Common
Disease of despair
Classes of medical conditions
Disease of despair
A disease of despair is one of three classes of behavior-related medical conditions that increase in groups of people who experience despair due to a sense that their long-term social and economic prospects are bleak. The three disease types are drug overdose (including alcohol overdose), suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. In 2017, diseases of despair, and the resulting deaths of despair, were high in the Appalachian region of the United States, especially in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware. The prevalence increased markedly during the first decades of the 21st century, especially among middle-aged and older working class White Americans starting in 2010, followed by an increase in mortality for Hispanic Americans in 2011 and African Americans in 2014. It gained media attention because of its connection to the opioid epidemic. In 2018, some 158,000 people in the United States died from these causes, compared to 65,000 in 1995. The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton attribute...
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