The new study links falling church participation among middle-aged, less-educated white Americans to rising deaths from overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related disease. The timing is important: these increases began before the wide availability of powerful prescription opioids. That suggests the opioid crisis built on earlier social and cultural shifts that had already increased vulnerability for certain groups.
Understanding how big social patterns shape individual risk points to different kinds of solutions. Public health responses that focus only on drugs miss opportunities to strengthen community resilience, restore networks of care, and build inclusive paths to meaning and stability. Follow the reporting to see how researchers connect these long-running trends to human potential, recovery, and policies that could help more people thrive.
Long before opioids flooded communities, something else was quietly changing—and it may have helped set the stage for today’s crisis. A new study finds that as church attendance dropped among middle-aged, less educated white Americans, deaths from overdoses, suicide, and alcohol-related disease began to rise. The trend started years before OxyContin appeared, suggesting the opioid epidemic intensified a problem already underway.
