ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in syndemic theory [1]. Traditionally with syndemics one epidemic primes the conditions to accelerate another existing epidemic, in other words the epidemics synergize. Developed to explain how the epidemic of addiction, especially when it entails injection drug use, primed the spread of HIV [2], syndemic theory has been applied widely; although mostly to intersections of social determinants of health and disease (e.g., the poorly coined “diseases of despair”) [3]. For example, the excess in drug-related mortality in American Indian populations may be explained, in part, through an interaction between the epidemics of opioid use, poverty, racism, and historical trauma to cause a disproportionate number of deaths compared to White populations…
Fuente: Molecular Psychiatry
Published: 23 December 2022
