Getting help: neurodiversity, aging, addiction and mental illness
The National Institute of Mental Health counts mental illnesses among common maladies not just in the U.S., but around the world, estimating that as much as 23% of the adult U.S. population faces mental challenges.
Approximately 53 million Americans are family caregivers, providing varying degrees of support to relatives and loved ones because of disease, disability or simple frailty.
Last October, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Otsuka America Pharmaceutical did a study that concluded that if family caregiving was a business, 'it would be the largest revenue-generating company in the world,' providing $873.5 billion worth of labor each year. Close to 40% of that is due to Alzheimer's disease or dementia care, though only a quarter of those caregivers face that particular challenge.
Neurodiversity, addiction, aging and mental health are all issues with some challenges where families may find they need some help or suggestions or simply access to a support group.
A few weeks ago, a team of Deseret News reporters set out to explore some of the issues impacting families across that spectrum of issues. Today, we offer those stories with links in case you missed them earlier.
The importance of sensory awareness with autism
Learning disorders and decades of progress
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and new approaches
Why caregivers can't do it all alone
Aging well: preserving your brain with food, exercise and sleep
What we're learning about Alzheimer's disease
Anxiety and depression are very, very old problems
How states are tackling social media and smartphone use in schools
What do you do with debilitating fear?
Healing addiction through power of community, compassion and hope.
How addiction impacts the brain
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Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Navy ordered to rename USNS Harvey Milk in deliberate Pride Month move
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the U.S. Navy to rename a ship honoring late LGBTQ rights hero Harvey Milk — in a move intentionally set to coincide with Pride Month. According to a memo from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy reviewed by officials have already drawn up a plan for the USNS Harvey Milk to be renamed. The ship is a John Lewis-class oiler, part of a series of vessels named after civil rights leaders and activists. While its new name has yet to be announced, Navy Secretary John Phelan and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth are expected to unveil the change on June 13, according to the memo. An unnamed defense official confirmed to the decision to make the announcement in June was deliberate. The move was slammed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a 'shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.' Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, made history as California's first openly gay elected official. He was assassinated inside San Francisco City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978 — just months after helping pass a landmark city ordinance banning discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation. Before his short-lived career in public office, the trailblazing LGBTQ+ rights leader also served as a diving officer in the Navy, but resigned with the rank of lieutenant junior grade in 1955 after being questioned about his sexual orientation. In late 2016, the Navy announced it would name a ship after the slain LGBTQ icon. Construction began in late 2019 and, two years later, Navy Veteran Paula Neira christened the Navy's USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO 206) in a ceremony in San Diego Bay attended by state and local leaders. 'Harvey fought for the dignity and worth of every person,' Pelosi, who represents California's 11th congressional district, which includes most of San Francisco, said in a statement Tuesday. 'In San Francisco, we take great pride that our Harvey's name adorns a mighty ship among a new class of Navy vessels — named for the conscience of the Congress, John Lewis — which honors titans in the fight for freedom,' Pelosi said. 'As the rest of us are celebrating the joy of Pride Month, it is my hope that the Navy will reconsider this egregious decision and continue to recognize the extraordinary contributions of Harvey Milk, a veteran himself, and all Americans who forged historic progress for our nation,' she concluded. _____
Atlantic
38 minutes ago
- Atlantic
FEMA Is Not Prepared
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Who manages the disaster if the disaster managers are the disaster? That's a question that the people of the United States may have to answer soon. As hurricane season begins in the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in disarray. Reuters reported yesterday that acting FEMA head David Richardson suggested during a meeting with employees that he was unaware of the very existence of a hurricane season. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security dismissed the report: 'Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season.' The spokesperson added, 'FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.' FEMA employees, and Americans at large, might be forgiven for having doubts. Richardson has only been on the job since early May, when his predecessor was abruptly fired after telling Congress he did not believe that FEMA should be eliminated, as President Donald Trump has contemplated. Richardson is a Marine veteran who had been leading the DHS office that seeks to prevent attacks on the U.S. involving weapons of mass destruction, but he has no experience with disaster management. The Wall Street Journal reported that he had expressed surprise at how broad FEMA's remit is. (The last time FEMA was led by an administrator whose profession was not emergency management was the mid-2000s, under Michael Brown. If you don't know how that turned out, I recommend my colleague Vann R. Newkirk II's award-winning podcast on Hurricane Katrina, Floodlines.) But Richardson surely is aware of hurricane season. In mid-May, CNN obtained an internal document warning that FEMA was badly behind schedule. 'As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready,' it read. (DHS, which oversees FEMA, said the information was 'grossly out of context.') To calm worries at the agency, Richardson held a conference call. 'I would say we're about 80 or 85 percent there,' he told staff, according to ABC News. 'The next week, we will close that gap and get to probably 97 to 98 percent of a plan. We'll never have 100 percent of a plan.' That was not the most reassuring answer, and it looks worse now. The Journal reports that in the same meeting yesterday where Richardson suggested unfamiliarity with hurricane season, he also said the agency would return to its 2024 hurricane-preparedness strategy. How that will work is anyone's guess, given that FEMA has already slashed programs and staff since last year's hurricane season. (FEMA responded to my request for comment with DHS's statement, but did not answer specific questions or make any official available for an interview.) FEMA is not a large part of the federal government by budget or staff, but it is an important one because it directly affects the lives of ordinary Americans in their worst moments. Washington can seem distant and abstract, but disasters are not, and as Hurricane Helene last year demonstrated, even people living in supposed ' climate havens ' are susceptible to extreme weather. In the aftermath of Helene, Trump grasped the widespread public fury at FEMA, which storm victims felt was not responsive enough, fast enough. (Major disasters are major, and even the best-managed response is going to be slower than anyone wants, but no one seems to think this was the best-managed response.) As a candidate, he was quick to say that the Biden administration should do more, but since becoming president again, he has taken steps to ensure that FEMA can and will do less. FEMA is also making recovery harder for the victims of past disasters. In April, the agency declined to declare a major disaster in Washington State, which would free up funding for recovery from a bomb cyclone in November 2024; the state's entire congressional delegation pleaded with him to reconsider. DHS also denied North Carolina more funding for cleanup after Helene, which Governor Josh Stein estimated would cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The president also refused individual federal assistance to nine Arkansas counties struck by tornadoes in March, only reversing the decision after Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary in Trump's first administration, called the president directly. In the post-FEMA future that Trump has floated, states would be responsible for all disaster recovery. Some conservatives have long argued that states need to shoulder more responsibility for smaller disasters, but most states (and territories such as Puerto Rico) simply don't have the resources to respond to large-scale disasters like Helene. This is, after all, one reason the 13 colonies united in the first place: for mutual aid and protection. The federal government has much greater resources and, unlike most states, is not required to balance its budget annually. That makes it a crucial financial backstop. As Brock Long, who led FEMA during Trump's first term, told me last year, 'All disasters are locally executed, state managed, and federally supported.' FEMA has not, generally, been a partisan agency. Administrators may have different political views, but they try to provide help without consideration for politics. I've spoken with several administrators over the years, and they are consistently professional, don't take wildly differing approaches to their work, and are dedicated to emergency response. When an employee at FEMA was caught telling workers not to help people with Trump signs in their yards, it was rightly a scandal. Yet in his first term, Trump himself reportedly withheld or delayed disaster funds in multiple cases based on partisanship. His reversal on assistance for Arkansas residents raises the specter of a future in which only states whose governors are close to Trump can hope to obtain relief. And yet if FEMA isn't prepared for hurricane season, doesn't have sufficient staff, and is laboring under a president who would like to see it gone, the problem may not be that only the president's allies can get help from the federal government—but rather that no one can. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the family of the man accused of Sunday's attack at a Colorado demonstration for Israeli hostages has been taken into ICE custody. Elon Musk posted on X calling President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act a 'disgusting abomination.' Mount Etna, an active volcano in eastern Sicily, erupted. No injuries resulted. Dispatches Work in Progress: Derek Thompson explains the No. 1 rule for understanding Donald Trump. More From The Atlantic Evening Read Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result By David Merritt Johns From 2023 Last summer, I got a tip about a curious scientific finding. 'I'm sorry, it cracks me up every time I think about this,' my tipster said. Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. Needless to say, the idea that a dessert loaded with saturated fat and sugar might actually be good for you raised some eyebrows at the nation's most influential department of nutrition. Culture Break Watch. Our writers and editors recommend five movies they could watch over and over again. P.S. Professional emergency managers are some of the most impressive people I've interviewed. To succeed, they have to be extremely practical, very creative, and totally unflappable. In 2015, while reporting an article on ' maximums of maximums '—the biggest hypothetical catastrophes the nation could face—I asked some sources what their nightmare was. 'What keeps me up is another form of a pandemic, respiratory transmitted, highly lethal virus,' Anthony Fauci told me. (Good prediction, doc.) But when I asked Craig Fugate, then FEMA's administrator, what kept him up at night, he answered in the way that only a veteran of many disasters could: 'Nothing.' — David Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.
The Hill
40 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump administration rescinds emergency abortion guidance
The Trump administration has rescinded guidance telling health care workers who provide abortions to save their patients' lives that they are protected under federal law. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Tuesday that it is rescinding guidance issued during the Biden administration, reinforcing to hospitals that under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) they must provide emergency abortions to pregnant patients if they are needed to save their lives. 'Legally, it means nothing,' Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project told The Hill. 'The obligation to provide emergency care comes from a federal statute… and as much as they might like to President Trump and Secretary Kennedy can not erase 40 years of law with this press release.' CMS said in a statement that the agency will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all emergency room patients seeking treatment, including 'identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.' 'CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration's actions,' the statement adds. The guidance change comes about two months after the Trump administration dropped a high-profile case over the right to an emergency abortion in Idaho, which health care policy experts said signaled an 'imminent reversal' of EMTALA guidance issued by the Biden administration. EMTALA was passed in 1986 to protect Americans from 'patient dumping,' a practice at hospitals and other clinics where patients are transferred to other facilities without their consent due to their inability to pay. The Biden administration in 2022 issued guidance on abortion specifically, following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. A cascade of state laws quickly banned abortion, but the guidance allowed for emergency procedures and protected physicians in those cases. The move does not change the law, but it does make it more confusing for doctors to know what care they can legally provide pregnancy terminations, especially if they practice in states with abortion bans, according to Kolbi-Molinas. Reproductive rights groups and health care providers are bashing the move, arguing that it will profoundly hurt the health of pregnant people in the United States. 'By rescinding this guidance, the Trump administration has sent a clear signal that it is siding not with the majority, but with its anti-abortion allies — and that will come at the expense of women's lives,' Kolbi-Molinas said. 'The ACLU will use every lever we have to keep President Trump and his administration from endangering our health and lives.' Jamila Perritt, president and CEO of the group Physicians for Reproductive Health, said that she is 'deeply troubled' by the Trump administration's decision to change the guidance, arguing that it is abandoning its responsibility to people who need emergency medical care. 'This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are not worth protecting,' she said in a statement. 'Complying with this law can mean the difference between life and death for pregnant people, forcing providers like me to choose between caring for someone in their time of need and turning my back on them to comply with cruel and dangerous laws…' Meanwhile, some anti-abortion groups lauded CMS's move, calling it a 'victory.' 'Led by Dr. Oz, the Trump administration has delivered another win for life and truth—stopping Biden's attack on emergency care for both pregnant moms and their unborn children,' wrote Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. 'We call on more states to follow the Trump administration's lead and pass Med Ed laws to protect women from abortion lobby misinformation.'
