As we work through the Coronavirus and recover from the subsequent approaches we took as a nation to fight it, and as we move past this political season that was intertwined with it, there is much uncertainty ahead. Regardless of where you get your news and information or the media slant you favor, there is very little attention directed at America’s health crisis of despair-death. It is truly the pandemic within the pandemic, but one very few people are discussing—until it affects them, that is.

There are three classes of behavior-related medical conditions that increase among groups of people who experience despair due to a sense that their long-term social and economic outlook is bleak. The three disease types are drug overdose (including alcohol overdose), suicide and alcoholic liver disease.

According to the CDC, the AMA and more than 40 state health departments, overdose death rates are escalating as high as 35 percent in many states. Overdose deaths were increasing even before COVID at a very high rate. In 2017, the opioid pandemic seemed to be reaching a plateau due in part to stricter regulations of prescription pain medication and President Trump’s brief success getting China President Chi’s assistance reducing the illegal importation of fentanyl into the U.S. in 2018, fentanyl use was escalating faster than ever through other illicit channels, causing a dramatic rise in synthetic opioids and a spike in overdose-related deaths.

Overdoses—both fatal and non-fatal—have increased 20 percent in 2020 compared with 2019, according to the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program.

According to the National Suicide Helpline, calls to suicide help lines have skyrocketed. Suicide rates have been on the rise, a trend that did not just begin this year. In 2018, the U.S. had the highest age-adjusted suicide rates since 1941. By June of 2020, a CDC survey of 5,470 American adults found that one-third reported anxiety or depression symptoms. About 10 percent said they had considered suicide during the last month, and the rate of suicidal thoughts was highest among unpaid caregivers, essential workers, Hispanic or Black respondents and young adults.

Reports of domestic violence are also rising, and many experts are worried the cases reported are but a small fraction of those actually occurring. As someone who has worked directly with domestic violence cases for more than 15 years, I can emphatically tell you this is the case. There has been a substantial increase in calls to domestic violence hotlines across the country. Calls to these hotlines had increased by 76 percent by August of this year. They remain elevated at this time. This is a direct contributing factor to increased trauma for children. Many of these children unfortunately turn to self-harm, substance use and abuse, and suicide to escape. The escalating drug use, the increasing rates of suicide, suicide attempts and domestic violence are all contributing to an increase in deaths. They are also pouring a foundation of despair for our children, many of whom are now experiencing a more serious level of disconnection.

Parents ask me all the time what they can do to prevent their child from growing up to struggle with addiction. How can it be prevented? When should they start talking to their kids about drugs? If I could bottle the solutions to those questions, I would be a very wealthy man. It’s just not that simple, but there are absolutely solutions in prevention, and they must start at home. They also must start incredibly young. We want to educate every child and every parent and guardian about preventing addiction and preventing suicide, but the education must be foundational and address what fuels the experimentation and substance use in the first place. Drugs are very rarely the problem—they are almost always the symptom of the problem.

At the foundation of prevention, and at the very core of everything I present to youth and young adults across America, are two foundational concepts: risk factors and protective factors. They are absolutely key to lowering the risk of risky behaviors such as drug and alcohol use as an adolescent. Risk factors are characteristics at the biological, psychological, family, community or cultural level that precede, and are associated with, a higher likelihood of negative outcomes. Protective factors are characteristics associated with a lower likelihood of negative outcomes or ones that reduce a risk factor’s impact. As a parent or guardian, you must work to reduce your childrens’ risk factors and enhance their protective factors.

At Steered Straight, we partnered with a true visionary, Mr. Stuart Johnson and the incredible Success Foundation out of Plano, Texas, to provide teens and families across America with a blueprint for success. We deliver this blueprint to students and families in 50 states, and literally hundreds of thousands of teens have benefited from these principles. They enhance the protective factors that every successful young adult must possess. They reduce the risk factors and they enhance protective factors. Every family should implement these principles into raising their kids.

The Eight Success for Teens Principals:

Little Things Matter

Attitude Is Everything

Use the Moment

Everything Starts as Small Steps

There’s No Such Thing as Failure

Habits Are Powerful

You’re Always Learning

Make Your Dreams Come True

One of the very things I love most about the Success for Teens curriculum is that it shows teens how to apply the Slight Edge Principles. It’s a philosophy that I teach in every program that Steered Straight presents across the country. The slight edge philosophy comes down to this: You can create any life you want, no matter how difficult it may seem, but only by understanding how small, positive steps make a difference over time. The things you do every single day—things that don’t look like such a big deal or like they don’t even matter—do matter! This philosophy is critically important right now as children’s lives have been completely upended because of this virus and shutting down our country because of it. They don’t comprehend it the way adults do, and virtually nothing in the media is addressing it, neither for kids nor for parents and guardians tasked with trying to navigate their kids through this ordeal.

Please visit steeredstraight.org/resources and download the free eight-chapter curriculum for you and your teen called Success for Teens. Share it with loved ones and friends. There has never been a time when enhancing protective factors and building a foundation for success mattered more. There has never been a more uncertain environment with as high a number of risk factors present in the lives of children. I don’t believe society at large is even paying attention—so you must!

Steered Straight has also published the first-of-its-kind book, Table Talks and Dashboard Conversations, giving parents a year’s worth of conversations they can have with their middle and high school students on a daily basis. There are more than 365 conversations to choose from. And we published it into an easy to use journaling guide, with 12 months of themes and conversations for every day of the year.

Find Table Talks and Dashboard Conversations at steeredstraight.org, on Amazon or at our local Murfreesboro Steered Straight Thrift Store at 845-C Middle Tennessee Blvd., Murfreesboro.

For more information on the literature mentioned or on addiction, depression and suicide prevention, visit steeredstraight.org or call 615-962-7539 or 856-691-6676.