Deaths of Despair: A Secular Curse
“Deaths of despair” are rising among middle-aged whites, and may be due to a reduction in religion.
According to Marketwatch, which reports a study by researchers at several universities, “deaths of despair” have been growing dramatically among middle-class white Americans.
Deaths of despair, according to Wikipedia, are deaths attributed to “suicide, drug or alcohol overdose, or liver failure.”
Note the researchers:
The authors noted that many measures of religious adherence began to decline in the late 1980s. They find that the large decline in religious practice was driven by the group experiencing the subsequent increases in mortality: white middle-aged Americans without a college degree.
The disturbing rise in these tragic types of deaths among middle-class whites is not a new phenomenon. It’s been going on for a while, and has mostly been attributed to the opioid epidemic and economic inequality. However, this is perhaps the first article I’ve seen that attributes the trend to a decline of religion. That’s been a theory of mine for awhile, so it’s nice to see a study back up what myself and probably a lot of others might have already known intuitively.
