Buttigieg: HEALING AND BELONGING IN AMERICA

[littlemissmartypants]

HEALING AND BELONGING IN AMERICA
A Plan to Improve Mental Health Care and Combat Addiction

We are in the midst of a devastating opioid overdose and addiction epidemic that is harming communities across the country.1

In the past two decades alone, almost 450,000 people have died due to opioid overdose. By the end of this year, almost nine times as many will have died as the total number of U.S. military deaths during the Vietnam War.2 This crisis leaves a harrowing impact far beyond rising death rates. For every person that dies from opioid overdose, countless others are living with opioid use disorder. Family members, friends, and neighbors are deeply affected. Families are being torn apart; since 2000, the number of children placed in foster care due to their parent’s opioid use has doubled to nearly 100,000.3

Yet for all the attention the opioid epidemic has rightly received, Pete understands that it is only one part of a much larger mental health care and substance use disorder crisis. Last year, for every five people who died from opioid overdose, three died from overdose due to other drugs,4 such as methamphetamine or cocaine;5 five died by suicide;6 and nine died an alcohol-related death.7 Combined, these deaths have contributed to the longest sustained decline in American life expectancy since World War I.8

Collectively, these deaths due to drugs, alcohol, and suicide are characterized as “deaths of despair,” which are often preceded by people and communities being left behind.9 It is parents being laid off from the job they’ve had for decades and a society’s inability to provide them with the opportunity to take care of their family. It is teenagers coping with childhood trauma or living in constant fear of hearing gunshots at school.10 It is older people whose aging friends don’t stop by as often, if at all, and a society’s inability to take appropriate care of its elders.11 Each of these circumstances leaves members of our community searching for ways to numb their pain, manage their anxiety, or cope with their loneliness and isolation.

Much more at the link.
https://peteforamerica.com/mental-health/

White Paper PDF Here: https://peteforamerica.com/mental-health/white-paper

[Skittles]

1. this is good

this is the kind of attention that should have been applied to the crack epidemic - it is incredible the amount of damage addiction can cause, not just to the afflicted, but to their friends, family, community

[KT2000]

2. as my friend from China says

America suffers from alienation.
That is probably happening in China now as money is surpassing family and community in importance.

[Duppers]

3. Buttigieg

He's such an intelligent, caring, beautiful person. And wise beyond his years.