Month: April 2019

The day after Tarek Saoud contemplated ending his life, the college student reached out for help on the campus of the university in Ohio he attended.

“I called the student mental health services and they told me I could see one of their therapists in, like, two months, which wasn’t going to work for me, unless it was urgent,” he recalls. “So I called back a week later when I was like, ‘I’m not going to survive this any longer, and they asked if it was urgent and I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Does that mean suicidal?’ I said ‘Yes’ and then at that point they got me an appointment the next week.”

The delay frustrated Saoud, now 22, who by that point had been thinking about suicide for months.

“For me it was a do-or-die situation,” he says. “When I called health services and told them I was suicidal, that was very true. I don’t want to say I made an attempt the night before but it looks like it was very close. A friend found me and told me straight up what I needed to hear, which was, ‘You can’t be here anymore. You need help now.’”

The delay Saoud experienced in getting the mental health care he was desperate for highlights a growing unmet need on college campuses throughout the country.

In the spring of 2018, more than 63 percent of college students experienced overwhelming anxiety, according to the American College Health Association. But those who seek help increasingly are likely to find they have to get in line.

For example, students at the University of California wait up to six weeks to see an on-campus counselor or therapist if it’s not an emergency. At California State University, it can take two to four weeks to get an appointment.

A 2017 special report by STAT, which is affiliated with the Boston Globe newspaper, found it could take up to three weeks to get a counseling appointment at Northwestern University in Illinois. The average wait time at Washington University in St. Louis, was nearly 13 days, while delays were so routine at Seattle’s University of Washington that the wait times, between two and three weeks, were posted online.

The lack of access to mental health care is not solely limited to college campuses.

Nearly six in 10 — 56 percent — of Americans report seeking or wanting to find mental health services for themselves or a loved one. But it’s not always easy to get the care they’re looking for.

“We have a real unmet need in this country,” says Dr. Vaile Wright of the American Psychological Association (APA). “And what I mean by that is when we look at those who need or want to seek out mental health services and then we look at how many providers, there’s a gap where we just don’t have enough providers now and/or projection going forward to meet the need of those with mental and behavioral health issues.”

While demand psychiatric services increases, there’s a growing shortage of outpatient and inpatient programs, according to the National Council for Behavioral Health, which also found that more than 60 percent of practicing psychiatrists are over the age of 55 and will soon near retirement.

By 2030, there will be 22,000 fewer psychiatrists than required to meet growing demand, according to APA projections.

Right now, almost three-fourths of Americans — 74 percent — don’t feel mental health care is accessible for everyone, while almost half — 47 percent — believe their options are limited.

Sometimes it comes down to not knowing how to seek the help they need.

“I think people still don’t necessarily know who to see for their problem, or how to find them, or how to pay for it,” Wright says. “If you are experiencing a mental or behavioral health issue, your emotional distress can often interfere with your ability to figure some of this stuff out, and the stigma which continues to surround mental health, then makes it hard to ask those around us to maybe assist us.”

Wright says expanding access to national programs like Medicaid — the number one provider of mental health services in the United States — and the Affordable Care Act, could help provide more low-cost options for individuals in need of mental health care.

“We know that individuals with untreated mental and behavioral health issues, if they are working, have lower productivity, more absenteeism, so there are economic and workforce costs associated with mental health disorders,” Wright says.

Saoud, the college student, eventually got an appointment at the campus mental health center, but his frustrations continued.

“And then after that, I couldn’t get a follow-up appointment,” he recalls. “They scheduled me for a month later for a follow-up and that ended up getting canceled. Then it was summer at that point.”

Saoud ultimately left the Ohio college for good three weeks before the end of his sophomore year. Once he returned home, he started seeing both a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and he is now on medication.

After taking a semester off, Saoud is living at home while attending a nearby community college. He hopes to transfer to a different four-year university when he feels ready.

 
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One in five deaths globally is linked to poor diet, experts said in a study released Thursday, warning that overconsumption of sugar, salt and meat was killing millions of people every year. 

The United Nations estimates that nearly 1 billion people worldwide are malnourished, while nearly 2 billion are “overnourished.”  

But the latest study on global diet trends, published in The Lancet, showed that in nearly every one of the 195 countries surveyed, people were also eating too much of the wrong types of food — and consuming worryingly low levels of healthier produce. 

Sugar, sodium

For example, the world on average consumes more than 10 times the recommended amount of sugar-sweetened beverages, and 86 percent more sodium per person than is considered safe. 

The study, which examined consumption and disease trends between 1990 and 2017, also cautioned that too many people were eating far too few whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds to maintain a healthy lifestyle. 

Of the 11 million deaths attributed to poor diet, by far the largest killer was cardiovascular disease, which is often caused or worsened by obesity. 

“This study affirms what many have thought for several years — that poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor in the world,” said study author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.  

“Our assessment suggests the leading dietary risk factors are high intake of sodium, or low intake of health foods.”  

The report highlighted large variation in diet-related deaths among nations, with the highest-risk country, Uzbekistan, having 10 times the food-based mortality rate of the lowest risk, Israel.  

Earlier report

In January, a consortium of three dozen researchers called for a dramatic shift in the way the world eats. 

The EAT-Lancet report said that the global population must eat roughly half as much red meat and sugar, and twice as many vegetables, fruits and nuts in order to avert a worldwide obesity epidemic and avoid “catastrophic” climate change. 

Authors of Thursday’s study noted that economic inequality was a factor in poor dietary choices in many countries.  

It found that on average, reaching the “five a day” fruit and vegetable servings advocated by doctors cost just 2 percent of household income in rich nations, but more than a half of household income in poorer ones. 

“This study gives us good evidence of what to target to improve diets, and therefore health, at the global and national level,” said Oyinlola Oyebode, associate professor at Warwick Medical School in Coventry, England, who was not involved in the research. 

“The lack of fruit, vegetables and whole grains in diets across the world are very important — but the other dietary factor highlighted by this study is the high intake of sodium,” Oyebode said.
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Spain’s health minister called on Wednesday for so-called conversion therapy to be abolished after a report that a branch of the Catholic Church had offered to “cure” gay people.

El Diario, an online newspaper, said a reporter posing as a gay man trying to change his sexuality was told to stop watching porn and masturbate less in a counselling session provided by a diocese of the Catholic Church close to the capital Madrid. Its representatives called the report “fake news.”

Minister expresses regret

But Maria Luisa Carcedo Roces, Spain’s minister for health, consumption and social welfare, expressed regret that the practice persisted, saying it was illegal and calling for it to be “completely abolished.”

“I thought that in Spain, accepting the various sexual orientations was assumed in all areas, but unfortunately we see that there are still pockets where people are told what their sexual orientation should be,” she said at a press conference.

“I regret that this is happening and that a law is being broken,” she said, according to an audio recording sent to the Thomson Reuters Foundation by the ministry press office.

Conversion therapy, which can include hypnosis and electric shocks, is based on the belief that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a mental illness that can be cured.

Promoting or carrying out conversion therapy is banned in the region of Madrid, regardless of whether the person undergoing it has consented or not. Punishments include fines of up to 45,000 euros ($51,000).

‘Fake news’

In a statement on its website the diocese of Alcala de Henares called the report “fake news” and said that while it acknowledged the “respect and love due to all people,” it would offer help to “all those who freely request it.”

Books recommended on the Alcala diocese website include “How to prevent homosexuality: children and gender confusion.”

The minister also said offering such courses to children would contravene their rights, and that if the law continued to be broken, the Department of Justice would have to decide what action to take.

El Diario said the therapist at the Regina Familiae counselling center had told the undercover reporter that she “could go to jail” for trying to help him become straight.

Treatment outlawed

Malta, Ecuador and just over a dozen U.S. states have outlawed conversion therapy, according to the ILGA, a network of LGBT+ rights groups. Countries including Britain, New Zealand and Australia are considering bans.

A fifth of gay, lesbian and bisexual British people who have tried to change their sexuality have attempted suicide, according to a study of the controversial practice in Britain that was released in February.
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Boeing’s new space capsule for astronauts faces more launch delays.

The Starliner capsule was supposed to make its debut this month, after a series of postponements. But the first test flight is now off until August. And the second test flight, with astronauts, won’t occur until late in the year.

NASA announced the revised lineup Wednesday. At the same time, officials said the first Starliner crew will remain at the International Space Station longer than the few weeks originally anticipated. The mission length will be decided later.

SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew provider, successfully flew its new Dragon capsule without a crew to the International Space Station last month. The first flight with astronauts could be as early as this summer, but the schedule is under review.

Boeing said the last major milestones have been cleared and the capsule is almost finished. But scheduling conflicts with an early summer Air Force launch helped push the Starliner’s debut into August. 

The Starliner will fly on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, the same kind of rocket needed for the Air Force’s critical mission in late June, from the same pad.

While the first SpaceX astronauts will visit the space station for a few weeks at most, the Starliner’s three-person crew will move into the orbiting complex for an extended period. The typical station stay is about six months.

NASA wants to reduce its reliance on expensive Russian Soyuz capsules as soon as possible, and so the Boeing test flight will double as a taxi mission for station residents. NASA astronauts have been riding Russian rockets since the end of the space shuttle program.

SpaceX Dragons and Boeing Starliners will return human launches to Florida, following the eight-year hiatus. NASA contracted with the two companies to handle space station ferry flights, so it could focus on getting astronauts to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
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Boeing anti-stall software forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet even after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash.

A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster is due to be published within days and may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 MAX dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

A third person familiar with the findings confirmed the software had fired up again after pilots had initially switched it off, but said there was only one significant episode in which the plane pointed itself lower in the moments before the crash.

The so-called MCAS software is at the center of accident probes in both the crash of Ethiopian flight 302 and a Lion Air accident in Indonesia five months earlier that together killed 346 people.

It was not immediately clear whether the Ethiopian crew chose to re-deploy the system, which pushes the Boeing 737 MAX downwards to avoid stalling. But one of the sources said investigators were studying the possibility that the software started working again without human intervention.

In a statement on media reports about the investigation, Boeing said: “We urge caution against speculating and drawing conclusions on the findings prior to the release of the flight data and the preliminary report.”

Ethiopian investigators were not available for comment.

The Ethiopian crash led to a global grounding of 737 MAX jets and scrutiny of its certification process. Initial results of the accident investigation are due within days.

The stakes are high. The 737 MAX is Boeing’s top-selling jet with almost 5,000 on order. Ethiopian Airlines is also in the midst of an expansion drive, while other 737 MAX customers and victims’ families want answers, and potentially compensation.

Boeing shares were down 1.5 percent at 1450 GMT. They have lost more than 8.5 percent since the Ethiopian crash.

Emergency procedures

Getting the planes flying again depends partly on the role that Boeing design features are found to have played in the crash, though investigators are also paying attention to airline operations, crew actions and regulatory measures.

Boeing is upgrading the MCAS software and training while stressing that existing cockpit procedures enable safe flight.

People familiar with the investigation have already said the anti-stall software was activated by erroneous ‘angle of attack’ data from a key aircraft sensor.

Now, the investigation has turned towards how MCAS was initially disabled by pilots, but then appeared to resume sending automated instructions to point downwards before the jet plunged to the ground, the two sources said.

Boeing issued guidelines to pilots on how to disable the anti-stall system after the Indonesian crash, reminding pilots to use cut-out switches in the console to shut off the system in the event of problems.

Cockpit procedures call for pilots to leave the MCAS system off for the rest of the flight once it has been disengaged.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the pilots had initially followed Boeing’s emergency procedures but later deviated from them as they tried to regain control of the plane.

Disabling the system does not shut down MCAS completely but severs an electrical link between the software’s attempts to give orders to push the plane lower and the actual controls, a person familiar with the aircraft system said.

Investigators are studying whether there are any conditions under which MCAS could re-activate itself automatically, without the pilots intentionally reversing the cut-out maneuver.

Aerospace analyst Bjorn Fehrm said in a blog post for Leeham News that pilots may have deliberately re-activated the system in order to make it easier to trim or control the aircraft only to be overwhelmed too quickly by counter-moves from MCAS.

Safety experts stress the investigation is far from complete and most aviation disasters are caused by a unique combination of human and technical factors.
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U.S. health officials are investigating whether electronic cigarettes may trigger seizures in some people who use the nicotine-vaping devices.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it is reviewing 35 reports of seizures among e-cigarette users, particularly young people.

Regulators say it’s not yet clear whether vaping is responsible. But they say they’re concerned and want the public to report any information about the issue.

Most e-cigarettes heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor. The battery-powered devices are a fast-growing industry though there are no rules on how much nicotine they deliver.

Nicotine poisoning can cause seizures, convulsions, vomiting and brain injury. The FDA has previously warned of nicotine poisoning in children who accidentally swallowed the formulas used for vaping.

 
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