From the Pete For America website:In the past two decades alone, almost 450,000 people have died due

From the Pete For America website:In the past two decades alone, almost 450,000 people have died due to opioid overdose. By the end of this year, almost nine times as many will have died as the total number of U.S. military deaths during the Vietnam War. This crisis leaves a harrowing impact far beyond rising death rates. For every person that dies from opioid overdose, countless others are living with opioid use disorder. Family members, friends, and neighbors are deeply affected. Families are being torn apart; since 2000, the number of children placed in foster care due to their parent’s opioid use has doubled to nearly 100,000. Yet for all the attention the opioid epidemic has rightly received, Pete understands that it is only one part of a much larger mental health care and substance use disorder crisis….This crisis of despair is often portrayed as one unique to middle-aged white America. While mental illness and addiction rates have risen significantly for this demographic, this ignores the reality that rates of mental illness and addiction among people of color, other marginalized groups, and other age groups have historically been, and continue to be, high…..This crisis is the result of years of neglect by our political leadership. Our health care system is so broken—and our approach to mental health and addiction care so fragmented and often punitive—that less than one in five people with a substance use disorder and two of every five people with a mental illness receive treatment. The annual economic cost of the opioid epidemic is almost $80 billion a year. To meet this urgent national challenge, we need a new approach to providing mental health care: one truly prepared to tackle this as the crisis it is, and one that understands the key driver of change will be based in strengthening our communities.Learn more about Pete’s plan to improve mental health and combat addiction! -- source link

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