The opioid crisis, which made a record number of deaths in the country in 2021, with more than 107,000 victims, was aggravated by the pandemic and its anxiety -provoking context.
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The United States combines new claims. Thursday, May 12, the million death bar due to the COVVI-19 was crossed in the country. The day before, the prevention and prevention centers Fight against diseases (CDC) announced the record for the number of deaths by overdose in 2021. According to this preliminary data, 107,000 Americans lost their lives for this reason, up 15 % compared to the year previous. Or a death every five minutes.
These two health crises are not unrelated. That of opiates, which has been raging for twenty years in the United States, was exacerbated by the Pandemic of Covid-19. And vice versa. “Persons dependent on drugs were much more infected than the others by the COVVID, insists Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on the abuse of American drugs (NIDA). They also have rates very high prevalence of chronic, heart and pulmonary diseases, and are therefore more likely to die of an infection. “
are added to these direct deaths of the COVID-19 collateral victims, invisible, who found themselves consuming more opiates due to the anxiety-provoking context of the pandemic. From 2020, an increase of 30 % of the dead per overdose was thus recorded in the country compared to the previous year.
If this period has been synonymous with stress, anxiety, depression and isolation for the entire population, these ailments were experienced even more difficult by drug addicts. “Stress encourages the taking of medication and makes relapses very vulnerable,” says M me Volkow.
Americans aged 14 to 18 have particularly suffered the effects. Their suffering related to depression, anxiety and loneliness “increased by 30 %” between 2019 and 2021, according to the director of NIDA. Consequence: for the first time, the number of adolescents who died by overdose doubled during this period, according to a study Researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles and published on April 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Mixtures of synthetic opiates and antidepressants
This increase is also observed among the Amerindian, African-American and Hispanic populations. According to a Report published on April 25, 2022 by the Think Thank Bipartisan Policy Center,” Mortality rates by overdose Drugs of blacks and Amerindians [increased by 81 %, and the mortality rates of Hispanics by 65 % between 2019 and 2021; in comparison, for whites, mortality rates increased by 40 % “. These populations were the most affected by the economic benefits of the COVID crisis.
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