American death rate from substance abuse and mental disorders triples since 1980
There&#x27;s a really interesting result buried in this.<p>&quot;about half of US counties saw increases in suicide and violence&quot;<p>The separation of perceived and actual violent crime rates is a pretty infamous thing. Violent crime has been declining for decades, but at least since ~2000 perceived rates have failed to track that result. People toss around lots of theories, from &quot;the media scares us&quot; to &quot;bigots are scared&quot; to &quot;perception can only go so low&quot;.<p>This implies that we might be missing a better answer: people give national answers using local assumptions. If your county and all of the ones nearby have steadily rising rates of assault and homicide, it looks an awful lot like violence is on the rise (and for you, it is). This is especially true since you&#x27;ll hear about every murder in your town, but only a few from NYC regardless of how many happen there (or don&#x27;t happen).<p>So violent crime rates have dropped steadily, largely because they&#x27;re power-law effects and the deadliest regions have gotten much safer. But there are a lot of people looking around at rising violence where they and their families live, and that&#x27;s getting buried by the data from a handful of cities.