In the News
For almost two centuries now, scientists have noticed a place's suicide rate bears troubling links to the changing of the seasons and the friendliness of its climate.
In 1881, the Italian physician Enrico Morselli noted that suicide rates peak in the summer, deeming the effect "too great for it to be attributed to chance of the human will." Two decades later, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim noticed the same effect—though he also found the suicide rate was higher in Scandinavian countries.
SAN FRANCISCO — Here in the technology epicenter of the world, developers are increasingly writing code and launching products to try to disrupt yet another field: mental health.
Even as big tech players have conquered the markets in industries like transportation and lodging, they've largely steered clear of mental health treatment. Now, however, with an influx of funding, companies are revamping pills with digital sensors, designing virtual reality worlds to treat addiction and other conditions, and building chatbots for interactive therapy.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline saw calls double from 2014 to 2017, an increase that coincides with rising suicide rates this decade in the United States.
The helpline answered over 2 million calls in 2017, up from approximately 1 million calls in 2014. In 2015 and 2016, the helpline answered over 1.5 million calls each year.
Dr. Elliot Tapper has treated a lot of patients, but this one stood out.
"His whole body was yellow," Tapper remembers. "He could hardly move. It was difficult for him to breathe, and he wasn't eating anything."
Adela Carranco was just 11 years old when her mother discovered she was planning to kill herself.
Her suicidal intentions were tapped out in cold detail on her cell phone, from options for ending her life—take pills, get run over, or slit her wrists—to notes saying goodbye to loved ones.
The more teens use social-media networking sites, video games and streaming services, the higher their risk of developing symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a new study found.
The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked 2,500 teens over two years and monitored their usage and symptoms.
The urge to pull down statues extends well beyond the public squares of nations in turmoil. Lately it has been stirring the air in some corners of science, particularly psychology.
(Reuters) - A civil rights group asked a federal judge on Thursday to order the U.S. government to provide mental health counselling for the around 2,000 immigrant children separated from their parents by officials at the U.S.-Mexican border.
Vicki Bartholomew started a support group for wives who are caring for a husband with Alzheimer's disease because she needed that sort of group herself.
They meet every month in a conference room at a new memory-care facility in Nashville called Abe's Garden, where Bartholomew's husband was one of the first residents — a Vietnam veteran and prominent attorney in Nashville.
California is suffering a shortage of mental health professionals – and it's expected to get worse in the next decade.
In 2013, California had a shortage of 336 psychiatrists, according to national projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration, cited by the state Governor's Office.