Using alcohol to cope with negative emotions after military deployment is known to be common among active-duty servicemembers. But a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs suggests that Army Guard soldiers who return home after deployment may face similar risks. Further, the situation might be more troublesome for Guard soldiers who were...
People who kill themselves with a firearm are more likely to talk about suicide a month before ending their lives than ask for help and seek mental health treatment, according to a study by the New Jersey Gun Violence Center at Rutgers University. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, also found that those who died by suicide...
While much of the focus on education during the pandemic has involved the effects on children in schools, it is also having a negative impact on teachers, administrators, social workers, psychologists and school staff. Approximately one-third of teachers report that they experienced at least one incident of verbal harassment or threat of violence from students...
Having trouble hearing? Just turn up your shirt. That’s the idea behind a new “acoustic fabric” developed by engineers at MIT and collaborators at Rhode Island School of Design. The team has designed a fabric that works like a microphone, converting sound first into mechanical vibrations, then into electrical signals, similarly to how our ears...
Two years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, inflation, money issues and the war in Ukraine have pushed U.S. stress to alarming levels, according to polls conducted for the American Psychological Association. A late-breaking poll, fielded March 1–3 by The Harris Poll on behalf of APA, revealed striking findings, with more...
As COVID-19 upended societal norms when it swept through the United States in 2020, a second pandemic — or “infodemic”— was also on the rise. An analysis of Twitter users by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and University of Texas, Austin, suggests that Republican-identifying individuals who believe their local government has positive intentions...
In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being. A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today,...
The first study ever to examine sleeping behavior in a wild group of primates has challenged a central tenet of sleep science: that we must make up for lost sleep. Even after sleeping poorly, wild baboons still spent time on other priorities, such as socializing with group-mates or looking out for predators, rather than catching up...
Transmission of respiratory viruses depends partly on the rate of close social contacts in a population. A study publishing March 1st in PLOS Medicine by Amy Gimma at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues suggests that during the most restrictive period of lockdown in the United Kingdom, the number of reported contacts decreased by...
Many new mothers experience unwanted and intrusive thoughts about intentionally harming their babies, but those thoughts don’t appear to increase the likelihood that they will actually harm their newborn, according to a new UBC study. The researchers note that such thoughts should be discussed with new mothers as a normal, albeit unpleasant and likely distressing,...
