The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an alarming series of reports last week, finding that America is going through its longest sustained decline in life expectancy in a century.
But this time the decline isn’t due to war and famine as it was in 1918. Back then, World War I was still raging and a worldwide flu pandemic had just killed 675,000 Americans. Instead, Americans are living shorter lives because more of them are dying from what the CDC calls “unintentional injuries,” most prominently suicide and drug overdose.
Last year, 47,000 people killed themselves in America, a number that has risen by a third over the last two decades. Ten times that number are taken to the hospital every year after an attempted suicide. Over the same period, drug overdose deaths from opioids have increased five fold. On average, 115 people die from opioid overdose every day.
Unfortunately, many analyses of these disturbing trends fail to identify their underlying causes, blaming things like poverty, the availability of guns, and even climate change.
Advocates and policymakers too often merely talk of “raising awareness” of depression or call for “greater access” to mental health services and drug treatment. This makes it seem as if better marketing campaigns and beefed up government budgets are the best or only recourse we have.
These things can do some good. But they won’t address the root of the problem. According to the CDC, most Americans who take their own lives have no known mental illness.
Most suicides are the result of existential hopelessness or despair, which is why suicide and overdose deaths are often referred to as “diseases of despair.”
There is a reason why many Christian churches consider despair to be a mortal sin. The despairing man’s existence is stripped of all meaning and purpose. He has lost all hope in God’s goodness and in His promise of salvation.
Such despair is usually the result of living a life devoid of meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging. More specifically, it can be explained in part by our country’s retreat from community, family, and faith.
Social science tells us that human beings flourish when they form and maintain lasting relationships. But marriage rates have been dropping steadily for half a century, partly because divorces remain high and partly because many younger adults are delaying matrimony or forgoing it altogether. Meanwhile, the share of children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping to nearly a third of all children last year.
More than a quarter of Americans now live alone. But even when they venture into their communities, many aren’t likely to engage with their neighbors or spend time with loved ones. A recent study found that the average person has just one close friend.
When early Americans settled a new community, one of the first things they’d do was erect a church. It was not only a spiritual home but a center of community life, the place to gather for fellowship and celebration and a refuge to turn to during times of tribulation.
But as religious faith has receded, people have abandoned the churches that once nurtured their faith and provided them with a community that added meaning and purpose to their existence.
Social media and the Internet promised to fill the void by creating a new kind of virtual community, and in a sense they do. Facebook, for instance, allows its 2 billion monthly users to instantly communicate with one another no matter where they are.
But it turns out that staring into the blue glow of a smartphone screen is no substitute for looking into the eyes of someone you love and who loves you.
With the rise of virtual connections, including an epidemic of online pornography consumption, we’ve witnessed a decline in authentic intimacy and in-person social interactions.
The shocking decline in life expectancy has shed some much-needed light on the problems of drug overdose and suicide. But we won’t solve these ills without addressing the hopelessness that many people feel as a result of living lives that lack meaning, purpose, and belonging.
These are the things that are essential to life well lived. To rediscover them, we must rebuild a society based on family, faith, and community.
Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
