Almost 22,000 10- through 24-year-olds died of accidental drug overdoses in the United States between 2015 and 2019, according to a new study also finding that males accounted for 71.9% of those deaths and females for 28.1%.
Of those 21,689 young people, 3,296 were aged 10 through 19, according to an analysis led by Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Aimed primarily at calculating years of life lost among youth and young adults who accidentally overdosed — more than 1.4 million years from the young lives they examined, according to these researchers — the analysis also cited previous research suggesting that some of those premature deaths occurred in individuals grappling with co-existing psychiatric and/or substance use disorders, homelessness and other adverse factors.
Overdoses not recorded on official death certificates were among potential factors that limit the results outlined in their research letter, these investigators wrote. They also wrote that “our findings represent an unacceptable preventable mortality burden for adolescents and young people ... [O]ur findings suggest that further resources are needed to mitigate these factors.”