The U.S.’s National Center for Health Statistics issued its annual report on “Mortality in the United States” on Thursday, releasing final information on deaths and death rates for the year 2017. In the United States, the long-term trend is for the age-adjusted death rate to decline by about one per thousand each year. The other is drug overdose, a less common cause of death that has been increasing more dramatically over the same period. This rural suicide crisis has been much discussed in the media, and sometimes it is linked with the election of President Donald Trump, whose performance in the vote is also stronger in communities of diminishing size. In other words, it is hard to know whether rural suicide is a symptom of rural malaise per se, or some more general condition.

Source: National Post November 30, 2018 20:48 UTC