Viewpoints: How To Help Youth Handle Mental Health Struggles; Time To Revisit Quality Of Life Issue

USA Today: Youth Mental Health Crisis: A Simple Coping Toolbox Can Help Children
We are facing a national child and adolescent mental health crisis. Dr. Vivek H. Murphy, U.S. surgeon general warned of the “devastating” impact of the pandemic on young people. Three of the leading organizations in the field agree. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have cited dramatic increases in emergency department visits for all mental health emergencies, including suspected suicide attempts. Social media and its increased use due to the global pandemic is a leading factor in anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among today’s youth. Children and teens need other outlets and coping skills. (Alysha Tagert, 1/23)

The Star Tribune: Bring On The 'Right To Live' Debate 
When resources are scarce, who gets to decide who lives and who dies? Who gets to decide when and to whom care will be delivered? And who decides what sort of care they can get? The debate is not new, but now again begs attention ("When death is coming, difficult choices are required," Jan. 20). (Jim Abeler and John Hoffman, 1/24)

Stat: What's Blocking Health Care Boards On Diversity, Equity, Inclusion? 
Governing boards of health systems tend to be conservative and bound by tradition, often populated by pillars of the local community who have a vested interest in helping the organization succeed but who tend to be averse to change. And yet, especially considering the effects of Covid-19 and recent societal upheaval around issues like structural racism and health equity, it is time for health care boards to get creative and adopt new procedures and practices, especially regarding diversity. They would be well served by pressure testing and changing some of their “time-honored” practices and modernizing. (Jim King and Philip Burton, 1/25)

Chicago Tribune: As The Pandemic Has Shown, More Needs To Be Done To Factor Sex, Gender Into Biological Research 
Tuesday marks the sixth anniversary of the Sex as a Biological Variable, or SABV, policy. You probably have not heard of this policy, but it may someday save your life. On Jan. 25, 2016, the National Institutes of Health enacted this landmark policy that requires all federally funded investigators to consider sex as a biological variable in basic science and clinical research studies. Although Congress passed a law in 1993 requiring women to be included in government-funded clinical research, the NIH didn’t require this for researchers working in preclinical labs until more than two decades later. In 2018, Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and 27 other federal lawmakers officially designated Jan. 25 as Women’s Health Research Day. (Pavitra Kotini-Shah and Jeannette Wolfe, 1/24)

USA Today: COVID Shows Our Health Requires More Investment: WHO
How much is our health worth? If COVID-19 has given any guide, clearly not enough. This stark reality has been ignored for too long – at a price the whole world can now see. Lip service, largely, was paid to warning after warning to strengthen the world’s defenses against pandemics of novel pathogens, leaving the world dreadfully ill-prepared almost two years ago for the tsunami of suffering to come. (Gordon Brown, Helen Clark, Graca Machel, Paul Martin, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Elhadj As Sy, 1/25)