Black Americans are less likely to receive mental health treatment than the overall population. But as needs soar this year, faith leaders are tapping health professionals to share coping skills churchgoers and the community can use immediately.
A proposal in Washington state would use right-to-try laws to allow terminally ill patients access to psilocybin — the famed magic mushrooms of America’s psychedelic ’60s — to ease depression and anxiety.
As the coronavirus surges around the country, workers in nursing homes and assisted living centers are watching cases rise in long-term care facilities with a sense of dread. Many of these workers struggle with grief over the suffering they’ve witnessed.
With employees emotionally drained and residents suffering from loss, many nursing homes and assisted living centers are working with chaplains, social workers and mental health professionals to help people deal with the effects of the coronavirus.
Because loved ones are often kept apart from critically ill COVID-19 patients, the families may be especially vulnerable to symptoms including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that can be debilitating.
Seniors tend to have more serious symptoms than younger coronavirus patients, including the aftereffects of hospital-based delirium. Doctors recommend physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and cognitive rehabilitation.
Reports are on the rise regarding excruciating headaches, stomach upsets for weeks on end, sudden outbreaks of shingles and flare-ups of autoimmune disorders. A common thread among the complaints, one that has been months in the making, is chronic stress.
These seniors use coping strategies to keep them socially active yet safe from the coronavirus.
Daniel Prude’s family knew he needed psychiatric care and tried to get it for him. Instead, his encounter with police hours after he was released from Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, proved fatal.
The climate change center at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health plans to study and help implement policies for slowing climate change and adapting to it.