The alarming link between the increase in "despair deaths" and counties that voted for Donald Trump

[DonViejo]

The alarming link between the increase in “despair deaths” and counties that voted for Donald Trump

“It’s not surprising that health disparities correspond with voting behavior”

NICOLE KARLIS
SEPTEMBER 6, 2018 11:00AM (UTC)

The 2016 election brought to light a cohort of Americans whom activist Michael Moore tried to warn the country about before the 2016 presidential election.

“From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling – the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class,” Moore wrote in his viral article “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win,” which compared Middle America to Brexit.

A new analysis by researchers at Columbia University, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine this week, has corroborated Moore’s theory about the men and women previous politicians have seemingly left behind.

According to the study, there is an alarming link between an increase in "despair deaths" – a term which describes deaths caused by drug overdoses, alcohol or suicide – and counties that voted for Trump. In other words, those who have been left behind — the ones who voted for Trump, because they presumably thought his presidency would improve their quality of life — are enduring higher despair death rates.

"Although life expectancy is increasing in many parts of the country, especially in urban areas, we're not seeing nearly the same gains in rural and middle America. We shouldn't underestimate the degree to which some portions of the country have been left behind in terms of their health,”said study leader Lee Goldman, chief executive of Columbia University's Irving Medical Center, in a press release. “And it's not surprising that health disparities correspond with voting behavior."

The study started when Dr. Goldman and his team of researchers hypothesized that changes in health outlook may have impacted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. To test this hypothesis, they used data from America’s 3,112 counties to observe changes in presidential voting and death rates. The results concluded counties that had a net percentage increase of those who voted for the winning 2016 presidential candidate had a 15 percent higher 2015 age-adjusted death rate than those counties with a net increase in Democratic voters. The rise in deaths caused by alcohol, drugs and suicide was 2.5 times higher in 2016 those counties, too.

more
https://www.salon.com/2018/09/06/the-alarming-link-between-the-increase-in-despair-deaths-and-counties-that-voted-for-donald-trump/#close

[Achilleaze]

1. repube billionaires have convinced repube proles to vote against their own interests

over and over and over.

Time to wake up, fellow proles. Unless you are a billionaire grifter with darkside treasonous ties to russia, you should never vote republican. At this point, only suckers are left in their ignoble submission to the republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief, and Casino Hustler.

The republicans you submissively vote for have a BIGLY message for you:

[raging moderate]

2. Those deaths are due to mental health problems.

What are the rates of death in those places for other health problems? Are they similar? The study says we are not seeing the same life expectancy gains in rural and middle America. I have read that, contrary to Republicon mythology, the average age at death has not risen, but that it has actually fallen among some groups, and rural working class women were listed as a group with the greatest decrease in life expectancy. I worked among these women for decades. I can tell you that many of them were carrying heavy workloads, usually doing the actual physical work of a full-time strenuous job, plus housework and childcare and gardening for their own households, plus giving some care to their parents and parents-in-law, plus some volunteer work, usually through a church group. Then they have Faux News blaring at them everywhere, in banks and hospital waiting rooms, telling them lies about lazy Black and Mexican criminals sponging off welfare at their expense.