New research suggests that mid-life mortality among Native Americans grew by ~30% between 1999-2013.
The study's authors argue that the uptick in preventable "deaths of despair" among Native Americans has been underreported.
- The paper is a response to a 2015 study documenting a ~9% rise in "deaths of despair" — which refers to deaths caused by suicides, drug overdoses, or alcoholism — among middle-aged White Americans in that same period.
- The new study found that American Indians and Alaska Native people were left out of the original analysis.
- Harvard psychologist and anthropologist Joseph Gone, who co-authored the latest study, said Native peoples are often "folded into a category like 'Other' instead of being reported distinctively for indigenous peoples."
- The authors found that racial disparities in midlife mortality have gotten worse since 2013, with the start of the COVID pandemic marking an even greater divergence in outcomes.
- In 2020, the death rate for middle-aged Native Americans was twice that of White Americans.
