The depression–opioid connection may be linked to what some have argued—that opioid overdose deaths may, in fact, be “deaths of despair,” similar to suicides and alcoholic liver disease (Dasgupta, Beletsky & Ciccarone, 2018). Examining death rates, economists have found that the hardest hit have been white Americans without college degrees in rural areas and regions where manufacturing and construction jobs have been decreasing over the past decades. Financial strain associated with job loss and wage stagnation is associated with pain, distress, social dysfunction, and desperation and may explain why these areas have the starkest increase in premature mortality due to preventable deaths (Case & Deaton, 2017; Hoban, 2017).