Researchers have long suspected these dual trends, especially evident across the nation’s industrial heartland, are linked by an American epidemic of despair. Economic distress, population flight and the loss of local sports teams, lunch joints and barber shops have hollowed out communities that were long solidly middle class. The resulting hopelessness has been corrosive to the health of those who live in them.
Factory closures may have helped fuel the opioid crisis. Here’s how.
