Public and mental health
National Geographic: The pandemic delivered a surprise to Nordic countries: a baby boom
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK - Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, births in many wealthy countries across the world have plummeted. In 2020 the United States’ fertility rate cratered at its lowest ever, Chinese births plunged 15 percent, and France saw the fewest babies born since World War II. Meanwhile, the Nordic countries—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland—all have maintained their birthrates, and some are puzzled to find themselves in the midst of a pandemic baby boom. Read more.
The Untouchable Vaccine Mandate
Federal regulators are poised to give full approval to a COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 16. That would turn the spotlight to an obscure—and seemingly reluctant—state commission in North Carolina that has the power to mandate vaccines for school children and college students.
And while school leaders seem happy to pass the buck to this state commission, legal scholars say school districts and institutes of higher learning have more latitude in requiring vaccines than they realize, or perhaps care to admit. Read more.
The Atlantic: Suicide memes may actually be therapeutic
As the gatekeepers of social media are wrestling with how to police memes about suicide, some suicide-prevention experts see a window of opportunity. Typically, suicide memers aren’t mocking suicidal thoughts; they’re commiserating and bonding over being suicidal. Morbid memes, these experts believe, may be a foot in the door to one of the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations: socially isolated young people. Read more.
Postpartum psychosis: why loving moms sometimes hurt their babies
Personal accounts from women who recover from postpartum psychosis are the stuff of nightmares — chilling stories of feeling "possessed" or like a wild animal caged in their own bodies, a constant onslaught of sudden and overwhelming realizations of danger.
Some women believe they’re caught in a battle between good and evil — God and the Devil — while others conclude their family members are part of a vast conspiracy to harm mother and baby. Trapped in this new and twisted world, mothers with postpartum psychosis sometimes drown, stab, or strangle their newborns.
The cruel irony, Dr. Marla Wald said, is that whatever narrative the mother’s psychosis takes, “there’s usually a kernel of maternal desire to protect buried in the delusion.”
“In my clinical experience... it’s usually related to some thought of trying to protect the baby. A misguided thought. A confused thought. A thought we may consider irrational. But it’s related to protecting the baby. They're not evil, they're terrified.”
USAToday: A North Carolina teen was healthy and athletic. The flu killed her in days.
CANTON, N.C. – When she hadn't improved by 9 a.m., Monday morning, Lacie threw on some clothes and climbed into her dad’s truck for the quarter-mile drive to her pediatrician down the road. It was less than 72 hours after Lacie felt the first symptoms.
But when Lacie stepped out of the truck, "she just kind of screamed out a couple times," Fisher remembers. She crumpled to the ground, and "just went limp in my arms." Lacie would never regain consciousness.
By 4:45 p.m., Lacie Rian Fisher – athletic cheerleader, straight-A student and beloved friend – was gone.