More young people are dying of drugs, alcohol and suicide

According to new federal data, young Americans are dying in increasing numbers because of drugs, alcohol and suicide.

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has published its comprehensive annual report on health and mortality, which analyzes patterns of mortality by cause and demographics. According to the report, drugs, alcohol and suicide contributed to the first declines in life expectancy in the United States since 1993. Life expectancy in the United States rose from 77.8 to 78.6 years between 2006 and 2016. a decrease of 0.3 years between 2014 and 2016 – largely due to rising rates of drug overdoses, suicides and liver diseases, as well as Alzheimer.

Mortality rates of Americans aged 15 to 44 years increased by about 5% each year between 2013 and 2016, and drugs, alcohol and suicide are mainly to blame, according to the CDC report. .

The only drug overdoses killed more than 63,600 people in 2016, according to the report. Among men aged 24 to 35, overdose rates increased by more than 25% each year between 2014 and 2016; nearly 50 deaths per 100,000 in this population were related to an overdose in 2016. Women aged 45 to 54 had the highest number of overdoses, but 15 to 24 year-olds had the highest rate of increase. high: around 19% per year and 2016.

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Alcohol is also a major public health problem. Liver disease has replaced HIV as the sixth leading cause of death among adults aged 25 to 44 in 2016. Among men and women aged 25 to 34, deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis increased respectively by about 11% and 8% per year 2016. However, older people still die of liver disease at rates much higher than young adults.

Suicide, meanwhile, is rising in almost all demographic groups – but some trends have emerged. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 24, increasing by 7% in this group every year between 2014 and 2016. It is also the third leading cause of death for people aged 25 to 44 . 17 deaths per 100,000 in this population in 2016. Suicide rates even increased among children aged 1 to 14, increasing by approximately 9% each year during the study period – although suicide caused less of one in 100,000 deaths in 2016

And while men continue to die by suicide much more frequently than women, rising rates among young women are beginning to narrow this gap. Youth and adolescent suicide rates increased by 70% between 2010 and 2016, according to previous data from the CDC.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans who died in 2016 were over 65 years old. Rates of many life-threatening diseases have declined in this population during the previous decade; Deaths from heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death among adults over 65, have declined, as have strokes. Alzheimer's disease, however, increased by 21%. According to separate data from the CDC released Thursday, this trend is expected to continue. The number of people affected by Alzheimer's disease and related dementias is expected to double by 2060, from 5 million people (1.6% of the US population) in 2014 to around 13.9 million of people (3.3% of the population) in 2060, according to the CDC.