National mental health policy and Australia’s ‘Deaths of despair’

First coined in the United States, ‘Deaths of despair’ refer to mortality due to suicides, alcohol-related mortality and drug overdoses (Case and Deaton, 2017). Deaths from these combined conditions are approximately double the suicide rate alone and may represent a more comprehensive picture of adverse outcomes from psychological morbidity (Figure 1). In contrast to the declining rates of all-cause mortality in high-income countries, those from ‘Deaths of despair’ have remained steady or even increased, particularly in the United States...