Our Mental Health Crisis is Getting Worse. New 988 Suicide Hotline Can be our Fresh Start.
USA Today | Dr. Jerome Adams
This column contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know might be struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Before COVID-19, nearly 40 million people in the United States were identified in 2019 as having mental illness. Worse, fewer than half (45%) received treatment. The stress of the pandemic has exacerbated this crisis, with isolation, stress and worsening access to treatment.
Across the country, mental illness and suicide rates are high and rising. Approximately 20% of adults reported in 2020 that they suffered from mental illness, and the share of adults reporting anxiety or depression disorders spiked to over 41% last year.
Deaths attributed to suicide
About 47,500 deaths were attributed to suicide in 2019, compared with more than 38,000 in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mental illness and suicide are particularly pronounced among young people and those in rural areas. In rural America, higher suicide rates are further compounded by even greater challenges in accessing care.
Let's go nationwide: Our clinics meet mental health needs and lighten the load on law enforcement
July's launch of 988, a new mental health crisis response number, marks a historic opportunity to ensure that the growing number of people in crisis can get appropriate and more equitable access to mental health services – and that our broader emergency response infrastructure (which includes 911, emergency medical services and law enforcement) can guide people to the right places, at the right times.
By July 16, all telecommunications carriers must provide access to 988, which will direct calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a switchboard that provides free crisis counseling and emotional support to more than 2 million callers a year and connects them to one of more than 180 crisis centers nationwide.
The new, easy-to-remember 988 will provide an alternate access point into care and help keep people in crisis from needlessly cycling through hospital emergency rooms and the criminal justice system. It will also provide minority communities that are often fearful of calling 911 for a loved one in mental health crisis, an option less biased toward a response based solely in law enforcement…
Read Full Article |
Why the Omicron Offshoot BA.5 is a Big Deal
CNN | By Brenda Goodman
Once again, Covid-19 seems to be everywhere. If you feel caught off-guard, you aren't alone.
After the Omicron tidal wave washed over the United States in January and the smaller rise in cases in the spring caused by the BA.2 subvariant, it might have seemed like the coronavirus could be ignored for a while. After all, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in December that nearly all Americans had been vaccinated or have antibodies from a past infection. Surely all that immunity bought some breathing room.
But suddenly, many people who had recovered from Covid-19 as recently as March or April found themselves exhausted, coughing and staring at two red lines on a rapid test. How could this be happening again -- and so soon?
The culprit this time is yet another Omicron offshoot, BA.5. It has three key mutations in its spike protein that make it both better at infecting our cells and more adept at slipping past our immune defenses.
In just over two months, BA.5 outcompeted its predecessors to become the dominant cause of Covid-19 in the United States. Last week, this subvariant caused almost 2 out of every 3 new Covid-19 infections in this country, according to the latest data from the CDC.
Lab studies of antibodies from the blood of people who've been vaccinated or recovered from recent Covid-19 infections have looked at how well they stand up to BA.5, and this subvariant can outmaneuver them. So people who've had Covid as recently as winter or even spring may again be vulnerable to the virus.
"We do not know about the clinical severity of BA.4 and BA.5 in comparison to our other Omicron subvariants," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing Tuesday. "But we do know it to be more transmissible and more immune-evading. People with prior infection, even with BA.1 and BA.2, are likely still at risk for BA.4 or BA.5."
A 'full-on' wave
The result is that we're getting sick in droves. As Americans have switched to more rapid at-home tests, official case counts -- currently hovering around 110,000 new infections a day -- reflect just a fraction of the true disease burden
"We estimate that for every reported case there are 7 unreported," Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, wrote in an email.
Other experts think the wave could be as much as 10 times higher than what's being reported now.
"We're looking at probably close to a million new cases a day," Dr. Peter Hotez said Monday on CNN. "This is a full-on BA.5 wave that we're experiencing this summer. It's actually looking worse in the Southern states, just like 2020, just like 2021," said Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
That puts us in the range of cases reported during the first Omicron wave, in January. Remember when it seemed like everyone everywhere got sick at the same time? That's the situation in the United States again.
It may not seem like a very big deal, because vaccines and better treatments have dramatically cut the risk of death from Covid-19. Still, about 300 to 350 people are dying on average each day from Covid-19, enough to fill a large passenger jet…
Read Full Article |
|
Walk It Off: Exercise Therapy for Meniscal Tears on Par With Surgery — Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy Takes Another Hit
By James Lopilato
Exercise-based physical therapy remained noninferior to arthroscopic partial meniscectomy for treating degenerative meniscal tears, according to longer-term data from the ESCAPE trial, suggesting physical therapy be the preferred treatment over surgery.
By the 5-year mark, patient-reported knee function after 16 sessions of physical therapy was non-inferior to that observed after surgery, with a between-group difference of 3.5 points on the 100-point International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form (95% CI 0.7-6.3, P<0.001 for noninferiority) on intention-to-treat analysis, according to movement scientist Julia Noorduyn, MSc, from OLVG Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues.
Read Full Article |
Common Injections Don’t Help Knee Osteoarthritis More Than Placebo, Large Data Review Finds
State News | By Isabella Cueto
A commonly used treatment for people with knee osteoarthritis is barely more effective than the placebo effect in reducing pain and improving function, a new review of 50 years of data found. Yet despite decades of mounting evidence showing hyaluronic acid injections don’t help most osteoarthritis patients, the shots have become more widely used, costing the American health care system over $300 million each year in Medicare claims alone.
Osteoarthritis is an incurable, chronic condition that occurs as cartilage breaks down in the knees, hips, hands, or other joints, resulting in pain, limited range of motion, and swelling. More than 32 million adults in the United States have osteoarthritis, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since there is no cure, people with osteoarthritis often manage their condition with exercise, physical therapy, medications, and injected therapies. Since the 1970s, hyaluronic acid has been one of those injectables.
Originally sourced from cartilage in the fleshy, flamboyant-red crown atop a rooster’s head, the treatment has been dubbed the “rooster comb injection,” and thought to offer a gelatinous cushion for worn-down joints. In 2018, it was administered as the first treatment to an estimated one in seven patients with osteoarthritic knee pain, according to a paper published in The BMJ medical journal on Wednesday.
That broad look at the scientific literature concluded that injecting hyaluronic acid — called viscosupplementation — offers such a small reduction in knee osteoarthritis pain and stiffness when compared to placebo shots that it makes no meaningful difference in the lives of patients. Moreover, the shots were also linked to a greater risk of experiencing a wide range of negative side effects, the paper reported.
Read Full Article |
|
