People with an obsessive urge to constantly check the news are more likely to suffer from stress, anxiety, as well as physical ill health, finds a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Communication. During the last two years we have lived through a series of worrying global events, from the COVID pandemic to Russia...
A 6-year-old boy began hearing voices coming from the walls and the school intercom telling him to hurt himself and others. He saw ghosts, aliens in trees, and colored footprints. Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD, a psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital, put him on antipsychotic medications and the frightening hallucinations stopped. Another child, at age 4, had hallucinations...
Caregivers who consume digital media for relaxation are more likely to engage in negative parenting practices, according to a new multinational study. The new study led by the University of Waterloo aimed to investigate the relationship between caregivers’ use of digital media, mental health, and parenting practices at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On average,...
When a patient goes to a hospital or clinic, they might not realize that their digital medical records and samples of their blood or tissue may get used in ways far beyond guiding their care. But a new study suggests that many members of the public want to know if their health information or samples from...
The cigarette is the only legal consumer product that – when used as intended – causes the premature death of half of long-term users. To address this long-standing health threat, in late June 2022, the Biden-Harris administration announced a plan to move forward with a new standard for cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products that...
Kathryn H. Jacobsen, University of Richmond After news broke that the U.S. declared monkeypox to be a public health emergency, friends and family started asking me, an infectious disease epidemiologist, if monkeypox is about to begin causing widespread death and chaos. I assured them that the Aug. 4, 2022, public health emergency declaration is about...
Racial discrimination increases the risk for physical and mental illnesses, and Black women suffer from diseases at significantly higher rates than White women. How traumatic experiences such as discrimination increase vulnerability to illness remains the topic of intense research. Now, a new study shows that the experience of racial discrimination affects the microstructure of the brain, as...
As the strength or potency of cannabis products has increased internationally over the years, so have rates of people being treated for cannabis addiction, say the authors of a new study. Researchers from the Addiction and Mental Health Group at the University of Bath (UK) systematically analysed the relationship between the types of cannabis people use and...
Estimates suggest that more than 160 million women and adolescents who wanted to avoid pregnancy were not using contraceptives in 2019, despite significant progress in the use of modern contraceptives globally over the previous 50 years. Major disparities in contraceptive use still exist between regions – with more than half the women with unmet need...
We often hear the phrase ‘growing pains’ used by the general public to describe muscle or joint pain in young people and the term is also used by health professionals. However researchers have found there is no consistent medical definition of the condition behind a diagnosis. A broad review of medical literature by University of...
