Native American Years of Potential Life Lost
April, 2009 marks the 22nd year of Alcohol Awareness Month.
Tarzana Treatment Centers is participating with a series of articles meant to inform and educate the general public about alcohol abuse, dependence and treatment. Considering that over 21 million Americans meet the criteria for alcohol abuse and over 53 million admit to past-month binge drinking, not to mention the many loved ones affected by each, our efforts are worthwhile.
How can 54,571 years be lost in 4 years? When it comes to the Native American and Alaskan Native communities of the U.S., just add alcohol.
It is common knowledge that alcohol abuse and dependence takes its toll on Native Americans in many ways. Looking at the years of potential life lost to alcohol paints an emotionally painful picture compared to simple crime and death statistics. Hopefully this will motivate more Native Americans to seek alcohol detox and treatment.
Consider that a Native American has an approximate average life expectancy of 75 years. When that age is not reached, simply stated, the age of death is subtracted from the average life expectancy to get the years of potential life lost. While it is impossible to determine the actual amount of years a person would have lived, it is reasonable to use this formula to express the impact of unnatural causes of death like those attributed to alcoholism and alcohol abuse.
Even as a potential approximation, reported by the US Centers for Disease Control, 54,571 years is a staggering number. Divide that number by the 1514 alcohol-attributable deaths reported among Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, and we get about 36 years of potential life lost per person. It is 43 years if we remove chronic causes, and only use the numbers relating to traffic accidents, alcohol poisoning, homicide, suicide, and other acute causes of death.
Culture-specific alcohol detox and treatment for Native Americans, like at Tarzana Treatment Centers, can serve to not only reduce the amount of living years lost for Native Americans, but it can increase the amount of quality living in the years to come.
The table below from the US Centers for Disease Control details the data from its 2006 report.
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— Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5734a3.htm —
Tarzana Treatment Centers in Los Angeles makes a daily effort to find treatment news articles that we can share with our readers in the alcohol and drug treatment community. The external content was found among other articles of equal informational and educational quality.