This trend has researchers troubled. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with the point.

For years, there's been a rising rate of deaths of despair, particularly among blue-collar

Americans. Opioids, for example, continue to ravage rural towns across America. According to data drawn

from the U.S. Census, the occupation with the highest suicide rate, construction, and extraction,

nearly 40% higher than the occupation with the second highest suicide rate. In addition to reflecting dangerous work

conditions, tough economic prospects, and injury recovery, there's a deeper problem here that

impacts everyone from teens to seniors, those with degrees and without, our culture-wide loss

of meaning.

Jady Vance put it this way in Hillbilly Elegy,

I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets

of moors and social pressures.

My grandparents embodied one type, old-fashioned,

quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking.

The other mindset, Vance describes as consumerist,

isolated, angry, distrustful.

But the loss of a why will always lead to a struggle with all kinds of whats, without meaning

America's floundering.

The answer is only found in the one who's never left us, the one who came that we might

have life and have it to the full.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with The Point.