ArticleAmerican journal of epidemiology2021
Trends in "Deaths of Despair" Among Working-Aged White and Black Americans, 1990-2017.
Article in American journal of epidemiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- "We adjusted for race": now what? A systematic review of utilization and reporting of race in American Journal of Epidemiology and Epidemiology, 2020-2021.Epidemiologic reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Investigating demographic and geographic disparities in malnutrition and gastrointestinal cancer mortality among older adults in the United States: A comprehensive longitudinal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER analysis 1999-2020.Nutrition in clinical practice : official publication of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition · 2026Article
- Trends in obesity-related cardiovascular and cancer mortality in Switzerland 1995-2019: an analysis of multiple causes of death.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Education, Religious Attendance, and Precursors to Deaths of Despair in the United States.Journal of religion and health · 2025Article
- Trends in alcohol use disorder symptoms among U.S. adults disaggregated by sex, race, and age.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Article
- The Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the United States and Deaths of Despair: Trends from 1979 to 2022.Population and development review · 2025Article
- A Multivariate Genomic Investigation of the Externalizing Spectrum and Suicide Risk.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Spatially Continuous Maps of Disease Risk: An Analysis of Mortality Disparities in the United States.AJPM focus · 2025Article
- Racial Capitalism and Black-White Health Inequities in the United States: The Case of the 2008 Financial Crisis.Journal of health and social behavior · 2025Article
- Healthy life expectancy by county, race, and ethnicity in the USA, 2009-19: a systematic analysis of health disparities.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2025Article
- Identifying the Changing Landscape of Younger Adult Mortality in the United States from 1999 to 2021.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Observational
- Trends in educational inequalities in all-course mortality and deaths of despair in Swedish youths 1990-2018.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Age, period, and cohort trends of substance poisoning, alcohol-related disease, and suicide deaths in Australia, 1980-2019.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Observational
- Educational inequalities in deaths of despair in 14 OECD countries: a cross-sectional observational study.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2025Observational
- The Role of Despair in Predicting Self-Destructive Behaviors.Population research and policy review · 2025Article
- Correlates of suicidal behaviors and genetic risk among United States veterans with schizophrenia or bipolar I disorder.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Clinical, genomic, and neurophysiological correlates of lifetime suicide attempts among individuals with an alcohol use disorder.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Clinical, genomic, and neurophysiological correlates of lifetime suicide attempts among individuals with alcohol dependence.Research square · 2024Article
- Socio-economic vulnerability and deaths of despair in Brazilian counties.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Article
- The effect of economic crisis and austerity measures on deaths of despair in Brazil: An interrupted time series analysis.PloS one · 2024Article
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Abstract
Life expectancy for US White men and women declined between 2013 and 2017. Initial explanations for the decline focused on increases in "deaths of despair" (i.e., deaths from suicide, drug use, and alcohol use), which have been interpreted as a cohort-based phenomenon afflicting middle-aged White Americans. There has been less attention on Black mortality trends from these same causes, and whether the trends are similar or different by cohort and period. We complement existing research and contend that recent mortality trends in both the US Black and White populations most likely reflect period-based exposures to 1) the US opioid epidemic and 2) the Great Recession. We analyzed cause-specific mortality trends in the United States for deaths from suicide, drug use, and alcohol use among non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White Americans, aged 20-64 years, over 1990-2017. We employed sex-, race-, and cause-of-death-stratified Poisson rate models and age-period-cohort models to compare mortality trends. Results indicate that rising "deaths of despair" for both Black and White Americans are overwhelmingly driven by period-based increases in drug-related deaths since the late 1990s. Further, deaths related to alcohol use and suicide among both White and Black Americans changed during the Great Recession, despite some racial differences across cohorts.
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