Each year, more than 112,000 Americans die by overdose, more than 2000 here in Kentucky.

The loss of life is not the only tragedy.

Each death leaves behind families, friends and others to grieve the loss.

A study coauthored by a universe of Kentucky researchers found that four in ten people know someone who died by overdose.

She calls the impact of those left behind, quote, an overlooked emergency.

More now on the study in today's medical news.

We really see overdose exposure and suicide exposure as similar.

They're both stigmatized causes of death.

So people often don't talk about how the person they cared about died.

And when they don't talk about it, they don't realize that this is a common experience.

And so starting to work with these investigators at Rand, they had similar questions about opioid overdose or overdose in general.

How common is this experience?

What we found is that 40% of people knew one at least one person that had died of an overdose.

But really, it was more likely to be in that 2 to 5 or even more than five person range so that once you know someone that dies of an overdose, overdose, it's likely you're going to know more than one person.

We call this an overlooked emergency because there's lots of reporting and information available to the public on overdose.

We see the number of deaths have increased exponentially over the last few years.

And the disconnect is we talk about overdose prevention, we talk about substance misuse, prevention, but we don't talk about is this horrible impact on those people left behind.

What we found is that people said that this had a profound impact on their lives and what we don't know is the research hasn't really told us yet.

How is this a risk factor for people for their future substance misuse as well as other mental health difficulties or even things like suicide?

I think the takeaway from this study is that as we're thinking about the opioid epidemic and this crisis of overdose deaths, we really need to focus not just on prevention, but on helping those left behind.

Because folks who are left behind, who cared about someone that died of an overdose are probably going to be at risk of their own drug misuse and possible overdose and other long term consequences.

I think it's really important to figure out how to help those people left behind.

So that systematic research would be at first start and really figuring out what are their needs in terms of their substance misuse behavior and mental health and bereavement needs.

So each state has a plan for suicide prevention that also includes post mentioned helping those left behind.

And so overdose should be very similar, in my opinion.

The study also found people who lived in the New England region and east south central region, which includes Kentucky, were more likely to know someone who died of an overdose.