Mental Health and Disorders

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      PTSD Has Surged Among College Students

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      The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among college students rose to 7.5 percent in 2022, more than double the rate five years earlier, researchers found.Post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses among college students more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, climbing most sharply as the coronavirus pandemic shut down campuses and upended young adults’ lives, according to new research published on Thursday.The prevalence of PTSD rose to 7.5 percent from 3.4 percent during that period, according to the findings. Researchers analyzed responses from more than 390,000 participants in the Healthy Minds Study, an annual web-based survey.“The magnitude of this rise is indeed shocking,” said Yusen Zhai, the paper’s lead author, who heads the community counseling clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His clinic had seen more young people struggling in the aftermath of traumatic events. So he expected an increase, but not such a large one.Dr. Zhai, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Studies, attributed the rise to “broader societal stressors” on college students, such as campus shootings, social unrest and the sudden loss of loved ones from the coronavirus.PTSD is a mental health disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and heightened sensitivity to reminders of an event, continuing more than a month after it occurs.It is a relatively common disorder, with an estimated 5 percent of adults in the United States experiencing it in any given year, according to the most recent epidemiological survey conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. Lifetime prevalence is 8 percent in women and 4 percent in men, the survey found.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

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      Grayson Murray, Two-Time PGA Tour Titles Winner, Dies at 30

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      Mr. Murray, who was outspoken about his depression and alcohol abuse, had begun a comeback after several volatile years, winning this year’s Sony Open in Hawaii.Grayson Murray, the professional golfer who won two PGA Tour titles and was outspoken about his battles with depression and alcohol, died on Saturday. He was 30.His death was confirmed in a statement by the PGA Tour, which did not give a cause.“The PGA Tour is a family, and when you lose a member of your family, you are never the same,” the tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, said in the statement.After a successful 40-foot putt to win the Sony Open in Hawaii in January, Mr. Murray rose to 46th in the Official World Golf Ranking, a career high. The event marked the height of a comeback run after several volatile years as Mr. Murray struggled with his mental health.In a news conference after winning the Sony Open, Mr. Murray said that for a time he would drink during tournament weeks.“Best thing and worst thing that ever happened to me was winning my rookie year, but also feeling like I was invincible,” he said. “I’m a different man now, and I would not be in this position right now, today, if I didn’t put that drink down eight months ago.”He added that he had attended rehabilitation for a month, and said, “I hope I can inspire a lot of people going forward that have their own issues.”Mr. Murray had failed to gain P.G.A. status for several months last year after a series of off-course events mirrored a decline in his play.A 2021 alcohol-related incident at a hotel bar in Hawaii led to his suspension from the P.G.A. Afterward, he posted to social media.“Why was I drunk?” he wrote, adding that he was as an “alcoholic that hates everything to do with the PGA Tour life and that’s my scapegoat.”The golfer Phil Mickelson, who has struggled with a gambling addiction, responded at the time on social media, saying “If I can help in any way I’d be happy to.”This year, Mr. Murray played well enough to qualify for the Masters Tournament and PGA Championship. On Friday, he withdrew from the second round of the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, citing an illness.Grayson Murray was born on Oct. 1, 1993, in Raleigh, N.C., according to an ESPN biography. A list of survivors was not immediately available.He attended Wake Forest, East Carolina and Arizona State Universities, and at 16 became the second-youngest player to enter the Korn Ferry Tour, according to the P.G.A.He continued to gain prominence, playing in the U.S. Open at the age of 19 and clinching a win at the 2017 Barbasol Championship, sinking a 5-foot putt for a one-stroke victory.After losing his PGA Tour card for the 2023 season, and following an angry outburst directed at Mr. Monahan, he seemed to have found his swing again. He won two Korn Ferry Tour tournaments last year, regaining his P.G.A. eligibility, and finished in the top 10 at two events. More

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      Medicaid Funding Would Expand Psychiatric Beds Under New Bill

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      A Democrat and a Republican from New York will introduce the “Michelle Go Act,” named after a woman who was killed when a mentally ill homeless man pushed her in front of a subway train.As the nation faces a growing mental health crisis among people who are homeless, a bipartisan bill being introduced in Congress on Thursday may substantially increase the number of psychiatric beds covered by Medicaid.Proponents of the bill say that it will help address a severe shortage of psychiatric hospital beds and spur the construction of new beds and new facilities.The bill is sponsored by the unlikely-seeming New York City congressional duo of Dan Goldman, a liberal Democrat, and Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican Trump loyalist, along with Representatives Tony Cárdenas, Democrat of California, and Gus Bilirakis, a Florida Republican. Mr. Goldman is the lead author of the bill, the Michelle Go Act, named after the woman who was fatally pushed in front of a subway train in New York in 2022 by a man with schizophrenia, who had spent decades rotating from hospital to jail to street.Under current law, for people age 21 to 64, Medicaid covers stays in dedicated psychiatric hospitals only if they have 16 or fewer beds. The Michelle Go Act would raise the threshold to 36 beds.Mr. Goldman said in an interview that the legislation would “not only provide for significantly more beds for long-term mental health care but has the potential to increase the ability for those who cannot afford mental health care to get the treatment they need.”Mr. Goldman has said that he would have liked to remove the cap on hospital size altogether — one estimate put the cost at $33 billion over 10 years. But he said that the more modest measure was necessary to win support on both sides of the aisle.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

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      TikTok Attempts to Rein In Diet and Weight Loss Content

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      The company said it will work to remove content about drugs like Ozempic, extended fasting and more from the “For You” feed.Emma Lembke did not know what an algorithm was when she started using social media.The then-12-year-old was thrilled when her parents gave her permission to join Instagram. She quickly followed all kinds of accounts — from Kim Kardashian to Olive Garden, she said — and was soon spending five to six hours a day on the app. Then one day she searched for “ab workouts,” and her feed shifted. She started seeing 200-calorie recipes, pro-anorexia posts and exercise routines that “no 12-year-old should be doing in their bedroom,” she said.Ms. Lembke, now 21, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2023 about how social media led her to disordered eating, and what she and other advocates see as a dire need for stronger regulation to protect social media’s youngest users.Social media platforms have promised to take more action. On Friday, TikTok enacted what some experts called one of the most well-defined policies by a social media company yet on weight and dieting posts. The company’s updated guidelines, which come as TikTok faces a potential ban in the United States, include new guardrails on posts that show “potentially harmful weight management behaviors” and excessive exercise.TikTok said it will work to ensure the “For You” page, which serves as the main content feed on TikTok and is driven by an algorithm that caters to a user’s interests, no longer shows videos that promote “extended intermittent fasting,” exercises designed for “rapid and significant weight loss” or medications or supplements that promote muscle gain. The new regulations also aim to crack down on posts from influencers and other users promoting products used for weight loss or to suppress appetite, such as drugs like Ozempic. They also aim to curb content promoting anabolic steroid use.Under the new policy, machine learning models will attempt to flag and remove content that is considered potentially dangerous; a human moderation team will then review those posts to see if they need to remain off the For You feed, should be removed from age-restricted feeds or should be removed from the platform altogether, said Tara Wadhwa, TikTok’s director of policy in the United States.The elimination of problematic TikToks from the main feed is meant in part to “interrupt repetitive content patterns,” the new guidelines said. Ms. Wadhwa said the company wants to ensure users aren’t exposed to diet and weight loss content “in sequential order, or repeatedly over and over again.”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

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      Hilary Cass Says U.S. Doctors Are ‘Out of Date’ on Youth Gender Medicine

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      Dr. Hilary Cass published a landmark report that led to restrictions on youth gender care in Britain. U.S. health groups said it did not change their support of the care.After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass was hoping to begin her retirement by learning to play the saxophone.Instead, she took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria.At the time, in 2020, England’s sole youth gender clinic was in disarray. The waiting list had swelled, leaving many young patients waiting years for an appointment. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints that had spilled into public view. And a former patient had sued the clinic, claiming that she had transitioned as a teenager “after a series of superficial conversations with social workers.”The National Health Service asked Dr. Cass, who had never treated children with gender dysphoria but had served as the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, to independently evaluate how the agency should proceed.Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.”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

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      Are You Having a Millennial Mom Midlife Crisis?

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      Mothers have been exhausted since the beginning of time, but some difficulties are specific to the millennial generation.There was dog urine on the carpet, vomit on her blouse and a queasy 7-year-old to look after, but Dr. Whitney Casares had just a few spare moments to clean up and change so she could resume the keynote presentation she had been giving when the school nurse called.Dr. Casares, 42, a pediatrician in Portland, Ore., tried to clean up both messes and race back to her computer. “But I was completely unnerved and underperformed,” she said. “When my husband” — who hadn’t picked up when the school called — “and younger daughter came home a few hours later, the first words out of their mouths were ‘Didn’t you get anything for dinner?’ and ‘Why does it smell so bad in here?’”In that moment, said Dr. Casares, the author of “Doing It All: Stop Over-Functioning and Become the Mom and Person You’re Meant to Be,” she related to a Taylor Swift lyric: “I did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve.”It has always been exhausting to be a mother, but each generation has had its particular pressures and ways of coping. Boomer moms didn’t expect motherhood to be anything but difficult, though the lack of social awareness around anxiety and depression meant most would never openly discuss it. Generation X moms had to prove that they could do everything men could do — and then come home and work a second shift. Some Gen Xers were children of divorce, manifested an ironic detachment from their troubles and were prescribed Prozac to deal.And then came millennial moms, the women raised on “You go, girl!” in the 1980s and ’90s and who today are in their 30s and early 40s. On average, they enrolled in college in higher numbers than men, married later and delayed having children, sometimes to prioritize careers and other times because — with student debt and less wealth than previous generations — it felt impossible not to.Still, it seemed like some things had worked out in their favor. Perhaps they could juggle work and motherhood more successfully. Maybe their male partners, if they had them, would be more attuned to gender imbalances at home.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

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      Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Stabbings of 3 Homeless Men in Manhattan

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      Trevon Murphy, who a family member said had a history of mental health problems, killed one man and injured two others.A 42-year-old homeless man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Wednesday for stabbing three homeless men in Manhattan, one fatally, in a string of attacks during the summer of 2022.The man, Trevon Murphy, pleaded guilty in January to one felony count of murder in the second degree and two counts of attempted murder.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, had said that the attacks were committed against the city’s “most vulnerable” community members.“New Yorkers who face the painful and difficult experience of being unhoused shouldn’t have to simultaneously fear for their safety,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement on Wednesday.Mr. Murphy, who has a history of arrests and has struggled with mental illness, was arrested in July 2022 on charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the three stabbings, which took place over the course of a single week in July. All three men whom Mr. Murphy stabbed had been sleeping outside when the attacks occurred, according to prosecutors.Mr. Murphy’s lawyer, Kevin Canfield, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.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

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      Canada Re-Criminalizes Public Drug Use in British Columbia

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      A province that was a global pioneer in harm reduction took a step back after a political backlash.The government of Canada on Tuesday walked back part of a program allowing people in British Columbia to possess small amounts of drugs, including heroin and cocaine, without fear of criminal charges. At the request of the province and after a public backlash, people in British Columbia are no longer permitted to use drugs in public places.Under the changes, which went into effect immediately, adults will still be allowed to possess small amounts of drugs. But they will now have to use them in legal residences, at safe injection sites and at other harm-reduction centers established by the health authorities.The re-criminalization of public drug use in British Columbia underscores the difficulties that governments face as they grapple with the opioid crisis. Even in a province that has been a global pioneer of the harm reduction movement, an approach that seeks to reduce risky behavior rather than to punish drug users, there are no easy answers.The province’s coroner estimated that there were a record 2,511 toxic drug deaths last year. Drug overdoses from toxic substances kill more people ages 10 to 59 than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural diseases combined in British Columbia, according to the provincial coroner’s office.The goals of decriminalizing possession were to enable police officers to focus their time on large drug distributors rather than users and encourage users to be open to treatment. But concerns about public drug use have quickly surfaced and raised repeatedly in the provincial legislature by members of opposition parties.Eugenia Oviedo-Joekes, a professor in the medical school at the University of British Columbia who studies addiction and public health policy, said the decision amounted to “three steps back” in dealing with the opioid crisis.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