Posted on 01/28/2007 8:01:13 AM PST by SmithL
As America's baby boomers approach senior status, a troubling number are dying from causes that have marked the generation since the 1960s - drug abuse, suicide and accidents.
A new analysis by Scripps Howard News Service of death records for more than 304,000 boomers who died in 2003 shows the legacies of early and lingering drug use, a tendency toward depression at all stages of life and a stubborn determination not to "act their age."
All of those problems contribute to more deaths from drugs, suicides and accidents than seen in previous aging generations.
Most of the nearly 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are still alive and will be for many years. By one Census Bureau projection, in 2050 as many as 780,000 members of the generation that said "never trust anyone over 30" will be at least 100 years old.
But no one, not even members of a generation with a lifelong bent for defying convention, can beat death. Boomers are now dying at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day. The Census Bureau estimates that nearly 21 million will die in the next 25 years.
In the mid-1990s, with the first boomer occupying the White House, the chronic diseases of aging - cancer, heart disease and the new scourge of human immunodeficiency virus - edged out violent death as leading contributors to the demise of boomers as the first wave emerged into their 40s.
Yet the Scripps analysis found that some causes of death once thought to be restricted to the young persist among boomers into a more advanced age.
Scripps used a database of death-certificate records maintained by the National Center of Health Statistics to analyze the causes and nature of death for boomers who died in 2003, the most recent year for which complete records were available.
The causes of death for earlier and later generations were also studied.
The Scripps analysis found that 24 percent of the boomers who died in 2003 did not die of natural causes, and more than one in 10 died from some type of accident.
"The boomers are carrying forward into old age some risky behaviors that they've been living with and dying from since they were young adults," said Dr. Dan Blazer, a Duke University professor of psychiatry and behavioral science specializing in geriatrics.
"It's a bit of a myth that boomers have all figured out how to live a quality and great life. Many of them have problems that earlier generations just didn't bring to old age."
Boomer men accounted for two-thirds of the accidental deaths, 64 percent of drug-related deaths and three-quarters of suicides among their generation.
According to the Scripps study, boomers accounted for about half of all people nationwide who died of drug-related causes in 2003. That is far out of proportion to their 26 percent share of the population. Of the total 28,758 drug deaths that year, 13,901 were boomers. Those numbers do not include impaired driving or other accidental causes indirectly related to drug use.
"Oh, my goodness," the Mutual of Omaha insurance company medical director, Dr. Bruce Henricks, said when informed of the Scripps drug-deaths data. He is one of a handful of national experts on substance abuse and boomer mortality.
The study found that, by far, most of those dying are white males in their mid- to late 40s. Nearly 70 percent suffered accidental overdoses. California, where 10 percent of all boomers live, accounted for 15 percent of the drug deaths, followed by Florida and Texas.
Henricks said the fact that boomers account for one out of every two drug fatalities - and that such a dramatic rate has until now gone largely unnoticed - provides even more evidence that the problem of substance abuse by aging Americans is occurring largely under the nation's radar screen. Because drug-related deaths typically are underreported, Henricks said the true number could be even larger.
One certainty, he and several other researchers say, is that the boomer drug toll will continue to climb in coming years.
According to studies, 1.7 million Americans older than 50 were addicted to drugs in 1999. By 2020, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates, that number will soar to 4.4 million.
Add in those not addicted but misusing painkillers and anti-anxiety medicine, plus those mixing alcohol and pills, and what results is an "invisible epidemic." As more boomers enter their "coronary years," even more are forecast to be drug users and to die as a result, Henricks said.
"It's a growing area of concern because it is going mostly undetected," he said.
The upward trend is also being felt by substance-abuse rehabilitation facilities, such as Odyssey House, a New York City nonprofit enterprise that was founded in the early days of the drug culture. Forty years later, it has become one of the few treatment centers nationwide that specialize in older substance abusers.
Peter Provet, a psychologist and president of Odyssey House, says the waiting list to get into its senior-citizen facility is growing by the week. But even as evidence mounts of a looming wave of boomer substance abusers, the nation's predominant focus remains on battling drug abuse by the young.
The same is true for suicides.
The 11,667 boomer deaths classified as suicides in 2003 represented more than a third of the national total, and experts in the field note that the suicide rates have been above the national average at all stages of life since boomers were in their teens.
Although the focus has been on youth suicides, "from a public health perspective, suicide is a greater problem for older Americans, who have consistently higher rates, and aging baby boomers could double those late-life rates in the next 25 years," said Jerry Reed, executive director of the Suicide Prevention Action Network, a Washington advocacy group.
Blazer said many boomers have risk factors that typically make people more likely to attempt suicide.
"Since adolescence, they've been drinking and using more drugs than previous generations. They're less likely to have strong religious beliefs, more isolated, twice the divorce rate of the generation before them, and still facing money and work issues they thought would be behind them in their 60s. This is not going to be an easy period for boomers as they age."
The "forever young" attitude catches up with some as they continue to ride motorcycles and personal watercraft, hang-glide and climb mountains. Accidents of all types claimed more than 31,500 boomers in 2003, more than two-thirds of them men.
When the injuries don't kill them, orthopedic surgeons chalk activity-related accidents among boomers up to "boomeritis" - thought to account for well over 1 million trips to the emergency room each year.
Motorcycles are just one example. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says deaths among motorcycle riders over age 40 have more than tripled in a decade, from 541 in 1994 to 1,847 in 2004, often from boomers climbing on high-powered machines either for the first time in decades, or even the first time ever.
Conventional wisdom suggests that boomers will age out of their riskier behaviors to some extent, but experts note that boomers still cling to their cars.
"Our roads, our cars, our buildings, everything is pretty much designed for twenty-somethings, and while many of the boomers coming into their 60s are doing everything they can to stay healthy and not feel old, they need to recognize there are still changes in vision, in reaction time that put them at more risk when they do certain things," said Nadine Marks, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Although the 11,274 boomer deaths from motor-vehicle accidents of all types in 2003 was roughly in proportion to the group's share of the population, recent research suggests that older drivers who are injured in auto accidents are more likely to die from those injuries than are younger drivers.
"So much of our aging research has focused on models of success, of people staying active and healthy," Marks said. "The data on boomer deaths reminds us that not everyone has the same advantages and outlook as they age, and maybe we need to be doing more to support those who fall between the cracks."
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Okay, I see your point now. Thanks for clarifying.
"...I cringe to admit I'm part of this cohort. We truly are a bunch of assholes...."
Born in 1956 myself. We sure as hell did a great job of "revolutionizing" our society and leaving behind a wrecked national consciousness, ruined families, dope everywhere, softcore porn in prime time (and hardcore porn available any time by calling this number), millions of cynical voters, a huge government bureaucracy, sky-high divorce rates, millions of children killed in the womb, sexual predators roaming the streets, cultural self-hatred, white guilt (for white men) and unabashed racist affirmative action (for everyone else - except the Jews and Asians!), millions killed after forcing the loss of the Vietnam War.... gee, this is a depressing list.
And I didn't even mention disco.
Of course there would be a greater # of deaths, there are a greater # of people in the pool to begin with. However, it's refreshing that someone in the MSM finally takes note of what many of us knew all along. Baby boomers haven't discovered a new way of "growing old gracefully." They just refuse to grow old which is like refusing to be born.
In other news, the overall human death rate is holding steady at 100%.
You read my mind. Especially the disco part!
Well, I really doubt that will happen (except for diabetes - I'd guess we're 7 - 10 years away from curing the majority of cases). The rest are going to be very hard, if not impossible to fully eliminate. I work for a large biotech that is very good at designing and making cancer treatments, and I'm am constantly amazed at how little clue we really have about the true nature of these diseases and how to get at them in complex biological systems.
Don't get me wrong, I was born in the 1970's, and I'd love to live to be 1000 years old if that was possible, but I just don't know if we'll ever have the knowledge to pull that off, much less in my life time.
Of course you are right, though - people will continue to live longer on average and it's going to be murder on SS and the economy as a whole. I really hope someone in DC has the guts to push through major changes along the lines of: raising the retirement age, implementing mandatory (but private) savings and investments, allowing Seniors to work tax free in exchange for a reduced SS payment, etc. Otherwise, we are totally screwed. I'm certainly planning on the necessity of being self sufficient by the time I retire.
Isn't that pretty much the same thing?
Even now, there is still time to "rescue" Social Security. If the government were to stop raiding the treasury of allocations currently being set aside for the Social Security Fund, it could be invested and grow appreciably.
That isn't going to happen, and we all know it, but it isn't necessarily the fault of the seniors.
Having spineless representatives who simply refuse to do the work assigned is a problem for all generations, and internecine warfare between us doesn't correct it.
Before of after...
..."We told 'em so"...
That came first, then the rest of that stuff. I haven't reached the point where I feel bad about it yet.
"I bet if this news was more widely reported a lot of today's teens and 20-somethings would be less likely to try drugs. I mean, who wants to emulate some washed-up old hippy?"
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For a memorable "compare & save" just look at legendary boomer rockers Ozzy Ozbourne and the famously clean-living Ted Nugent. The two men are the same age but... whooie!
Don't drink and drug kids, you may live to regret it...
Skateboards will still be around to finish off a few of them.
"NEVER get rid of your motorcycle."
I may get to where I need to be helped on and off of it but I'm not about to stop riding.
Now what do we do about the major numbers of Liberals in the Gen X group? I run into them all the time and they are very vocal about Bush/Cheney/Rove et al.
So much for growing old with dignity.
What the liberals don't destroy, they corrupt.
LOL, that Osbournes show was probably more effective than any DARE program, I'll betcha!
I say give us a little more time. What joining the workforce may not have accomplished in terms of facing reality for a lot of us, having children probably will! ;)
So, "Turn on, tune in, drop out" has become, Turn on, tune in, drop dead!
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