Deaths of Despair

Deaths of Despair!

In the United States, mortality rates are high and increasing among working-age adults, and "deaths of despair" from?suicide,?alcohol poisoning, and drug overdose are key contributors. However, this is not the case in 16 other industrialized nations, including Canada, Australia, and Japan, where mortality rates are actually decreasing.

Peter Sterling, PhD, and Michael Platt, PhD, with the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, write in a special communication in?JAMA Psychiatry?published online?February 2 that perhaps one reason is that other countries take better care of their citizens from cradle to grave

But they also caution against what they call the "medicalization" of every identified cause of rising death rates in the U.S. As they say in their article:

?"Every symptom of despair has been defined as a disorder or dysregulation within the individual. This incorrectly frames the problem, forcing individuals to grapple on their own," they write.

?"It also emphasizes treatment by pharmacology, providing innumerable drugs for anxiety,?depression, anger, psychosis, and obesity, plus new drugs to treat addictions to the old drugs. We cannot defeat despair solely with pills ― to the contrary, pills will only deepen it," they add.t