Week of Nov. 14–18, 2022

General Articles

• As more Americans struggle with depression and anxiety, the cast of “The West Wing” teamed up with the Biden administration on Thursday to share a simple message: you are not alone. The star-studded cast of the drama series that, even years after being off air maintains a strong fan base, participated in a roundtable discussion with the White House to share their own. Through it all, five members of “The West Wing” cast said that talking with friends, family and even each other got them through darkest moments. Read more here. 
• Here’s another fun, feathered fact: Birdwatching—or even simply listening—can lead to an array of mental-health benefits in humans, including long-lasting stress relief. “The mental-health benefits are profound,” says Strassmann, who’s the author of the new book Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard. “Sitting outside and listening to the birds and getting to know their songs is really calming.” Read more here. 
• Imagine calling a suicide prevention hotline in a crisis. Do you ask for their data collection policy? Do you assume that your data are protected and kept secure? Recent events may make you consider your answers more carefully. Mental health technologies such as bots and chat lines serve people who are experiencing a crisis. They are some of the most vulnerable users of any technology, and they should expect their data to be kept safe, protected, and confidential. Unfortunately, recent dramatic examples show that extremely sensitive data has been misused. Read more here.
• “I became a psychiatrist to find answers and help address what my dad, my family, and so many others have experienced in their journeys with mental illness. But I’ve learned even more by talking with thousands of people living with mental health conditions and in my work at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). I’ve discovered a new set of experts — people with mental illness — who can help others live with these conditions.” Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• There has been a steady increase in the number of children who are seen in emergency rooms for suicidal thoughts, according to a new study — and the increase started even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought record high demand for psychological services for children. The pandemic’s effects drew renewed attention to suicide in teens and young children. In June, the Biden administration called the recent rise in rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts among kids an “unprecedented mental health crisis.” Read more here.
• Some 40 percent of college students in the United States struggle with anxiety, 45 percent with depression and 16 percent with suicidal thoughts. Many students are considering taking time away from school to tend to their mental health — and it is something that should be encouraged, experts say. Still, navigating those waters may be intimidating. Students may have concerns about how to take a leave of absence, how it will impact their academic career and their plans for the future. Read more here.  
• For months, she struggled silently with a sense of worthlessness. She had panic attacks that left her trembling. Nightmares that made her cry. She’d told only a handful of friends about the sexual assault she endured while she was home the summer after her freshman year. Now, as she finished her sophomore year at Yale University, the trauma finally became unbearable. On a June day after the 2021 spring semester, the 20-year-old college student swallowed a bottle of pills at her off-campus apartment. As she slowly woke up at the emergency room in New Haven, Conn., one thought overwhelmed her: “What if Yale finds out?” Read more here. 
• Congress has a busy itinerary in the lame duck session, but some grieving parents believe lawmakers should have a clear legislative priority: protecting minors from the harms they say led to their children’s deaths. A group of mothers whose children’s deaths were tied to social media are meeting with lawmakers this week, and sent a letter to congressional leaders, to push Congress to pass two bills that would add additional regulations governing how tech companies operate for children and teens. Read more here.
• Comprehensive sex education, not generally taught in Tennessee, has far-reaching benefits beyond sexual health, including promoting adolescent mental health. Sex education that is comprehensive promotes student agency by discussing both the merits of abstinence and ways to make sex safer — such as using condoms and birth control to prevent sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy — and works to develop self-esteem, skill-build for healthy relationships, increase understanding of social justice and promote belonging for LGBTQ+ students. Read more here.
• Florida had 5,077 incidents of students being involuntarily committed under a mental health law known as the Baker Act during the past school year, data presented Wednesday to a school safety commission showed. The Baker Act is a roughly 50-year-old state law that allows courts, law enforcement officers and certain medical workers to order people who could be a harm to themselves or others to be taken to facilities for up to 72 hours. Read more here.
• Colorado’s child welfare system has stepped up efforts in recent years to either keep kids with their relatives or more quickly get them adopted, policies motivated by research that children are better off in permanent homes.  But where the system is failing, parents and child advocates say, is in getting kids the mental health help they need to heal — not just from the original abuse and trauma, but from the grief that comes with losing their biological parents.  Read more here.

Impact of the Pandemic

• As the flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) have spread rapidly this fall — inundating and overwhelming hospitals and their staff across the country — Covid has not. In fact, Covid-related deaths and Read more here.

Abortion and Mental Health

• Mental health advocates say there’s a cruel quirk in abortion bans in several states: There are exemptions for life-threatening emergencies, but psychiatric crises don’t count. It makes no sense to an Arizona mother of three who became suicidal during her fourth pregnancy and says an abortion saved her life. Or to researcher Kara Zivin, who nearly died from a suicide attempt in pregnancy and whose work suggests these crises are not uncommon. Read more here.

Gun Safety

• A grim and familiar pattern has followed the parade of mass shootings across America. In their aftermath, the nation’s attention focuses on the direct victims of the attacks, the dead and injured, their families and friends, and the witnesses. But a growing body of research reveals that the negative effects of mass shootings spread much farther than previously understood, harming the health of local residents who were not touched directly by the violence. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis

• Have U.S. drug overdose deaths stopped rising? Preliminary government data suggests they may have, but many experts are urging caution, noting that past plateaus didn’t last. Last year, more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses — the highest tally in U.S. history. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released provisional data on what happened through the first six months of this year. The news appears to be hopeful. Provisional data indicates U.S. overdose deaths fell three months in a row. Read more here.
• A group of researchers found a potential vaccine to block fentanyl from entering the brain. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, was introduced as a pain management remedy in the 60s; but overdoses on the opioid have increased dramatically in recent years. A team at the University of Houston that developed the new vaccine say it could affect fentanyl’s impact on the brain, eliminating the euphoric feelings it produces. They published their findings in the journal Pharmaceutics. Read more here.
• Opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone may be safe and effective for over-the-counter use in some forms, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, potentially paving the way for its use federally. The FDA would still require data on individual products from manufacturers for them to be available over the counter at a federal level. The drug regulator's preliminary assessment included up to 4 milligrams dose of naloxone nasal spray and up to 2 milligrams when given through an auto injector. Read more here.
• Walmart offered a tentative $3.1 billion settlement Tuesday with states, local, and tribal governments over the toll of powerful prescription opioids sold at its pharmacies. The settlement is the latest result of a long line of lawsuits filed by state and local governments across the U.S. against the drug industry. Attorneys general from several states accused Walmart in its lawsuit of failing to appropriately oversee the dispensing of these medications at its stores. Read more here.

Veterans Mental Health

• Four soldiers in Alaska died by suicide in the last month, an alarming spike that came despite a surge in mental health resources to the Army posts there. In May, the Army sent more than 40 counselors and chaplains to Alaska after USA TODAY reported a month earlier that soldiers with suicidal issues had waited weeks for appointments with mental health providers. In 2021, 17 soldiers died by suicide, including eight over four months late in the year as winter descended on the state, daylight shortened, and despair deepened. Read more here.

Climate Change

• Hundreds of millions of people around the world lack reliable access to safe water — an escalating crisis with a potentially profound impact on their mental health. Why it matters: Similar to food insecurity, water insecurity has been linked to depression, anxiety, and increased rates of violence — and is considered one of the greatest threats facing humans, several scientists tell Axios. The impact: Mental health outcomes from water insecurity are still being studied but many scientists think "experiences of resource insecurity seem to track closely with PTSD, anxiety, and depression." Read more here.
• During the most recent conference of my professional organization, my colleague Amanda Dilger and I encouraged our fellow clinicians in attendance to offset the carbon cost of their travel. This was in addition to a panel in which we explained to a small crowd of surgeons that climate change is a health issue. Before starting the panel, I was unsure about how it would be received by my fellow surgeons, as climate change had rarely been discussed at these meetings. Read more here.

Social Determinants

• Exposure to lead-contaminated drinking water in childhood was tied to lower levels of cognition in late adulthood, U.S. data showed. Older adults who lived as children in cities with lead pipes and acidic or alkaline water that would leach it had lower cognitive functioning at age 72 than others. The association between childhood lead exposure and adult cognitive function equaled the effect of 8 additional years of aging, Lee and co-authors wrote in Science Advances.  Read more here.

Federal and State Policy

• More than 2 million low-income people — half of them in Florida and Texas — are uninsured because they are stuck in a coverage gap: They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but because of a quirk of the Affordable Care Act, they earn too little to qualify for a subsidized ACA marketplace plan. The problem affects people in 11 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. Some of these consumers, however, likely could get financial help to purchase a marketplace health plan. Read more here.
• Oregon will be the first state in the nation to enshrine the right to affordable health care in its constitution.  The measure’s long-term impact on Oregon health care is unclear because it doesn’t prescribe how the state should ensure that everyone has affordable health care. Measure 111 amends the Oregon constitution by adding: “It is the obligation of the state to ensure that every resident of Oregon has access to cost-effective, clinically appropriate and affordable health care as a fundamental right.” Read more here.