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To treat pain, study people in all their complexity
Last month, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) formally launched a multi-agency effort to combat the country’s opioid-addiction crisis. Funds for research into controlling opioid misuse and treating pain will nearly double in 2018, to US$1.1 billion. The forces behind this epidemic extend beyond overprescription: most of the tens of thousands of deaths caused by opioid overdose in the United States each year result from illicit use. Still, an inadequate understanding about how to treat pain has certainly contributed. We need to characterize patients better, and we need more studies that incorporate non-drug treatments alongside any form of medication.
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Why it’s ridiculous that high schools start so early in the morning
According to the National Sleep Foundation and a grass-roots coalition called Start School Later: Biological sleep patterns shift as children grow up, and it is natural for teens to find it difficult to fall asleep before 11 p.m. Teens need about eight to 10 hours of sleep each night to function best. Most teens do not get enough sleep. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2015 showed that 73 percent of U.S. high school students get less than eight hours of sleep on school nights. Forth-three percent reported getting six or fewer hours.
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Who’s in Charge Here? Aging Parents Resist Interfering ‘Helicopter’ Children
Joshua Coleman remembers watering down a glass of wine before giving it to his father, then in his 90s. “What the hell is this?” he recalls his father asking. “I feel a little guilty about that now,” says Dr. Coleman, whose father died in 2001. “The poor old guy had few remaining pleasures left. But I would have felt bad had he gone back to assisted living and slipped.” There’s a fine line between being an appropriately concerned adult child and an overly worried, helicopter one, says Dr. Coleman, a psychologist who specializes in family dynamics. If a parent is in an accident, it might be time to talk about driving, as he did after his father sideswiped three cars.
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You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health?
If you’re looking for an easy way to transform your mood, cue the music. Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower your levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol and ease pain. Listening to music before an operation can even improve post-surgery outcomes. How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate” neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health.
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‘Mental instability’ must be considered when looking for motive behind attack: psychologist
What makes Monday’s horrific van attack so deeply terrifying is almost the “banality” of the new violence, said an expert in crime and human behaviour. “Here you have a major thoroughfare in a major city and people are going about their lives and a van driving down the street just goes up the curb and starts cruising down the sidewalk,” said Frank Farley, a Canadian-born professor of psychological studies and education at Temple University in Philadelphia. “That’s what makes it so exceptionally scary. This is almost a new form of violence that takes place in our 9 to 5 lives.”
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Why It Seems as if Everyone Is Always Angry With You
Why do you look so angry? This article hasn’t even begun and already you disapprove. Why can’t I ever win with you? I see it in your face. If this sounds unfamiliar, good for you. You don’t need this. For the rest of us, it may be helpful to know that some people seem to have outsize difficulty with reading neutral faces as neutral, even if they are exceptionally accurate at interpreting other facial expressions. Over the past decade psychologists have been piecing together why this occurs. --- “Angry interactions could be a cue for them to retreat to their room,” said Alice Schermerhorn, a developmental psychologist at the University of Vermont and the author of the study.
