Depressing

[Maxheader]

If your in aircraft in kansas your economic situation might be...should be better than the ag community that
has suffered low prices and lousy weather...drought etc. The article imho doesn't really pinpoint why kansas
seems to be such an anomaly...It may be we were an exception to other states problems and are now just
catching up. I love kansas...raised here back in the early 50s..in n. central ks. Hate to read about these sad
statistics in that area...

Stressful living conditions in Kansas are contributing to a dramatic increase in the mortality rate among middle-aged whites and concentration of the phenomenon in regions marked by prolonged economic insecurity and lower educational achievement, new research said Friday.

Death rates of U.S. residents have generally been on decline during the past century with minority populations suffering higher mortality due to socioeconomic inequities of employment, education and housing. On a national level, the recently documented rise in deaths among whites ages 25 to 64 has drawn scrutiny of researchers, including a deep dive into Kansas.

“What we found is that it is happening in Kansas,” said Steven Woolf, a physician at Virginia Commonwealth University and the study’s lead researcher. “Since the 1990s, mortality rates have been increasing significantly in that age group primarily from what we call stress-related conditions.”

He said a 112 percent rise between 1995 and 2014 in Kansas’ death rate within the 25-64 age category likely resulted from people adopting unhealthy coping behaviors and being at greater risk of lethal substance abuse and suicide.

In terms of the change in Kansas, here are key numbers over the two-decade period studied: drug overdose, 585 percent increase; alcohol poisoning from binge drinking, 440 percent increase; alcoholic liver disease, 54 percent increase; and suicide, 52 percent increase.

Another way to examine the trend is to compare the mortality rate among 100,000 whites in Kansas from 1995 to 1999 against the rate for 2010 to 2014. In that sense, the rate for drug overdoses shifted from 2.2 percent in the early period to 15.1 percent in the more recent period. Alcoholic liver disease escalated from 4.1 percent to 6.4 percent, while suicide broadened from 15.4 percent to 23.3 percent.

The Kansas project, a collaboration of the Kansas Health Institute and Sunflower Foundation, left to future researchers questions of precisely why middle-aged whites in particular had been disproportionately affected. Still, Woolf offered a reasoned theory of the culprit.

“The areas that are more severely impacted are those that have been going for a long period of time at the bottom of the economic ladder,” Woolf said. “I can’t prove A leads to B, but it seems highly plausible.”

He said the largest relative increase in mortality associated with stress conditions in Kansas between 1995 and 2014 occurred in regions with lower household incomes, greater poverty and income inequality and a higher proportion of single-parent households.

The largest transformation of mortality among middle-aged whites -- 147 percent --- occurred in north-central Kansas. The escalation in east central Kansas, including Topeka and Kansas City, Kan., was 115 percent. Northeastern Kansas’ rate expanded by 112 percent.

“Frustration and hopelessness over these conditions would be expected to increase anxiety and depression,” the report said. “Over time, chronic stress, despair and the pain they produce can induce harmful coping behaviors.”

The report also said: “These upstream conditions are not solved by doctors and addiction specialists, but by policies that create the social and economic conditions necessary for each person, family and community to be healthy and survive -- including strong schools, affordable housing, transportation options and more.”

In 2016, the Commonwealth Fund’s analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed rising death rates among middle-aged whites was associated with the nation’s stalled progress in fighting leading causes of death -- respiratory disease, diabetes, heart disease. That work also pointed to suicide and substance abuse as culprits for working-age adults from 1968 to 2014.

That report followed the assessment of two Princeton University researchers who pointed to a “mortality gap” related to a rising death rate for non-Hispanic, white Americans ages 45 to 54 since 1999, despite several previous decades of decline.

[pwb]

1. Are we winning yet?

Shit no.

[jodymarie aimee]

2. Kansas and Wisconsin are cousins...

raised by the bastard Koch Brothers. Rs are pure evil.

[RKP5637]

3. Seriously, the GOP is like some kind of unleashed evil spirit from the dark side. It just gets

freakier and freakier with the GOP. ... and the diabolical creature Brownback that was governor. WTF, it's really a bad dream all the way around with the GOP.