ArticlePublic health2023
Increases in 'deaths of despair' during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Article in Public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Economic Cynicism, COVID-19 and Deaths of Despair in Rural Ohio Counties.Sociology of health & illness · 2026Article
- Self-Injury Mortality: Global Ascertainment and Prevention.Medical principles and practice : international journal of the Kuwait University, Health Science Centre · 2026Review
- Substance Use and Delirium Trends in the Critically Ill During the Peri-COVID Period.Critical care explorations · 2026Article
- The decline of 'Deaths of Despair' in Italy: unveiling this phenomenon in a new context.Population health metrics · 2026Article
- Deaths of despair before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparative analysis of 27 European countries and the United States.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Deaths of despair in England, 2014-2022: trends by sex and socioeconomic deprivation before and after COVID-19.International journal of public health · 2026Article
- Excess Alcohol-Induced Hospitalisations and Deaths During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia.Drug and alcohol review · 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
- Suicide in people prescribed opioid-agonist therapy in Scotland, United Kingdom, 2011-2020: A national retrospective cohort study.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cause-of-death analysis of life expectancy changes in 24 countries, 2015 to 2022.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Alcohol-induced deaths in the United States across age, race, gender, geography, and the COVID-19 pandemic.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- "They pulled that funding away and we're not recovering. it's getting worse": deaths of despair in post-austerity north east England.International journal for equity in health · 2024Article
- Parental Patterns of Alcohol Consumption During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review.Interactive journal of medical research · 2024Article
- Faltering mortality improvements at young-middle ages in high-income English-speaking countries.International journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Asynchronous online training increased knowledge, confidence, and intent to screen and treat substance use disorders among primary care clinicians practicing in Texas.Preventive medicine · 2024Article
- US exceptionalism? International trends in midlife mortality.International journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- A longitudinal study of alcohol consumption among adults in Victoria, Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2024Article
- COVID-19 pandemic impact on opioid overdose deaths among racial groups within the United States: an observational cross-sectional study.British journal of anaesthesia · 2024Observational
- Changes in Alcohol-Specific Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemic in 14 European Countries.Sucht · 2023Article
- Comparing trends in mid-life 'deaths of despair' in the USA, Canada and UK, 2001-2019: is the USA an anomaly?BMJ open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted mental health, health-related behaviours such as drinking and illicit drug use and the accessibility of health and social care services. How these pandemic shocks affected 'despair'-related mortality in different countries is less clear. This study uses public data to compare deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in the United States and the United Kingdom to identify similarities or differences in the impact of the pandemic on important non-COVID causes of death across countries and to consider the public health implications of these trends. STUDY DESIGN AND
methodsData were taken from publicly available mortality figures for England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the United States of America, 2001-2021, and analysed descriptively through age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates from suicide, alcohol and drug use.
resultsAlcohol-specific deaths increased in all countries between 2019 and 2021, most notably in the United States and, to a lesser extent, England and Wales. Suicide rates did not increase markedly during the pandemic in any of the included nations. Drug-related mortality rates rose dramatically over the same period in the United States but not in other nations.
conclusionsMortality from 'deaths of despair' during the pandemic has displayed divergent trends between causes and countries. Concerns about increases in deaths by suicide appear to have been unfounded, whereas deaths due to alcohol have risen across the United Kingdom and in the United States and across almost all age groups. Scotland and the United States had similarly high levels of drug-related deaths pre-pandemic, but the differing trends during the pandemic highlight the different underlying causes of these drug death epidemics and the importance of tailoring policy responses to these specific contexts.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.