Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Advocates Push For Expanded National Mental Health Crisis Hotline
Roll Call: Mental Health Advocates Seek Crisis Hotline Expansion Resources
Advocates are citing growing mental health concerns during the pandemic and the implementation of a 2020 law for a new national suicide hotline as reasons to attach suicide prevention resources to an infrastructure or appropriations bill. A bipartisan 2020 law designated the three-digit phone number 9-8-8 as the new number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a 24/7 crisis hotline that will connect callers with immediate counseling or referrals for local mental health services. (Raman, 8/4)
Newsweek: COVID-19 Could Increase Dementia, Other Brain Disorders For Decades To Come
Gabriel de Erausquin first began to worry about the long-term impact of COVID on the brain when he read early reports out of Wuhan, China last January that survivors had lost two of their give senses--smell and taste. Worry turned to alarm when one of his medical assistants, a young mother who had come down with COVID-19 and had to be quarantined for a month, told de Erausquin, a neuroscientist, that she "couldn't care less" about being separated from her children. Loss of smell, emotional detachment and other cognitive disorders among COVID-19 survivors has in recent weeks become an urgent medical issue. Some patients experience psychotic breaks. Others report strange neurological symptoms—tremors, extreme fatigue, phantom smells, dizziness and bouts of profound confusion, a condition known as "brain fog." In one early study of more than 200 patients in Wuhan, neurological complications were identified in 36 percent of all cases and in 45 percent of severe cases. Another study in France in the New England Journal of Medicine reported neurological symptoms in 67 percent of patients. (Piore, 8/3)
The New York Times: Most Children Recover Quickly From Covid, But Some Have Lingering Symptoms, A Study Says
Most children with Covid-19 recover within a week, but a small percentage experience long-term symptoms, according to a new study of more than 1,700 British children. The researchers found that 4.4 percent of children had symptoms that last four weeks or longer, while 1.8 percent have symptoms that last for eight weeks or longer. The findings suggest that what has sometimes been called “long Covid” may be rarer in children than adults. In a previous study, some of the same researchers found that 13.3 percent of adults with Covid-19 had symptoms that lasted at least four weeks and 4.5 percent had symptoms that lasted at least eight weeks. (Anthes, 8/4)
More on children's health and safety —
ABC News: Summer Camp Aims To Get At-Risk Kids Off The Streets, Away From Gun Violence
In response to an unprecedented spike in gun violence this year, one district in Miami launched a summer camp program to protect at-risk children and teenagers. SafeSummers partnered with seven local community-based organizations to offer full-time summer programming to nearly 400 children and teens in District 8 of Miami-Dade County, an area with high crime and poverty rates. Violence is up 15% in the first half of 2021 compared to last year, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department. (Choi, 8/3)
CNN: Puberty: What Parents Need To Know About Guiding Kids Through Adolescence
Grown-ups tend to recall their adolescence as a highlight reel (or maybe, in some cases, it's a lowlight reel): the first leg or face shave, the first kiss, the first bra, the first ejaculation or menstruation, and the first time you walked into a room and were treated like an adult. It can flip quickly through our brains, a series of events -- part humiliating, part liberating -- accounting for one of our greatest stages of metamorphosis. Perhaps it's the trauma that has compressed the experience. Or maybe it is that, once the final product -- our adult selves -- is realized, it is hard to trace it back to the starting point. (Strauss, 8/3)
