Original post-Science News

Photo by Eugene Capon

Photo by cottonbro studio

By Colby Stong

February 15, 2024

• Researchers are reporting that stress early in life can contribute to cardiometabolic diseases in adulthood.
• They say that’s because high levels of stress hormones may contribute to heart disease.
• Experts say there are a number of ways parents can help children understand and deal with stress.

Stress in adolescence and early adulthood may contribute to the development of cardiometabolic diseases later in life, according to a studyTrusted Source published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

To reach their findings, researchers looked at the health information of 276 participants from the Southern California Children’s Health Study from 2003 to 2014 and a follow-up assessment from 2018 to 2021.

The stress participants felt was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale, with questions about thoughts and feelings during the previous month. Assessments were done in three life stages: childhood (average age of 6 years), adolescence (average age of 13 years), and young adulthood (average age of 24 years).

In early childhood, parents provided information on their child’s stress levels. During adolescence and adulthood, the responses were self-reported.

The researchers categorized participants into four groups:

• Consistently high stress
• Decreasing stress
• Increasing stress
• Consistently low stress

The scientists used six different markers to determine a cardiometabolic risk score in young adulthood:

• Neck artery thickness
• Systolic and diastolic blood pressure
• Body mass index (BMI)
• Percent of body fat
• Android/gynoid ratio
• Hemoglobin A1C

Participants received one point for markers above the normal range. The scientists did not use BMI in calculating the risk score as the body fat percentage and the android/gynoid ratio provided a comprehensive assessment.

End scores ranged from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating higher cardiometabolic risk factors.

Seeing the wave of massive layoffs in late 2022 through the first half of 2023 has created feelings of distrust toward employers and job insecurity. Consequently, the EY data revealed that Gen-Z’s anxiety levels are at an all-time high.

The study captured insights from more than 1,500 participants across the United States born between roughly 1997 and 2007—aged 16 to 26 years old—to track Gen-Z’s personal and professional interests and their outlook on mental health, trust, technology, career and lifestyle ambitions.

Marcie Merriman, EY Americas cultural insights and customer strategy leader, said about the survey, “Right now, Gen-Z is particularly important as the newest generation of consumers, employees and citizens that will dramatically impact businesses today and into the future.” Merriman added that EY’s research found that mental health is an ongoing challenge for this cohort.

They will ultimately comprise a large component of the workforce. Elder Zoomers will soon age out of their parent’s health plans and need to assume the high costs of insurance—not to mention the additional expenses of renting an apartment, paying back tuition loans and life’s necessities.

Key Findings

According to the report, over 50% of Gen-Zers said they are “extremely worried about not having enough money.” In light of the economic turmoil, fears of a recession, the ascension of artificial intelligence and corporate downsizings, making a living is a top priority for these young adults.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

By  Jack Kelly

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

By breaking down the walls of stigma and shame surrounding men’s mental health, we can start addressing this critical issue with compassion, understanding, and empathy. Here we will explore the importance of men’s mental health, the challenges men face when seeking help, and the available treatment options that can help them achieve greater emotional well-being and fulfillment.

Sobering Statistics

• Men are more likely to die by suicide than women. In the United States, men account for nearly 75% of all suicides.

• Men are less likely to seek help for mental health issues than women. In a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, only 35% of men reported they would seek help from a mental health professional, compared to 58% of women.

• Men are more likely to struggle with certain mental health conditions. For example, men are more likely to be diagnosed with alcohol dependence and antisocial personality disorder, while women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders.

• Men are more likely to experience workplace stress and burnout. According to a survey by The American Institute of Stress, men are more likely to report feeling overwhelmed at work and are less likely to take time off to care for their mental health.

• Men are more likely to engage in risky behaviors as a coping mechanism. This can include substance abuse, reckless driving, and other dangerous activities.

Importance of Men’s Mental Health

Men’s mental health is important for many reasons.

1. Mental health issues can severely affect a man’s quality of life. This includes relationships, work, and personal goals.

2. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions can impact a person’s ability to function, causing them to feel hopeless, isolated, and overwhelmed.

3. Untreated mental health conditions can lead to physical health issues like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

4. Mental health issues can have a ripple effect on those around them, including family members, friends, and colleagues.

5. When men struggle with mental health issues, it can impact their relationships and those closest to them.

6. Addressing men’s mental health is crucial for building a more equitable society that prioritizes all individuals’ well-being, regardless of gender.

Contributing Factors

Several factors contribute to men’s reluctance to seek help for mental health issues. These include societal expectations of masculinity, mental health stigma, and a lack of awareness about available resources.

Men are often expected to be strong, stoic, and self-sufficient, making it difficult to acknowledge their struggles and ask for help. Additionally, mental health stigma can make men feel ashamed or weak for struggling with mental health issues, further preventing them from seeking help.

Treatment Options for Men’s Mental Health

Fortunately, several treatment options are available for men struggling with mental health issues. These include:

• Therapy: Talk therapy can involve working with a mental health professional to identify and address mental health issues. Therapy can be conducted in person, online, or over the phone and can help men develop coping strategies, manage symptoms, and improve their overall mental health.

• Medication: In some cases, medication can be used to treat mental health issues. This may include antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, or mood stabilizers. Medication can help manage symptoms and improve overall mental health but should always be prescribed and monitored by a healthcare professional.

• Support groups: Support groups can be valuable for men struggling with mental health issues. These groups provide a safe space for men to share their experiences, connect with others going through similar challenges, and receive emotional support.

• Lifestyle changes: Making lifestyle changes, such as eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and practicing stress-management techniques, can also improve mental health. These changes can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, improve mood, and promote overall well-being.

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): ECT uses brief, low-energy electrical pulses to stimulate nerve-cell activity in the part of the brain that affects mood. Stimulating this area helps to alleviate symptoms of depression. The electrical impulses are delivered through electrodes placed on the scalp. Patients are given anesthesia to relax and ensure the procedure is pain-free.

• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): TMS is an FDA-approved outpatient treatment that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerves in the brain non-invasively. This innovative and safe technique requires no sedation or anesthesia and successfully treats individuals suffering from Major Depressive Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Published reports from TMS treatment studies for depression show that more than half of patients treated with TMS Therapy experienced significant improvements in symptoms, and one-third of patients experienced full remission of their depressive episodes.

Disclaimer: The content in this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and should not serve as medical advice, consultation, or diagnosis.  If you have a medical concern, please consult your healthcare provider, or seek immediate medical treatment. 

Original post

Written by: Eric Tirrell, clinical manager of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) program and the research operations manager for the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Neuromodulation at Butler Hospital and Joshua Davis a program therapist in the Butler Hospital’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program. 

As I approach the end of a teaching career that stretches from the late 1970s into the 2020s, I am struck by a noticeable change in my students. Why, I ask myself, does this generation seem to be more vulnerable to stress, anxiety, trauma and depression? Why do they appear to require greater access to therapy and to accommodations that go beyond extended exam time?

I ask myself, are my impressions illusory or are my students unhappier and more psychologically fragile than their predecessors? If this is indeed the case, why?

Even though much of my scholarship is on the history of childhood and youth, I don’t claim to have well-thought-out, evidence-based answers to these questions. I couldn’t tell you whether what I and others see is a short-term consequence of the pandemic or the Great Recession or reflects certain long-term trends in parenting, family instability, schooling, media consumption or cultural values.

So, I asked our modern-day oracle, ChatGPT and here’s what it told me:

That certainly strikes me as true.

The text generator then went on. It said that indeed, “some studies have suggested that rates of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression have been increasing among young adults in recent years.” It then offered several potential explanations.

• Increased awareness and destigmatization of mental health issues, which may encourage more individuals to seek help and receive a diagnosis.
• Increased stressors such as academic pressure, social media use and economic uncertainty, which may contribute to the development of mental health issues.
• Changes in parenting and cultural norms, such as a greater emphasis on protecting children from discomfort and failure, which may lead to decreased resilience and coping skills.
• Changes in college culture, such as a greater focus on achievement and a decline in supportive social structures like fraternities and sororities, which may contribute to increased stress and isolation.

ChatGPT concluded with some good advice. It noted “that there is significant individual variation in mental health and resilience,” that “not all college students experience psychological distress,” and that it would be a mistake to assume “that all young adults are inherently fragile or over-sensitive.” It then recommended that I respond to my students with compassion and “evidence-based interventions.”

As a historian, I study change over time, and I, like most historians, view claims of progress with skepticism. It’s not that I, like other historians, fail to appreciate the many measurable ways that life has gotten better. The increase in life expectancy; the declining proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty; the improvements in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of many diseases and medical conditions; and advances in technology and scientific and humanistic knowledge are, indeed, examples of progress.

And yet, like most historians, I take it for granted that advances inevitably come at a price and that progress invariably involves trade-offs. Notice how much of our vaunted progress has resulted in environmental degradation, increasing social inequality and cultural homogenization.

In my own scholarship on childhood and youth, I argue that today’s young Americans are better off than their forebears in every way except those that matter most. Today’s young graduate from high school and college at much higher rates. They smoke less, drink less and are less likely to use illicit drugs. Teen pregnancy rates have also fallen sharply. But by most measures, they are also less happy and less confident about the future.

Growing up, at its best, is an odyssey of self-discovery, a developmental process that involves risk-taking, exploration, increasing responsibilities and competence, and regular social interaction with siblings, peers, kin and nonkin. However, in the interest of child protection, the young do have fewer opportunities for free, unstructured, unsupervised play and exploration. As a result of “the discovery of risk,” young lives are monitored more closely. An increasing share of their interactions are technologically mediated, and kids’ culture has been colonized by commercial culture, marketers and influencers of various sorts.

Don’t get me wrong: young lives are better in countless ways. I grew up in a culture with strong and inflexible expectations about normality, femininity and masculinity that had all kinds of negative effects. But there is also reason to believe that the actual incidence of anxiety disorders, behavioral disorders (involving distractibility and impulsivity), developmental disorders (that impede communication and social interaction), and various symptoms of psychological distress has increased. Although these trends may be a product of greater visibility, attention and diagnosis, a shift in labels or the paradox of progress (that fewer children with disabilities die young), most experts that I have consulted believe that the prevalence of these disorders has in fact risen.

Let’s, then, cut to the chase. What does that mean for colleges?

It seems to me that colleges need to do a better job of tackling two crucial challenges. The first, and the most obvious, is to better address students’ mental health challenges and better support their psychological well-being. The second is to better prepare them for adulthood.

I am of the view that these two challenges are, in fact, interconnected.

Adulthood, you may have noticed, has lost its allure. No one says life begins at 40—at least not without irony.

I’m old enough to remember a very different conception of adulthood. It was a movie-made fantasy, to be sure, but who wouldn’t want to be sophisticated, urbane, worldly and debonair like Cary Grant or Sean Connery or witty, mature, stylish and tantalizing like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck? I knew of no one who, as a teenager, wasn’t desperate to get out and grow up, even if their vision of adulthood wasn’t their parents’.

I think it’s fair to say that many college students today associate adulthood with being trapped in a rut. My students are convinced that the mass of adults (to use Thoreau’s phrase) lead lives of quiet desperation. They look around and see adults who are stressed and work-absorbed, whose relationships are unstable, who are even more anxious and depressed than they are.

Their view of adulthood is much like John Updike’s: it’s a life stage filled with regret, disappointment, workplace discontent, spousal estrangement, alienation from children and a pervasive sense of malaise.

We certainly need to increase access to mental health services: to clinics, individual and group counseling, crisis intervention and psychiatric care. We also need to reduce stigma and encourage more students to seek support. Wellness programs, including yoga and meditation, and peer mentors and peer support groups can also help. Flexible accommodations for students experiencing mental health challenges are certainly warranted.

But those steps aren’t enough. Because our institutions will never be able to meet the demand for professional counseling, we need to enhance other forms of support and guidance.

In addition to addressing the systemic issues that students struggle with—including financial stress, social isolation and excessive academic pressure—we need to reassert the importance of mentoring. That will require colleges and universities to:

• Institutionalize mentoring by establishing learning communities, specialized support centers (for example, for veterans, transfer students or first-generation college students), undergraduate research teams and thematic interest groups (for example, in the arts, business, computer science, health care, humanities and the life, physical and social sciences) with a dedicated faculty or staff mentor and expanding access to mentored research and internship opportunities.
• Foster a culture of mentorship by promoting the value of mentoring, encouraging students, faculty and staff to engage in mentoring relationships and providing training for mentors in active listening and providing constructive advice.
• Support informal mentoring outside the classroom or office hours through faculty-student lunches, coffee breaks and social events with prospective and current majors.

We also need to do a better job of helping students acquire adult skills. Here are some steps that campuses can take:

• Better integrate the co-curricular and extracurricular activities into the undergraduate experience.  It is through these experiences that students acquire the literacies and leadership skills—including the communication and team management skills and the strategic thinking, decision-making and problem-solving skills—that will prepare them for career success after college.
• Offer life skills workshops. These might include workshops in etiquette, self-care (maintaining physical and mental health, managing stress and cultivating resilience), financial management, interpersonal and professional communication, career development, romantic and interpersonal relationships, and family dynamics and emotional intelligence—that is, awareness and management of one’s emotions and the development of empathy and cognizance of other people’s feelings.
• Introduce formal classes that deal with adulthood, including its challenges and joys.

It’s tougher today to become or to be an adult than it was a half century ago. The earlier rule book that defined adulthood has frayed, and no longer does adulthood have well-defined script. It’s up to individuals to chart their life trajectory and to give it meaning and coherence.

No wonder college students are anxious.

Adulthood has become less predictable. But this has made adult life potentially more fulfilling.

We need to do a better job of preparing young people to take advantage of the freedom that adults enjoy. We need to do much more to help them shape their lives in ways that reflect their dreams and desires.

That responsibility is upon us.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

By Steven Mintz a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin

As the world begins a return to normalcy following the COVID-19 pandemic, teenage girls are still at the forefront of the ongoing mental health crisis.

According to a 2021 study from the CDC, three out of five teenage girls in the United States feel constant sadness or hopelessness.

The study also revealed this is a 60% increase from the past decade, showing rates of emotions related to sadness and depression among young girls continuing to grow.

Viviana Zavala, a 19-year-old radiology technician major, believes social media is a significant contributing factor to the mental health crisis teenage girls are facing.

“Social media, in my opinion, causes a lot of damage to mainly girls,” Zavala said. “Social media is filtered, photoshopped and only shows what the world wants to see.”

Zavala said girls tend to compare themselves to people they see on the internet, which can cause them to look down on themselves and lower their self-confidence.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2023, over 97% of teenagers said they go on social media and the internet daily, compared to 92% in 2014 and 2015.

Shaira Villanueva, an El Camino student interested in game development, also believes social media and the internet contribute to the mental health decline in teenage girls.

“With social media defining how relationships should be with either yourself or those around you by labeling those actions as the bare minimum, creates a sense of stress and insecurity of how one’s life doesn’t meet the social media standard of perfection,” Villanueva said.

She said the use of social media draws comparisons to other girls, which elicits a response of feeling insecure, as well as feelings of low self-esteem.

With social media being one the main contributors to the mental health crisis, becoming a teenager also means the sudden increase of responsibilities they have or are given.

In addition, teenage girls feel as if they run out of methods to manage it all, which can result in sadness and high amounts of stress.

According to the American Institute of Stress, 64% of Americans aged 15-29 have high levels of stress.

Psychology major Katelyn Estrada, 19, said there are various components, both academic and non-academic that account for high levels of stress in teens, which can result in a decline in their mental states.

“Whether it be school responsibilities or at home like helping to take care of siblings while also being expected to clean and do other stuff is stressful for teens,” Estrada said.

Students seeking mental health treatment are encouraged to visit the El Camino College Student Health Center, which offers various health services to students, including therapy. The office can be contacted by phone at 310-660-3643 or after hours at 310-660-3377 for the crisis line.

Original Post El Camino College The Union

Photo by Fahmy Danar Sutisna