Every day, 8-year-old Emma sits in a garden outside her grandmother’s home in Salem, Ohio, writing letters to her mom and sometimes singing songs her mother used to sing to her, Stateline reports. Emma’s mom, Danielle Stanley, died of an overdose last year. She was 34, and had struggled with addiction since she was a teen, said Brenda “Nina” Hamilton, Danielle’s mother and Emma’s grandmother. “We built a memorial for Emma so that she could visit her mom, and she’ll go out and talk to her, tell her about her day,” Hamilton said. Hundreds of thousands of kids are in a similar situation: More than 321,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose in the decade between 2011 and 2021, according to a federal health research study published in JAMA Psychiatry in May. Opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers have paid states billions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of contributing to the overdose epidemic. Some experts and advocates want states to use some of that money to help children cope with the loss of their parents. Others want more support for caregivers, and special mental health programs to help the kids work through their long-term trauma — and to break a pattern of addiction that often cycles through generations.
The rate of children who lost parents to drug overdoses more than doubled over a decade, surging from 27 kids per 100,000 in 2011 to 63 per 100,000 in 2021. Nearly three-quarters of the 649,599 adults aged 18 and 64 who died during that period were white.
The children of American Indians and Alaska Natives lost a parent at a rate of 187 per 100,000, more than double the rate among the children of non-Hispanic white parents and Black parents (76.5 and 73.2 per 100,000, respectively). Children of young Black parents between ages 18 and 25 saw the greatest loss increase per year, almost 24%. The study did not include overdose victims who were homeless, incarcerated or living in institutions. The data included deaths from illicit drugs, such as cocaine, heroin or hallucinogens; prescription opioids, including pain relievers; and stimulants, sedatives and tranquilizers. Danielle Stanley, Emma’s mother, had a combination of drugs in her system when she died. Children need help to get through their immediate grief, but they also need longer-term support, said Chad Shearer of the United Hospital Fund of New York, formerly of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s State Health Reform Assistance Network. An estimated 2.2 million U.S. children were affected by the opioid epidemic in 2017, according to the hospital fund, meaning they were living with a parent with opioid use disorder, were in foster care because of a parent’s opioid use, or had a parent incarcerated due to opioids.
Comentarios