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Rates of Anxiety, Depression Rising Among Americans, Especially the Young
Rates of anxiety and depression among U.S. adults, especially younger folks, continues to rise, the latest federal data shows. Nearly 1 in every 5 (18.2%) adults reported anxiety issues in 2022, up from 15.6% in 2019, reported Emily Terlizzi and Benjamin Zablotsky, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As for depression, rates among adults rose from 18.5% to 21.4% during the same time period, the new survey found. Young adults were the most affected: More than a quarter (26.6%) of people ages 18 through 29 said they’d struggled with anxiety symptoms over the prior two weeks, compared to about 21% of those aged 30 to 44, just under 16% for those aged 45 to 64, and 11.2% among people 65 or older. For nearly 10% of young adults, their anxiety was rated as moderate or severe, the researchers noted.
Age-related trends were similar for depression: nearly 27% of young adults surveyed said they’d felt depressed at some point over the past two weeks, with rates dropping off with increasing age. The rate among seniors, for example, was 18.6%.
For almost 10% of young adults, depression symptoms were rated as moderate or severe.
None of these statistics will come as a surprise to health experts. In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a report outlining a “crisis” in mental health among American youth. “Young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth — telling them they are not good-looking enough, popular enough, smart enough or rich enough,” Murthy wrote in the report. “That comes as progress on legitimate, and distressing, issues like climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the opioid epidemic and gun violence feels too slow.”
UK Identifies 4 Cases of New Mpox Variant, the 1st Cluster Outside Africa
British health officials say they have identified four cases of the new, more infectious version of mpox that first emerged in Congo, marking the first time the variant has caused a cluster of illness outside of Africa. Scientists said the risk to the public remains low.
Authorities announced the first case of the new form of mpox in the U.K. last week, saying the case was being treated at a London hospital after recently traveling to countries in Africa with ongoing outbreaks. This week, the U.K. Health Security Agency said it had now identified three further cases who lived in the same household as the first patient. They too are now being treated at a hospital in London.
“Mpox is very infectious in households with close contact and so it is not unexpected to see further cases within the same household,” said Susan Hopkins, chief medical advisor of the U.K. Health Security Agency.
The new variant of mpox was first detected earlier this year in eastern Congo. Scientists believe it causes milder symptoms that are harder to notice, which makes it easier to spread because people may not know they are infected. Its spread in Congo and elsewhere in Africa prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency in August.
Britain recorded more than 3,000 cases of another type of mpox during a 2022 outbreak that hit more than 100 countries. The new variant of mpox has also caused outbreaks in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Single cases in travelers have also been reported in Sweden, India, Germany and Thailand.
Confusion Mounts in Another U.S. City Grappling With Lead in Its Taps
After assuring residents here for months that their tap water is safe to drink despite earlier tests showing high lead levels, city officials announced Thursday that some of their earlier assessments were done improperly.
The news in Syracuse — the latest U.S. city grappling with a crisis over contaminated drinking water — comes after officials first disclosed in August that samples collected in the spring found that dozens of homes had dangerous levels of lead exposure.
The city said 10% of the homes it surveyed had levels more than four times the Environmental Protection Agency threshold that triggers government enforcement, or more than twice what officials found during the Flint, Michigan, water crisis a decade ago.
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For Fame or a Death Wish? Kids’ TikTok Challenge Injuries Stump Psychiatrists
Kids and teens can make some pretty hairbrained choices sometimes. But when a kid’s choice is to engage in a TikTok challenge that threatens their life, psychiatrists can struggle to understand if it was just an exasperating poor choice born out of impulsivity and immaturity or something darker — an actual suicide attempt.
In a Viewpoint published today in JAMA Psychiatry, two psychiatrists from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis raise the alarm about the dangers and complexities of TikTok challenges. They’re an “emerging public health concern” for kids, the psychiatrists write, and they’re blurring the lines between unintentional injuries and suicide attempts in children and teens.
The child and adolescent psychiatrists Onomeasike Ataga and Valerie Arnold say that their psychiatry team first saw injuries from TikTok challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the trend has continued since the pandemic eased.
Over recent years, they’ve seen children and teens hospitalized from a variety of challenges, including the “blackout challenge,” in which participants attempt to choke themselves until they pass out; the “Benadryl challenge,” in which participants ingest a large amount of the allergy medicine to get high and hallucinate; and the “fire challenge,” in which participants pour a flammable liquid on their body and light it on fire.
In these cases, the psychiatry team is sometimes called in to help assess whether the children and teens had an intent to self-harm. It’s often hard to determine — and thus hard to decide on treatment recommendations.
Australia to Ban Social Media for Kids Under 16
Australia is set to ban social media for kids under 16, in a stated attempt to minimize “harms that are being caused to young people” through the platforms. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the measures on Thursday, after a decision by his government on Monday.
“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Albanese said in a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. “I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online.”
“We don’t argue that the changes that we will be legislating will fix everything immediately,” he added. “We have laws such as people can’t buy alcohol if they’re under 18, and from time to time that can be broken. But those laws set what the parameters are for our society and they assist in ensuring the right outcomes.”
Findings Indicate 10% of Children in High-Burden Tuberculosis Settings May Develop the Disease by Age 10
An estimated 1.2 million children develop tuberculosis disease (TB) and 200,000 kids die from TB worldwide each year, but the risk of developing TB infection and disease throughout childhood remains under-studied.
A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), the University of São Paulo, and the University of Cape Town sheds new light on this risk, by finding that there is a high risk of TB infection and disease in children up to 10 years old who live in areas where TB spread is common. Published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the study is the first birth cohort study to assess TB infection and active TB disease during children’s first decade of life in high-burden settings.
The new results found that there was a consistently high rate of annual TB infection among children in the study group — between 4–9% — and that more than 10% of children developed TB disease by the time they were 10 years old. The study builds upon a previous analysis by some of the researchers which also found high rates of TB infection and disease in children up to five years old.
“‘These results are striking and show that children in these communities in South Africa are at extraordinarily high risk,” says study co-senior author Dr. Leonardo Martinez, assistant professor of epidemiology at BUSPH.
