Themes in published obituaries of people who have died of opioid overdose

Abstract

This study gauged public perceptions of the opioid epidemic in online obituaries related to opioid overdose by analyzing emotional themes and tones. A thematic analysis was performed on a consecutive listing of online obituaries from the United States. Three hundred electronic obituaries of people who died due to opioid, heroin, and prescription drug overdose, identified in an online obituary platform (Legacy.com) using the keyword “overdose” were used. Tones, emotions, terms used to describe death, and types of opioids were measured using the string search function of Stata and IBM Watson Tone Analyzer. Our analysis showed that joy and sadness are the most prevalent tones in these obituaries (92% and 88%, respectively) and the most common emotion was love (79%). The two most commonly used terms to describe death due to opioid overdose were ‘accidental’ (53%) and ‘addiction’ (34%). The two types of narcotics named were ‘heroin’ (35%) and ‘prescription opioids’ (7.8%). Obituaries of people who have died due to opioid overdose contain main themes of love, joy, and sadness. The fact that stigma and shame were less prevalent themes might suggest support of the concept that addiction should be regarded as a disease rather than a criminal behavior.

Keywords:

• Opioid
• heroin
• obituary
• stigma
• emotions

Data availablity

Data can be made available upon request.

Declaration of interest statement

One of the authors (DR) received royalties from Wright Medical (Memphis, TN, USA) for elbow plates in the amount of less than USD 10,000 per year and from Skeletal Dynamics for an internal joint stabilizer elbow in the amount of between 10,000 and 100,000 USD per year. One of the authors certifies that he (DR) is a Deputy Editor for Hand and Wrist, Journal of Orthopedic Trauma, and Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research^® and has received or may receive payments or benefits in the amount of USD 5000 per year. One of the authors certifies that he (DR) received honoraria from meetings of the AO North America (Wayne, PA, USA), AO International (Davos, Switzerland), and various hospitals and universities.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Each author certifies that they approved the human protocol for this investigation and that all investigations were conducted in conformity with ethical principles of research.