Correlation Between Drug Use And Suicide Epidemic

Non-medical drugs can affect everyone no matter what color they are, where they live, and even their culture. Heroin can affect anyone including young, old, male, female, wealthy, urban, rural, and most of all suburban. A report in New Mexico pointed out that over 60% of death rates have been between 2001 and ‘10 and 10 youths used drugs to get high.New Mexico’s Youth Risk and Resilillency survey said 1 in 10 youths have admitted to using opiate-based prescription drugs to get high.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has published a fact sheet of statistics on suicide in the United States. In 2007, it is reported that suicide was the tenth leading cause of death. Furthermore, for every suicide committed, eleven were attempted. A total of 34,598 deaths occurred from suicide with an overall rate of 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people. (NIMH, 2010). Risk factors were also noted on this report and listed “depression and other mental disorders, or a substance abuse disorder (often in combination with other mental disorders). More than ninety percent of people who die by suicide have these risk factors (NIMH, 2010).”

Over the past decade suicide rates have been either stagnant or have been decreasing over all of the demographics of people. One demographic of people's suicide rate, on the other hand, has risen at a substantial rate. Scientists and researchers have just started studying this trend and have yet to draw one specific reason on why middle aged white males suicide rates are climbing. The suicide rate for this demographic of people has just surpassed the deaths by automobile accidents. This recent epidemic has got many researchers and scientists asking the question of “why?”.

This literature review will focus mainly on the drug use of heroin, the scary numbers behind the drug and the sudden rise of overdosing on the drug across the United States. Issues that will be discussed are what is Heroin, what’s in Heroin that makes it addicting, how it can increase the users risk of contracting other life threatening diseases and where it’s use and abuse are most popular across the United states and we will take a look at multiple studies that show examples of our new drug problem in the United States. While we looked at how homicide rates have dropped while in class, the flip side to that is that the amount of drug usage has risen.

Often referred to as the “devil’s drug”, heroin in today’s society holds responsibility as one of the top killers next to murder, suicide, and car accidents. From 2002 to 2013, the number of deaths by heroin has quadrupled. In 2007, approximately 2,000 lives were taking by heroin, and these numbers increased to 8,000 by 2013. Heroin has affected thousands of people lives and killed many at an alarming rate; it now holds a spot as an epidemic in the United States. In a poem by an anonymous author, the effects of heroin are described explicitly, “If you try me, be warned this is no game. If given the chance, I’ll drive you insane. I’ll ravish your body; I’ll control your mind. I’ll own you completely; your soul will be mine.” Thousands of

In 1999, fatal heroin over doses accounted for 1,960 deaths in the United States. In 2014, the toll went up to 10,574 fatal over doses. 2,414 of them were women and 8,160 of them were men ("Overdose Death Rates", 2015). 10,574 women and men. They were someone's mother and father, wife and husband, daughter and son, sister and brother. Addiction is ugly. Addiction is fatal. Addiction is real. Sometimes, no matter how much a person loves their family, they love their drug more and sobriety is not an option. While all other efforts to control the war on drugs are clearly failing, the United States needs to take another route of harm reduction with supervised injection facilities. Supervised injection facilities should be implemented throughout the United States because they reduce fatal overdoses, offer treatment and counselling, and have decreased the amount of public injections.

Many teens use drugs in everyday life. Especially teenagers, they have a constant tendency of using illegal substances behind schools,playgrounds and other areas.according to drugabuse.gov up to 46,000 teens mainly 12th, 10th and 8th graders show 13 percent of 8th graders, 30 percent of 10th graders and 40 percent of 12th graders use drugs. But the questions still here,how many teens die a year from drug

Suicide rate is a grow problem in the United States according to the American foundation for suicide prevention more than 41,149 suicides were reported in 2013. The highest rate of suicides is committed by adults between age 45-64 and this is especially true amongst the elderly. Older adults are inflected with a terminal disease, loneness and depression and because of this they are committing suicide at a higher rate. Suicide amongst the men is steadily higher than women, in 2013, 77.9% were male and 22.1% were female. Men success rate for suicide is much higher, because their attempt is more lethal, for example, men are more than likely to shot themselves, whereas women are more likely to use poisons to end their life. Suicide Rate committed race/ethnicity was higher among Whites 14.2%, American Indians and Alaska Natives 11.7%, Asians and Pacific Islanders 5.8%, Blacks 5.4% and Hispanics 5.7%. According to the mean method used to commit suicide is a firearm, then suffocation and poisoning. The main cause of suicide is due to mental health condition and depression is at the foremost leading factor.

In the United States today, heroin overdosage is the highest rate it has been since 2002 (“Overdose Death Rates”). Heroin is a drug that can be sold off of any person will to take the risk of selling the drug. Former addicts will tell you that heroin is cheaper on the street that any other drug. You can involve yourself with heroin in many different ways. This attracts people to obtain the drug for those reasons. Heroin addiction can happen to the most successful people as demonstrated in the story of Kurt Cobain’s abuse of heroin.

Hundreds of thousands of people die due to suicide every year. This number is estimated to double by 2020 should the current trend continue. The primary cause of these suicides is mental disorders and harmful use of alcohol - which in itself is a result of mental health related conditions. The World Health Organization reports indicate that 20% of the world 's children and adolescents suffer from one or more mental disorders and according to the Kim foundation, 57.7 million people in the US suffer from a mental health disorder.

A study conducted by Cheek, Nestor & Liu (2015) found Injection drug use was positively associated with suicide attempts, but not suicide ideation or suicide plans. This study also can be explained by the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide, which stated you needed to remove the fear of death to go from ideation to attempter (Joiner, 2005). In this study injection drug use removed the fear of death. Also injection drug use was associated with the suicide attempts among suicide planners (Cheek, Nestor & Liu, 2015). Which further supports the concept that substance use can remove the fear of dying and can take an individual from suicide ideation to suicide

Heroin use and overdose related deaths have increased considerably in the United States in recent years (Jones, Logan, Gladden, & Bohm, 2015). The results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health [NSDUH] (2014), showed in the year 2013, approximately 517,000 Americans abused heroin, which was almost a 150 percent increase since 2007 (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2014). According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] (2014), in the year 2011, 4.2 million people who were twelve years of age or older said they used heroin at least once in their lifetime. Furthermore, data from NSDUH showed approximately 460 people, twelve years of age or older, used heroin each day in 2013 (Lipari and Hughes, 2015). An even more frightening statistic is death rates doubled for people who were twelve years of age or older as a result of heroin overdose in the years 2010 through 2012 (Hedegaard, Chen, and Warner, 2015).

Other research indicates that people who suffer from more than one psychiatric illness are twice as likely to suicide. This would add weight to the argument that those who are substance abusers, who have anti social personalities or have anxiety disorders coupled with depression are prime candidates for suicide. 2 Unemployment and Social Disadvantage The issues of unemployment and poor long term job prospects are frequently cited in media reports on youth suicide, particularly in relation to suicides in rural areas. In recent studies of suicide trends, it has been demonstrated that unemployment is a significant cause of psychological disturbance in young people who were initially employed and not suffering from any previous documented history of physical or mental illness.

Depression affects everyone's life at sometime or another. Depression comes in a wide variety of forms, from mild unhappiness to a chemical imbalance in the mind. There are many different symptoms that reveal a person's problem with depression. If left untreated, depression may continue to develop into a serious illness or even death.

Ninety percent of the general populations who submit suicide have a mental or substance mishandles scatter or both. (May,