Starting in 1998, a rise in deaths of<unk>  has resulted in an unexpected increase in the number of middle-aged White Americans dying (the age-specific mortality rate). By 2014, the increasing number of deaths of<unk>  had resulted in a drop in overall life expectancy. Anne Case and Angus Deaton propose that the increase in mid-life mortality is the result of cumulative disadvantages that have occurred over decades, and that solving it will require patience and perseverance for many years, rather than a quick fix that produces immediate results. The number of deaths of<unk>  in the United States has been estimated at 150,000 per year in 2017. Even though the main cause of<unk>  may not be purely economical, the consequences of this phenomenon are, in terms of money, expensive. According to a report from 2016, alcohol misuse, misuse of illegal drugs and non-prescribed medications, treatment of associated disorders and lost productivity cost the U.S. more than $400 billion every year. About 40 percent of those costs were paid by government, which implies a huge cost of alcohol and drug misuse to taxpayers. Another study claims even higher costs of around $1.5 trillion in economic loss, loss of productivity and societal harm. As stated above,<unk>  and an increase in drug and alcohol overdoses and suicides have much in common. Therefore, should this trend continue to spread, the U.S. society will have to pay for it, both psychologically and economically.
Diseases of despair
Mental disorders in fiction
Bullying and suicide
Unipolar emotions
Death anxiety
Jurosomatic illness
Psychological dependence
Listener fatigue