Deaths of despair: “a term that needs to be retired”

The term ‘deaths of despair’ is shorthand for 3 causes of death: drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol-related liver disease. “The term is well intentioned but mistaken in theory, of doubtful validity, and misleading,” Shane Darke and Michael Farrell of University of New South Wales and Wayne Hall and Julia Lappin of University of Queensland posit.