number of social ills shall mostly disappear once this is accomplished.<p>Supporting evidence:<p><a href="http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/03/fijian-girls-succumb-to-western-dysmorphia/" rel="nofollow">http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/03/fijian-girls-s...</a>