Publications on Mental Health Topics

Just one night of sleep loss harms your well-being, new study finds, by Sarah Molano, CNN, Jul 9 2021.

“One night of sleep loss is enough to disrupt your day-to-day mental and physical well-being, according to a new study, and consecutive days of sleep loss can increase these negative impacts.  “Consecutive sleep loss was associated with decreases in positive emotions, increases in negative emotions, and greater frequency of severity of physical symptoms,” said Soomi Lee, lead author of the study, which published Monday in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.  Adults should get at least seven hours of sleep per night, but 1 in 3 of them don’t, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The negative effects of poor sleep have been well documented, with its occurrence linked to higher risk of a variety of conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and, in another recent study, dementia. ”

Addiction treatment had failed. Could brain surgery save him?, by Lenny Bernstein, The Washington Post, Jun 18 2021.

“More than 600 days after he underwent the experimental surgery, Buckhalter has not touched drugs again — an outcome so outlandishly successful that neither he nor his doctors dared hope it could happen. He is the only person in the United States to ever have substance use disorder relieved by deep brain stimulation. The procedure has reversed Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and a few other intractable conditions, but had never been attempted for drug addiction here.  The device, known as a deep brain stimulator, also is recording the electrical activity in Buckhalter’s brain — another innovation that researchers hope will help locate a biomarker for addiction and allow earlier intervention with other people.  Yet for all the futuristic prospects, he is also proof of how difficult treatment of addiction remains. Quelling it with a scalpel helps refute the false belief that substance use disorder is a weakness or a moral failing, rather than a brain disease. But it does not address the psychological, social and socioeconomic factors that complicate the disease. ”

How A Hospital And A School District Teamed Up To Help Kids In Emotional Crisis, by Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, Jun 11 2021.

“The concerning rise in mental health issues noticed by school administrators mirrors national trends. Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. children meet criteria for a mental health disorder, and the rate of suicide attempts among youth has risen over the past decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Around the country, most kids who have mental health issues don't get treatment. There's a shortage of providers who work with children and it can take months to get an appointment.  "The wait times on an average to see a mental health specialist on an emergency basis is somewhere between two to three months, and for regular basis is up to 12 months, which is an unacceptable wait time," says Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Nationwide Children's Hospital. ”

Women Now Drink As Much As Men — Not So Much For Pleasure, But To Cope, by Aneri Pattani, NPR, Jun 9 2021.

“For nearly a century, women have been closing the gender gap in alcohol consumption, binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder. What was previously a 3-1 ratio for risky drinking habits in men versus women is closer to 1-to-1 globally, a 2016 analysis of several dozen studies suggested.  And the latest U.S. data from 2019 shows that women in their teens and early 20s reported drinking and getting drunk at higher rates than their male peers — in some cases for the first time since researchers began measuring such behavior. ”

A Guide To Gender Identity Terms, by Laurel Wamsley, NPR, Jun 2 2021.

“Issues of equality and acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people — along with challenges to their rights — have become a major topic in the headlines. These issues can involve words and ideas and identities that are new to some.  That's why we've put together a glossary of terms relating to gender identity. Our goal is to help people communicate accurately and respectfully with one another.  Proper use of gender identity terms, including pronouns, is a crucial way to signal courtesy and acceptance. Alex Schmider, associate director of transgender representation at GLAAD, compares using someone's correct pronouns to pronouncing their name correctly – "a way of respecting them and referring to them in a way that's consistent and true to who they are." ”

Gender-affirming surgery linked to better mental health, study finds, by Dan Avery, NBC News, May 1 2021.

“The report, published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, compared the psychological distress levels, suicide risk and substance use in trans and gender-diverse people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery with those who wanted such procedures but had not yet had them. ”

Mental health services struggled to meet increased demand during pandemic, study finds, by Tori Powell, CBS News, May 1 2021.

“The study analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 27% more adults in the U.S. reported symptoms of anxiety or depression during the pandemic, between April 2020 and February 2021, compared to in 2019. ER visits for drug overdoses increased by 36% and ER visits for suicide attempts rose by 26% in the past year compared to the same time period of the year earlier.  ”

How the Closure of In-School Learning Damaged U.S. Children's Mental Health During the Pandemic, by JEFFREY KLUGER , TIME, Apr 29 2021.

“The work, led by psychologist Tali Raviv at Northwestern University, involved a survey of more than 32,000 caregivers looking after children from kindergarten to grade 12 in the Chicago public school system. The definition of “caregiver” was broad, including parents and grandparents as well as anyone 18 or older with principal responsibility of caring for children in a household. The sample group of the families was ethnically and racially diverse—39.3% white, 30.2% Latinx; 22.4% Black; and 8.1% mixed. ”

Suicides Rise in Black Population During COVID-19 Pandemic, by Karen Blum, John Hopkins Medicine, Apr 20 2021.

“Early in the pandemic, there were worries among mental health professionals that COVID-19’s impacts on people’s isolation, stress and finances — coupled with Americans’ unprecedented purchases of guns — would create a perfect storm toward a surge of suicides, says psychiatrist Paul Nestadt. After all, spikes in suicide rates were documented during the 1889 and 1918 flu pandemics, as well as among the elderly in Hong Kong after the 2003 SARS outbreak. A recent study directed by Nestadt analyzing suicides among Maryland residents during the first six months of the year yielded some surprising findings. Instead of a peak in suicides during the lockdown of spring 2020, the investigation found an overall decrease in suicides compared with the previous three years’ numbers. However, once investigators studied suicide deaths by race, they found that suicides among white residents decreased by 45% during early March to early May, while suicides among Black residents increased by 94% in the same time frame. These results were published as a research letter in JAMA Psychiatry. “This is obviously concerning, and it serves as a reminder that when we aggregate all of our data — thinking the population is homogeneous — we miss especially vulnerable populations,” says Nestadt, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Black Marylanders were much more severely affected by the pandemic in terms of both infection rate and fatalities, he says. It’s possible that other populations hit hard by COVID-19 — such as the Latino community, single mothers balancing work and child care, and older residents — may also have suffered greater distress as marked by suicide, though his dataset was too limited to make those determinations. ”

Special Report: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, Reuters finds, by Benjamin Lesser, Reuters, Mar 19 2021.

“Reuters surveyed school districts nationwide in February to assess the mental health impacts of full or partial school shutdowns. The districts, large and small, rural and urban, serve more than 2.2 million students across the United States. Of the 74 districts that responded, 74% reported multiple indicators of increased mental health stresses among students. More than half reported rises in mental health referrals and counseling. Nearly 90% of responding districts cited higher rates of absenteeism or disengagement, metrics commonly used to gauge student emotional health. The lack of in person education was a driver of these warning signs of trouble, more than half of districts said. ”

Culturally Responsive Behavioral Health Resource Hub, by Network of Care MA, Network of Care MA, Mar 19 2021.

“Finding a provider, support group, or community space where you feel safe and supported is extremely important to your mental health and wellbeing. Click below to find resources and behavioral health providers who tailor their services to support the emotional and mental wellness of specific racial, ethnic, or cultural identity groups. ”

The U.S. Is Opening Up. For the Anxious, That Comes With a Cost., by Matt Richtel, New York Times, Mar 17 2021.

“A new survey from the American Psychological Association found that while 47 percent of people have seen their stress rise over the pandemic, about 43 percent saw no change in stress and 7 percent felt less stress.   Mental health experts said this fraction of the population found the quarantine protective, a permission slip to glide into more predictable spaces, schedules, routines and relationships. And the experts warn that while quarantine has blessed the “avoidance” of social situations, the circumstances are poised to change. ”

Disruptive Behavior: Why It’s Often Misdiagnosed, by Child Mind Institute, Feb 9 2021.

“Most children have occasional temper tantrums or emotional outbursts, but when kids repeatedly lash out, are defiant, or can’t control their tempers, it can impair their functioning in school and cause serious family turmoil.  The first challenge in helping a child manage his behavior better is to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. In the same way that a headache or a fever can be caused by many things, frequent outbursts — which clinicians call “emotional dysregulation”— can reflect a number of different underlying issues.  It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that a child who’s pushing or hitting or throwing tantrums is angry, defiant or hostile. But in many cases disruptive, even explosive behavior stems from anxiety or frustration that may not be apparent to parents or teachers. ”

Make Space, Listen, Offer Hope: How To Help A Child At Risk Of Suicide, by Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, Feb 2 2021.

“As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened the mental health of kids, more families are dealing with their children feeling anxious and depressed and thinking about and even attempting suicide. But mental health professionals say that suicide is preventable and that parents and family members can play an important role.  It's hard work that requires parents to listen to their children, acknowledge their struggles and help them find a way out of their darkness. And in the long run, it calls for creating a home environment where kids feel safe sharing their emotional lives and where families solve problems together. ”

Lawmakers push mental health days for kids amid pandemic, by Sopia Eppolitio, Associated Press, Jan 30 2021.

“State lawmakers are increasingly seeking more support for kids. This year, legislation proposed in Utah and Arizona would add mental or behavioral health to the list of reasons students can be absent from class, similar to staying out with a physical illness. Similar laws have passed in Oregon, Maine, Colorado and Virginia in the past two years. ”