Americans are dying of despair. COVID’s to blame, and Biden’s administration must address it | Opinion

President Biden should create a Department of Loneliness — I’m serious — or, at the very least, a White House Commission on Loneliness to deal with the growing crisis of despair, drug addiction and suicides that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On, Feb. 12, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced the creation of a Ministry of Loneliness, largely in response to a rise in suicides during the past 12 months. Nearly 21,000 people in Japan committed suicide in 2020, in what was the first annual increase in in 11 years, the Japan Times reported.

Remote work and the lack of social gatherings during the pandemic have worsened Japan’s loneliness-related mental-health problems, as has happened all over the world. Japan followed the steps of Great Britain, which already had created a Ministry of Loneliness in 2018, amid a growing tide of depression and mental illnesses that experts linked, in part, to technological isolation.

Now, growing numbers of U.S. mental-health experts recommend that Biden create a similar government body in the United States.

A new study by the Brookings Institution entitled “America’s Crisis of Despair” calls on the administration to establish a White House coordinating body of major government agencies to combat the rise of depression, addictions and suicides.

Carol Graham, who wrote the study and is the author of several books on happiness and despair around the world, told me that an average of 70,000 Americans die each year from “deaths of despair,” and that the figure may have nearly doubled to 130,000 during the pandemic.

Deaths from drug overdoses have risen significantly because of increased social isolation and unemployment. And this crisis won’t be solved by simply trying to reduce the supply of drugs — people in despair will inevitably find substitute drugs, she told me.

Most of America’s deaths of despair happen among middle-aged white men without college degrees, Graham’s study says. This is especially visible in one-factory towns where manufacturing plants have moved abroad or where workers have been replaced by robots.

“Lack of hope is the central issue,” Graham says. “The American Dream is in tatters, and, ironically, it is worse for whites. African-Americans and Latinos have shown to be more resilient.”

This epidemic of despair among poorly educated white working-class Americans is also leading to populism and nativist politics, vulnerability to conspiracy theories and skepticism about science. The bloody takeover of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was just a symptom of this problem, Graham says.

In Great Britain, the government does surveys asking people four simple questions, including whether they are happy with their lives and whether they have a good reason for living. It takes only two minutes to respond and is not very costly. It allows authorities to identify populations at risk and to re-direct public funds for social activities or to give greater mental-health attention to those most in need.

In America, there is no federal agency trying to measure despair and coordinate corrective measures, Graham says. Agencies dealing with drug addiction, mental health and economic development mostly are working separately.

Creating a U.S. Department of Loneliness, like Japan and Great Britain have done, may be too costly, Graham told me. Instead, she suggests a White House task force on loneliness.

“I’m proposing a super-agency, a coordinating agency, something that wouldn’t cost billions of dollars and that wouldn’t create a bureaucracy,” she told me. A coordinating agency could set priorities and help carry out overdose- and suicide-prevention programs, she added.

I agree. Once we have enough vaccines to control the COVID-19 pandemic, we will have to address its aftermath of despair, depression and loneliness.

Granted, the idea of a ministry or a super-agency of loneliness sounds weird. But in the post-pandemic age of isolation because of remote work, e-commerce and e-learning, some sort of initiative is needed to address it.

If we don’t know who is at risk of dying of despair — and we fail to attack the problem with targeted programs involving counselors, social companions, community activities, volunteering programs and economic-development plans — the costs of inaction will be much higher.

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