From providing mental health care at the supermarket to training pediatricians in infant mental health, some in health care and social services are trying to apply the lessons of brain science and development to prevent problems that can threaten children’s health and well-being.
Three high-profile deaths that occurred over the past year are worth noting as reminders of the larger topics that should be top of mind for health writers.
Addiction usually leaves a wake of chaos, and all kinds of casualties - marriages, jobs, health. Today's opioid addiction crisis is not only claiming lives, but sparking a new epidemic of hepatitis C among new injection drug users.
The Affordable Care Act has made it easier to obtain drug addiction treatment services like methadone in California, but access to detox centers remains limited.
So much crucial brain development occurs in the first three years of life that one researcher jokes that to him and his colleagues, 3-year-olds are practically middle aged. And yet,the first three years of life often get comparatively little attention in mental health or education policies
Prescription painkillers like OxyContin have flooded the market. They're incredibly addictive, and once people are hooked, the habit gets expensive. More and more are turning to the cheaper alternative, heroin. And now, more people die every year from accidental opioid (painkillers and heroin) overd
Heroin addiction grabbed the national spotlight recently after famed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died on Super Bowl Sunday. He was almost certainly not alone that day — about 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. Can anything be done to stop this?
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
When I tackled the topic of loneliness as a 2013 National Health Journalism Fellowship project, I honestly didn't think it would be hard to find people who were lonely so that I could write about the issue. I was right and wrong.
