Shocking statistics from the CDC show that drug overdose deaths in Louisiana shot up by 56-percent between March 2020 and March of this year. Dr. James Patterson, Clinical Director of the Louisiana Addiction Research Center at LSU-Shreveport, blames social isolation during the pandemic for the dramatic increase.
“It’s obvious that this pandemic is having a significant impact on our society, on stress,” said Patterson.
According to the CDC, predicted drug overdose deaths totaled more than 21-hundred in the one-year period ending this past March.
Dr. Patterson says that a lack of interaction with other human beings during the pandemic has proven costly.
“Social isolation I think is deadly and is taking a toll on our society,” said Patterson.
He went on to say that the impact of social isolation and overdose deaths are reflected in part in the way a large segment of grade school children in Caddo Parish are handling the pandemic.
“Forty-nine-percent of our kids in Caddo Parish are depressed or sad most days in the past year,” according to Dr. Patterson.
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