Utah follows sad national trend of white women dying faster, earlier than 1999
FILE - This Feb. 19, 2013, file photo, shows OxyContin pills arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt. More than 28,000 Americans died from overdosing on opiates in 2014, a record high for the nation. That’s 78 people per day, a number that doesn’t include the millions of family members, first responders and even taxpayers who feel the ripple of drug addiction in their daily lives. A rise in prescription painkillers is partially to blame: The sale of these drugs has quadrupled since 1999, and so has the number of Americans dying from an addiction to them. When prescriptions run out, people find themselves turning to the cheaper alternative heroin and, increasingly, the even more deadly drug fentanyl. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
McKay-Dee Hospital held a press conference announcing its initiative to reduce opioid abuse and increase awareness of risks for opioid users in Ogden on Wednesday, August 31, 2016. Posters and a chandelier made out of 7,000 pill bottles decorates the lobby. According to the hospital Utahns fill 7,000 opioid prescriptions a day.
McKay-Dee Hospital held a press conference announcing its initiative to reduce opioid abuse and increase awareness of risks for opioid users in Ogden on Wednesday, August 31, 2016.
A recent interactive report from The Washington Post shows the population of white women nationwide — and in many Utah counties — are dying faster than they did in 1999.
The report attributes the alarming statistics to increases in overdoses “primarily from opioids, but also from anti-anxiety drugs, which are often prescribed in tandem.”
By examining data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Post concluded the number of middle-aged white women who die from overdose each year rose 400 percent between 1999 and 2014. Due to inconsistent reporting across counties and states, the number could be higher.
Most southern Utah counties seem to align with that grim trend, showing increases in death rates for white women as high as 65 percent.
In Northern Utah, things look a little better: Weber and Morgan counties had only a 5 percent increase in the death rate and Cache County had a 6 percent decrease. Rich County was the only Northern Utah area with a dramatic increase of 65 percent.
Then there’s Box Elder County, which has mixed results. While the data shows good news for white women — a 12 percent decrease in the death rate — there has been a staggering 117 percent increase in the death rate for white men since 1999. That figure is almost double the next highest death rate increase for men. The Post’s data shows Box Elder has both the most dramatic decrease in death rates for women and the most dramatic increase in death rates for men.
As for Hispanic and Black men and women, most of The Post’s data is relatively incomplete for Utah counties, with many of them showing “N/A” in those data fields. The small amount of data that was available for Hispanic men was generally positive, though, with death rates slowing by as much as 38 to 40 percent in Box Elder, Morgan, Weber and Davis counties.
For those same counties, the death rates for Hispanic women increased by 9 percent.
For many Utahns, the theory that opioid use could be at least partly to blame for the accelerated death rates is sadly unsurprising. Utah ranks eighth highest in the U.S. for prescription drug overdose deaths, according to the Utah Department of Health. About 49 Utahns die every month from overdose, and the majority are caused by prescription opioids.
Downtown Ogden is third highest in the state for that specific cause of death, according to the Utah Department of Health.
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McKay-Dee Hospital recently announced an effort to encourage patients to talk with their doctors and find alternatives to opioid painkillers. Since 2002, opioids have been the cause of death for more people in Utah than all other drug categories, such as anti-depressants, over-the-counter medications, or illicit drugs, according to a report from the Utah Department of Health.
The CDC also introduced new prescription painkiller guidelines in March and the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on Aug. 31 that it is issuing stronger warnings about the dangers of prescribing both benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety or anti-depressant) and opioid medications. New warnings about potential side effects and mediation guides will be printed on more than 400 pharmaceutical products.
White women are five times more likely than white men to be prescribed both opioids and antidepressants as part of a daily medication regimen, according The Post’s reporting.
There are plenty of recent reports examining the exploding opioid epidemic but there don’t appear to be recent, specific reports showing the impact of benzodiazepines on death rates here in Utah.
A search of the relationship between benzos and earlier deaths can primarily be traced back to an oft-cited 2002 survey, which showed antidepressant prescriptions were higher in Utah than any other state, according to a February 2002 Los Angeles Times story. Express Scripts Inc., a St. Louis-based pharmacy benefits management company, conducted the survey by randomly selecting 2 million of its 48 million members and tracking use of 24 types of prescription drugs.
The study did not separate survey results by sex but at that time, women were reportedly about twice as likely as men to suffer from a form of chronic depression.
A search of the Utah Department of Health and the state Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health don’t show any results for any specific reports on antidepressant use within the past 5 years.
Experts or officials could not be immediately reached for comment Monday because of the Labor Day holiday.