Mental

New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced Wednesday a lawsuit targeting five major social media platforms, alleging the companies that host the platforms are responsible for “fueling the nationwide youth mental health crisis.” The lawsuit, filed in California by the City of New York, seeks accountability from the companies behind five major platforms: Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Google’s YouTube. “Over the past decade, we have seen just how addictive and…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain If you are an educator or a parent, you have likely already seen many ways in which "the kids are not alright." Mounting evidence shows that the mental health of American youth has been declining for at least a decade. During the pandemic, it took an even sharper downturn. The Centers for Disease Control and…

Chris Bardenhagen used to shrug off any worries about mental health, but the stresses of taking over his struggling family farm now have him seriously considering therapy. Bardenhagen is a sixth-generation farmer who grew up on an 80-acre multicrop orchard in Michigan that his family has run since the 1800s. And it all was officially transferred to him on January 1—a transition that he says has “been too much too fast” as he has scrambled to find financial support and profitable crops.“We needed to simplify the farm for…

After designating social media as a "public health hazard" in late January, New York City is now suing Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok for "fueling nationwide youth mental health crisis." Specifically, these companies face three counts in the lawsuit: public nuisance, negligence and gross negligence. The Mayor Eric Adams administration accuses TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube of "endangering our children's mental health, promoting addiction, and encouraging unsafe behavior."These are allegedly achieved by…

Recent research from the University of Otago has demonstrated that kiwifruit, a rich source of vitamin C, can quickly enhance mood and vitality, showing effects in as little as four days. The study, which involved 155 adults with low vitamin C levels, utilized smartphone surveys to track improvements in mood, vitality, and overall well-being. The findings underscore the benefits of incorporating nutrient-rich foods like kiwifruit into one’s diet for mental health and introduce a novel approach to nutritional research.…

The boy hated himself.Six months into his first year in high school, he dropped out. For more than a year, he isolated himself in his Huntington Beach bedroom where he became addicted to video games and anonymously vented his anger online with racist and misogynistic screeds, haunted by suicidal thoughts and fantasies about hurting others. His health deteriorated as he binged on pepperoni pizza, grew obese and developed terrible rashes. Then Ben Chida ventured out of his room.Today, Chida, 38, is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s…

L eigha Sanderson always wanted to dance, but it was never going to be easy for her. Sanderson, 16, was born with spina bifida, a congenital birth defect in which the spinal cord fails to form properly. She spent her early years in and out of the hospital, undergoing dozens of surgeries; she still regularly struggles with pain and bladder infections, and since she was five, has used a catheter to go to the bathroom. “The school nurse was my best friend growing up,” she says.  Around 2013, when Sanderson…

Some women’s worst nightmare is to go missing. Having the authority “Netflix and chill” instead of trying to find them must come pretty close to the second biggest fear.A woman who had gone missing for half a day after suffering from a mental health crisis was utterly stunned when she discovered that the police, who had been sent to search for her, had spent several hours inside her home streaming shows and “chilling.”A search party had been looking for 21-year-old Abbygail Lawton, in Wigan, UK, with a police helicopter…

The news: An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England’s National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups who are less likely to seek help, new research has found. What happened: The new study from the AI company Limbic, examined data from 129,400 people visiting websites to refer themselves to 28 mental health services across England, half of which used the chatbot on their website and half of which did not. The number of referrals…

“What if I told you one of the strongest choices you could make was the choice to ask for help?” says a young, twentysomething woman in a red sweater, before recommending that viewers seek out counselling. This advert, promoted on Instagram and other social media platforms, is just one of many campaigns created by the California-based company BetterHelp, which offers to connect users with online therapists.The need for sophisticated digital alternatives to conventional face-to-face therapy has been well established in…