US mental health and mortality data reflect structural despair and inequality

Evidence

For three years in a row and counting, the US has been the only developed country to experience a decline in average life expectancy, which the American Medical Association attributes to suicide, opioid addiction, alcoholism, and obesity, explicitly connecting these factors to wealth inequality. Group traumas like mass shootings and racist extrajudicial killing are escalating. Viral losses exacerbate all this distress: governmental abandon in the pandemic has made the US the world leader in excess death and suspended millions in protracted isolation. The teenage suicide rate increased 70 percent from 2006 to 2019, while overall suicide rates increased 2 percent per year over the same period. Significant majorities of young people in wealthy countries are repeatedly rated “extremely pessimistic about their economic futures.” Too-lateness also looms: according to the Pew Research Center, fully two-thirds of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to mitigate climate change, and one in five college students pursues treatment for climate grief. Recent studies estimate that over 40 percent of Americans are suffering from anxiety and depression. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 81

Categorization

• QUESTION: The AMA attribution and the specific statistics would need verification if used in her Antitheory critique; the ‘one in five college students pursues treatment for climate grief’ figure is oddly specific and worth chasing.