Mental Health and Disorders

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares189 Views

    Why Do Mental Health Conditions Lead to More Severe Covid?

    by

    People with psychiatric conditions are more likely to be hospitalized or die of the virus. Scientists have ideas about why that might be the case.It’s been clear since the early days of the pandemic: People with mental illness are more likely to have severe outcomes from Covid. Compared to the general population, they’re at higher risk of being hospitalized, developing long Covid or dying from an infection.That fact puts mental illness on the same list as better-known Covid risk factors like cardiovascular issues, chronic kidney disease and asthma.When it comes to Covid risk, mental illness “shouldn’t be treated differently than you treat diabetes or heart disease or cancer,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System.Scientists now have a better understanding of who is vulnerable. While research has linked a wide range of mental illnesses to worse Covid outcomes, experts generally believe that the risk is greatest for people with severe or unmanaged mental health conditions — suggesting that someone with schizophrenia, for example, is more likely to get sicker from Covid than someone receiving treatment for anxiety. They also have several hypotheses about why mental illness might make people more susceptible.The Strain of StressMany mental health conditions can lead to chronically high stress levels. And stress sabotages the immune system, flooding the body with hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Those hormones make it harder to produce certain immune cells that are crucial for fighting off illnesses.“The whole system is not designed to be constantly activated,” said Andrea Lynne Roberts, a researcher at Harvard University who has studied the effects of mental health conditions on Covid outcomes. That’s why people with mental illness may be more vulnerable to viral infections in general, from the common cold to Covid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Doctors, A.I. and Empathy for Patients

      by

      More from our inbox:Breast Cancer ScreeningWalz’s MisstepsMental Health Support for SchoolchildrenTo the Editor:Re “ChatGPT’s Bedside Manner Is Better Than Mine,” by Jonathan Reisman (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 9):Dr. Reisman notes that ChatGPT’s answers to patient questions have been rated as more empathetic than those written by actual doctors. This should not be a call for doctors to surrender our human role to A.I. To the contrary, we need to continue to improve our communication skills.For the past 25 years, I have been facilitating seminars in doctor-patient communication. The skills to communicate bad news listed by Dr. Reisman are exactly the techniques that we suggest to our medical students. However, doctors can avoid the temptation to surrender their “humanity to a script” as if it were “just another day at work.”Techniques are a valuable guide, but the real work consists of carefully listening to the responses and their emotional content, and crafting new words and phrases that speak to the unique patient’s confusion, fear and distress.In my experience, patients know when we are reciting a script, and when we are paying attention to their thoughts and feelings. Unlike A.I., and especially when conversations are matters of life and death, we can reach into the depths of our humanity to feel and communicate empathy and compassion toward our patients.Neil S. ProseDurham, N.C.To the Editor:Mention the words “A.I.” and “doctoring” to most physicians in the same sentence, and the immediate reaction is often skepticism or fear.As Dr. Jonathan Reisman noted in his essay, A.I. has shown a remarkable ability to mimic human empathy in encounters with patients. This is one reason many practicing physicians worry that A.I. may replace doctors eventually.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Does Your School Use Suicide Prevention Software? We Want to Hear From You.

      by

      Concerned about anxiety and depression among students, some schools are monitoring what children type into their devices to detect suicidal thinking or self-harm.In response to the youth mental health crisis, many school districts are investing in software that monitors what students type on their school devices, alerting counselors if a child appears to be contemplating suicide or self-harm.Such tools — produced by companies like Gaggle, GoGuardian Beacon, Bark and Securly — can pick up what a child types into a Google search, or a school essay, or an email or text message to a friend. Some of these alerts may be false alarms, set off by innocuous research projects or offhand comments, but the most serious alerts may prompt calls to parents or even home visits by school staff members or law enforcement.I write about mental health for The New York Times, including the effects of social media use on children’s brains and algorithms that predict who is at risk for suicide. I’m interested in knowing more about how these monitoring tools are working in real life.If you are a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Do you think these tools have saved lives? Do they help students who are anxious or depressed get the care they need? Are you concerned about students’ privacy? Is there any cost to false positives?I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up with you. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.Share Your Experiences with Suicide Prevention Software More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Daniel Penny’s Lawyers Will Ask to Throw Out Chokehold Charge in N.Y.C. Subway Death Case

      by

      Mr. Penny’s subway-car struggle with a homeless man, Jordan Neely, ended in death. On Thursday, his lawyers will also ask a judge to exclude video of Mr. Penny discussing the encounter.Minutes after a subway rider named Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely in a train car in May 2023, Mr. Penny stood inside the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan telling officers, “I just put him out.”Mr. Penny was recorded on body-worn camera explaining to officers that Mr. Neely, a homeless man, had entered an F train and thrown his possessions on the ground, and that he was “was very aggressive, going crazy.”“He’s like: ‘I’m ready to go to prison for life. I’m ready to die, I’m ready to die,’” Mr. Penny told an officer, according to court filings from prosecutors. “And I was standing behind him. I think I might have just put him in a choke, put him down. We just went to the ground. He was trying to roll up. I had him pretty good. I was in the Marine Corps.”Last year, Mr. Penny, who is from Long Island, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 21. In a hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Penny asked a judge to suppress the comments he made to officers at the subway station and later at a precinct house, and to dismiss the indictment against him.When the video of the encounter spread online last year, it reverberated through the nation. The chokehold was captured in a four-minute video that showed Mr. Penny with his arms around Mr. Neely’s neck and his legs wrapped around his body. Mr. Neely struggled against Mr. Penny’s restraint as two other men stepped in to hold him down.Mr. Penny cooperated with officers who came to the scene and arrested him after Mr. Neely died, even going back to the Fifth Precinct to speak with them, his lawyers said in court filings. However, his statements followed what they argued was an illegal arrest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      California Passes Law Protecting Consumer Brain Data

      by

      The state extended its current personal privacy law to include the neural data increasingly coveted by technology companies.On Saturday, Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed a new law that aims to protect people’s brain data from being potentially misused by neurotechnology companies.A growing number of consumer technology products promise to help address cognitive issues: apps to meditate, to improve focus and to treat mental health conditions like depression. These products monitor and record brain data, which encodes virtually everything that goes on in the mind, including thoughts, feelings and intentions.The new law, which passed both the California State Assembly and the Senate with no voter opposition, amends the state’s current personal privacy law — known as the California Consumer Privacy Act — by including “neural data” under “personal sensitive information.” This includes data generated by a user’s brain activity and the meshwork of nerves that extends to the rest of the body.“I’m very excited,” said Sen. Josh Becker, Democrat of California, who sponsored the bill. “It’s important that we be up front about protecting the privacy of neural data — a very important set of data that belongs to people.”With tens of thousands of tech startups, California is a hub for tech innovation. This includes smaller companies developing brain technologies, but Big Tech companies like Meta and Apple are also developing devices that will likely involve collecting vast troves of brain data.“The importance of protecting neural data in California cannot be understated,” Sen. Becker said.The bill extends the same level of protections to neural data that it does for other data already considered sensitive under the California Consumer Privacy Act, such as facial images, DNA and fingerprints, known as biometric information.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

      by

      The California legislation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of cellphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Friday aimed at protecting minors from social media addiction amid growing concerns about the impact of technology on adolescents’ mental health.The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said in a statement on Friday.The move, targeting powerful tech interests in the nation’s most populous state, is part of a nationwide effort to address concern over cellphone and social media use among adolescents. Amid reports of cyberbullying and distraction in classrooms, at least eight states, including Florida and Indiana, have already enacted restrictions on the use of cellphones in school settings. New York put in place a similar law aimed at social media addiction this year.In June, Governor Newsom also called for a ban on smartphone use in all public schools in California. Legislation now before him includes a requirement that the schools devise a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit smartphones during the school day, though most school districts already have cellphone policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Held Involuntarily in a Psychiatric Hospital

      by

      More from our inbox:The Debate Over Taxing TipsNonpartisan ElectionsSitting Still in SchoolAcadia Healthcare’s Park Royal hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., and Florida is among those that wrongly held some patients against their will.Michael Adno for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Patients Held Against Will by Hospitals” (front page, Sept. 2):Thank you for your hard-hitting exposé of Acadia Healthcare, a chain of psychiatric hospitals, which revealed Acadia’s corrupt financial practices. The authors report on the toxic effects — including but not limited to driving people away from treatment — of these unscrupulous procedures.But even when hospitals have pure motives, inpatient psychiatric care — especially when it is involuntary — can be traumatizing, and may lead to an increased risk of suicide: In one meta-analysis, “the postdischarge suicide rate was approximately 100 times the global suicide rate during the first 3 months after discharge.”The key to helping people is funding community-based, evidence-based programs. For example, “Peer-run respites provide a voluntary alternative to an emergency department visit or inpatient hospitalization for people experiencing a psychiatric crisis,” as was noted in a recent article in Psychiatry Online.With so much evidence to support the benefits of community-based mental health care, I believe that a paradigm shift in the mental health system — away from hospitalization and toward community-based treatment, including peer support — is long overdue.Susan RogersCherry Hill, N.J.The writer is the director of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.To the Editor:The motivation for this atrocious behavior is cited in the first paragraph of the article, where it is noted that Acadia Healthcare’s stock price has more than doubled. This is an example of the perverse results of the use of private equity to finance health care. There are other such examples.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Correction Officers Who Failed to Aid Dying Inmate Won’t Be Charged

      by

      Correction Department rules “do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the New York attorney general’s office said.Michael Nieves sliced his throat with a razor around 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022. For the next 10 minutes, correction workers at the Rikers Island jail complex stood by his cell and watched him bleed without providing medical care.Mr. Nieves later died.The failure by three correction workers to offer aid was “an omission” that contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, the New York attorney general’s office of special investigation found in a report published on Tuesday. But because Mr. Nieves might have died even had he received immediate medical help, the attorney general, Letitia James, said her office would not charge the workers criminally.In a surprising finding, the report also said that the workers had followed correction department rules by deciding not to render help.“The D.O.C.’s rules and regulations do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.The decision not to charge the corrections workers “is incredibly disappointing,” said Samuel Shapiro, a lawyer hired by members of Mr. Nieves’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court. Describing surveillance footage that captures Mr. Nieves’s suicide attempt and the workers’ response, Mr. Shapiro said, “It is incredibly disturbing to watch city employees stand there as Mr. Nieves is slowly bleeding to death from his neck and do nothing to help him.”The Department of Correction suspended all three workers for 30 days. When they returned to work, they were prohibited from having contact with detainees. In May 2023, two officers, Beethoven Joseph and Jeron Smith, were accused by the department of violating rules and a directive on suicide prevention and intervention. The disciplinary proceedings are still pending, the attorney general’s office said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Former Miss Teen USA Contestant Rebukes Vance for Using Her Flub to Attack Harris

      by

      Caite Upton wrote on social media that “online bullying needs to stop,” after JD Vance posted a clip of her mangled answer from the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant to mock Kamala Harris.Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who since becoming former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate in July has been criticized on several occasions for comments demeaning women, found himself again embroiled in controversy this week when he used a viral clip of a beauty pageant contestant’s meltdown to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.On Thursday, Mr. Vance shared a video clip from the 2007 Miss Teen USA competition in which Caite Upton, who was representing South Carolina, gave a mangled answer to a question about why many Americans could not locate the United States on a map.“BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview,” Mr. Vance wrote on X.That evening, CNN was set to broadcast the first major interview with Ms. Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. quickly reposted Mr. Vance’s post, writing: “This is total Fake News from JD. We all know that Kamala isn’t that articulate.”In a social media post on Friday, Ms. Upton objected to Mr. Vance’s dredging up the 17-year-old clip of her pageant struggles, remarks that were reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., and later deleted, after she appeared to have deactivated her account on X.“Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop,” she wrote, according to the newspaper.A representative for Ms. Upton, who competed in the pageant under the name Lauren Caitlin Upton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.In 2015, Ms. Upton told New York magazine that the embarrassment she felt over the viral video had led to depression and thoughts of suicide.When Mr. Vance was asked whether he had been aware of Ms. Upton’s mental health challenges during an appearance on CNN on Friday, he said that he had not at the time he posted the clip.“My heart goes out to her, and I hope that she’s doing well,” he said.When asked whether he wanted to apologize, Mr. Vance said that he did not have regrets.“Politics has gotten way too lame,” he said, adding, “I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke, but I wish the best for Caitlin.” More