An epidemic of abuse of opioids and other drugs means that almost 1 in 3 U.S. adults now know someone who lost their life to overdose Poorer Americans were harder hit by these losses, although 1 in 4 people from affluent households said they'd experienced such a tragedy In many cases, people lost family members or close friends FRIDAY, May 31, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- As the opioid addiction crisis continues to lay waste to American life, a new survey finds that nearly a third of U.
S. adults now know someone who's died of a drug overdose. Conducted in the spring of 2023, the survey of 2,300 Americans found 32% saying they'd dealt with the loss of someone they knew due to fatal overdose.
Expanded into the full U.S. population, that's the equivalent of nearly 83 million people now personally affected by such tragedies, said a research team led by .
“The drug overdose crisis is a national tragedy,” said Kennedy-Hendricks, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. And too often, the pain of losing a loved one to overdose is hidden, she said. “Although large numbers of U.
S. adults are bereaved due to overdose, they may not be as visible as other groups who have lost loved ones to less stigmatized health issues," Kennedy-Hendricks explained in a Hopkins news release. The new findings were published May 31 in the journal .
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the deat.
