(NEW YORK) — Doctors in Ohio performed a groundbreaking surgery to separate conjoined twins, the first of its kind due to the twins’ age and the complexity of their condition.
When the doctors at Dayton Children’s Hospital in Ohio first heard about Guatemalan conjoined twins Pedro and Augusto in 2019, who were connected at the head, they worked quickly to bring the boys to Ohio to perform multiple surgeries.
The already complicated process was drawn out and made even more difficult after Guatemala implemented travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the separation surgery was finally made possible in April of 2022, when the boys were 3 years old.
Dr. Christopher Gordon, chief of craniofacial and reconstructive surgery at Dayton Children’s, and Dr. Robert Lober, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the hospital, knew they had their work cut out for them. No one had ever performed this operation on twins this old, or on twins that shared vascular structures, meaning one boy’s veins and arteries were feeding the other, and vice versa.
The doctors successfully completed the historic separation over six months, performing three surgeries over the first four months to first separate the twins’ veins and arteries before a fourth separation surgery. The hospital documented the entire process in the film Connected: The story of the seemingly impossible separation of Pedro and Augusto.
Gordon and Lober spoke exclusively with ABC News’ Kayna Whitworth about the experience.
“I mean, they were right at the edge of organ failure, just from the changes in load as we did each stage. So, I think if we’d tried to do more of this at once, they probably wouldn’t have made it,” said Gordon.
As pressure mounted surrounding the final operation, doctors discovered another large artery connecting the boys, with dangerous consequences to Augusto’s speech and motor skills if separated.
“It took a personal toll,” said Lober, speaking about the pressure the medical team faced in that moment.
Some nurses even had to leave the room, overcome by emotion, says Lober.
“Everybody was suffering,” Gordon added.
Eventually, after three long days in the operating room — the boys were separated.
Then, 14 months after the successful separation, the twins were able to return home.
“These were boys that we’d come to love over a long period of time,” said Lober. “Everybody’d come to love. They became our boys.”
These doctors have helped change the landscape of facial, cranial surgery and Gordon says there’s now a line of 60 kids with other complicated syndromes, who are hoping to come to Dayton Children’s Hospital for help.
(NEW YORK) — A pill for postpartum depression led to meaningful improvements in depression symptoms, according to a late-stage study published Wednesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The pill, zuranolone, is not yet approved, but the Food and Drug Administration is expected to make its approval decision by Aug 5.
In the study, 196 mothers who experienced postpartum depression were split into two groups — half were given zuranolone, half given placebo pills for two weeks.
All of the mothers experienced an improvement in their depression symptoms, but those who were taking the real medication experienced significantly better improvements than those who got the placebo pills.
Those improvements were still reported four and six weeks later, according to the study, which was funded by pharmaceutical partners Sage Therapeutics and Biogen.
A small number of patients experienced sleepiness and dizziness.
If approved, zuranolone would be the first pill approved explicitly to treat postpartum depression. An existing treatment called Zulresso was approved in 2019 by the FDA, but that medication is given by intravenous injection.
“It wasn’t just that sadness resolved or that crying spells resolved or that sleep improved. But we saw that zuranolone alone was associated with improvement in all of the core symptoms of depression during the course of the study,” Dr. Kristina M. Deligiannidis, professor at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the Feinstein Institutes and lead author of the new study, told ABC News.
According to the study authors, the biggest unknown about this pills is the long-term effect — and it’s not clear what impact this drug would have on breastfeeding, if any.
Still, experts say one of the biggest barriers to treating postpartum depression isn’t medication, but stigma.
“The major issue in postpartum depression is screening and patient acceptance of the diagnosis,” said Dr. Jacques Moritz, medical director at Tia women’s health.
Meanwhile, existing antidepressant treatments may be helpful for some women, even if those antidepressants are not explicitly approved for post-partum depression.
“Individuals with the first episode of depression may benefit from a standard antidepressant or antidepressant and therapy. Individuals that are on an antidepressant and are not fully responding may depend upon a new option such as this,” said Dr. Kimberly A. Yonkers, the departmental chair and Katz Family chair, Department of Psychiatry, at UMass Chan Medical School/U Mass Memorial Medical Center.
The bottom line, experts said, is that anyone experiencing feelings of depression should seek medical care because treatment and help is available.
If approved, zuranolone would represent an “important incremental addition to currently available treatment options,” said Dr. Jessica Shepherd, the chief medical officer for Verywell Health. But, said Shepherd, “we also need to make sure that the support system is there.”
Andrea Sutherland recounted how her third time expecting was filled with constant struggle despite never dealing with depression in her first two pregnancies.
“I wasn’t doing any of the regular things that I would do. I wasn’t focusing at work, I wasn’t taking care of my home, my kids, myself,” Sutherland said.
“They wouldn’t tell me which [pill] I got. But the minute I got home and took the first pill, I felt like I got the real thing…because I got a sense of relief within the first minutes of me taking it,” she added.
Sutherland is among the roughly one in seven women, according to the National Institutes of Health, who develop postpartum depression.
“I would say to a lot of females that might be going through the same thing, that it’s real. You are not alone…don’t be ashamed,” Sutherland said.
“Speak up, try and build that support team around you, express yourself, let others know how you are feeling so they can keep an eye on you. It’s normal, it’s nothing to be afraid of and there’s nothing wrong with getting help,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — When many people think of autism and an initial diagnosis, they think of children. A growing number of adults are learning they have autism, and their condition has gone untreated for years.
“The Bachelor” star Demi Burnett, 28, sat down for an interview with “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang to reflect on how she said her diagnosis last year put her life into perspective.
“It’s not like there’s a specific social interaction,” Burnett said. “There’s just this feeling of, anxiety of ‘I need to put on the show.'”
Burnett first found stardom on ABC’s “The Bachelor,” and later “Bachelor in Paradise,” but behind the scenes she was grappling with a crippling social anxiety she could never understand. For years, she says she “performed” her way through the anxiety, doing her best to mask it from others.
“It’s a performance to save your life though, because, like, it’s necessary,” Burnett said.
An autism diagnosis at the age of 26 suddenly put things into perspective and helped Burnett understand why she’d struggled with social interactions for most of her life.
“I want to be able to provide, like, that space for people to…relate, and not feel alone in this, or not feel stupid about it,” Burnett said.
An estimated 5.4 million adults, or 2.2% of adults, have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and while it usually is diagnosed in childhood, there are a number of reasons why it may not be detected until later in life.
“One of the reasons we often see or delay a diagnosis in adulthood is that those who might have average or above average intellectual ability might kind of fly under the radar or be able to mask some of their symptoms,” Carla A. Mazefsky, who serves as the Nancy J. Minshew, M.D. Endowed chair in Autism Research and professor of psychiatry, psychology and clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh, told “Nightline.”
Mazefsky said that as awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder has spread, the increasing diagnosis of children is also triggering some parents to begin to wonder about themselves, too.
Celebrities like singer Sia, actor Wentworth Miller, former NBA player Tony Snell, and former NFL player Joe Barksdale are helping shine a spotlight on being diagnosed with autism as adults.
In May, the “Chandelier” singer discussed her neurodivergence on “Rob Has a Podcast.”
“I felt like for 45 years, I was like, ‘I’ve got to go put my human suit on.’ And only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself,” Sia said on the podcast.
Burnett says she has relied on masking, a coping mechanism sometimes used by individuals with autism to hide sensory sensitivities, social and communication challenges, and repetitive behaviors that may be hallmarks of autism.
“The mask is very protective…because you can’t be your true self in the real world sometimes…because we have been ourselves and there were negative reactions that traumatized us,” Burnett added.
Since her autism diagnosis, Burnett says she has begun her process of unmasking by making accommodations for her sensory challenges, no matter how they may look to the outside world.
She now prefers wearing big, baggy clothes, and often wears no make-up in her private life and in some of her social media posts. Headphones or earplugs give her a noise buffer she says she needs, and repetitive movements like painting eases her anxiety.
Burnett says her biggest source of support and comfort is her dog, Sandor.
“My dog regulates me. One of the biggest things that I need is another nervous system to regulate me, to let me know that I’m safe,” Burnett said.
Burnett has begun chronicling her journey on social media joining a growing community of people across the spectrum documenting how they’re living with autism.
Chelsia Potts said she uses her TikTok to provide tips that she’s found useful.
Having amassed close to 200,000 followers, Potts has shared what she’s found to be significant about discovering one’s autism as an adult.
“[A diagnosis] removes this idea that you’re weird or that you’re odd or that you’re just socially awkward, and it puts it in a spot where you can say, ‘Oh, I’m autistic and it’s okay for me to need these things,” Potts told “Nightline.”
Last December, at 33, Potts said she was diagnosed with ADHD and autism. Potts uses her platform to discuss her experience and draw attention to how scarce the availability of an autism diagnosis is for specific demographics.
“Multiple girls, especially girls of color, have been missed throughout the years because we were never included in what would be considered the criteria for autism,” she said.
Experts say that they are seeing late diagnoses of autism most often in women and people of color.
“I think there are several reasons if that’s the case. Women might be a little bit more prone to masking as one reason and also, historically, autism was really thought of as kind of a male disorder,” Mazefsky said. “And one additional really important factor is access to resources. So it’s still the case that many people are not trained in autism diagnoses. And so being in an under resourced neighborhood or rural neighborhood really limits opportunities to receive a professional diagnosis of autism.”
Potts’ 10-year-old twins share her diagnoses – both Kennedi and Braelyn have ADHD and her daughter Kennedi has Autism Spectrum Disorder. Potts says she’s learned through their journeys what she missed out on, and sees a younger version of herself when she looks at her daughters.
“I think getting diagnosed as a kid can help you advocate for your needs a lot early and practice that in a much safer environment,” she told “Nightline.” “Whereas when you’re diagnosed as an adult, and especially if you’ve never suspected it, then you’re really going back, and you’re rethinking your whole life.”
Potts wants to give her daughters the understanding and patience that she never knew she needed herself.
As an adult, Potts has thrived professionally. She is an academic with a doctorate in education, but says work is still a challenge, and communicating with others communication is a minefield. Potts has found ways to push past some of her anxiety around the workplace, for now. Small adjustments such as working from home, or dimming the lighting in her office, making her windows more private, and using stress balls and fidget toys to calm her restlessness, have helped. She considers herself lucky.
Studies in peer-reviewed journals suggest that up to 75% of adults with autism are underemployed.
Mazefsky said that adults with autism may fall off of what is known as the “services cliff.”
“As children phase out of school and transition into adulthood, they may experience less services and structured supports. There’s so many gaps, and what we have available for autistic adults, it’s nowhere near where it needs to be,” Mazefsky said.
However, there are a growing number of programs designed specifically to support adults with autism.
Heidi Stieglitz Ham, Ph.D. created Spectrum Fusion, a Houston-based nonprofit organization creating a space for community, programming that includes skills and job training and they also employ autistic adults in media production through their Spectrum Fusion Studios team.
“There’s a stereotype of individuals on the spectrum that excel in math and science. But we have the rest of the spectrum to consider,” Ham said.
One of the participants, John Karl Barth, recalled having a “terrible experience” in college before dropping out, but Spectrum Fusion offered a prospect where it appeared that he had none.
“Now, against all odds, I actually have a job in a field I want to work in,” Barth said. “This is a workplace that is very much made with adults on the spectrum in mind, which most jobs in any field aren’t.”
As Barth, Burnett, Potts, and others learn to live as adults with autism, each day brings a new sense of hope for what they want to achieve for themselves.
“Sometimes we don’t think about how we have been socialized to do certain things,” Potts said. “How do we get to a point where we can be okay with being ourselves?”
Potts doesn’t think it has to be an impossible dream.
“Am I really that different? Or am I just coming from a different perspective?” Potts said.
(NEW YORK) — Several routine childhood vaccines require multiple doses to be effective, but a new study finds children are not receiving all of them.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics Wednesday, found one in six toddlers between ages 19 months and 35 months started the vaccine series but didn’t complete it, leaving them vulnerable to serious diseases.
Researchers from several institutions, including the University of Montana, the University of Colorado, Kaiser Permanente Colorado and the Yale School of Public Health, looked at data from the 2019 National Immunization Survey for more than 16,000 children.
They looked at vaccine series’ that protects children from 11 different diseases including diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, pneumococcal infections, Haemophilus influenzae type B, hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella and varicella.
The study found that only 72.9% of toddlers completed the combined 7-vaccine series and 17.2% — equivalent to one in every six toddlers — initiated, but did not complete, the one or multiple multidose vaccine series.
What’s more, approximately 1.1% of children were completely unvaccinated and 9.9% had not initiated one or more of the seven vaccinations.
“I think the study highlighted a trend that we had been seeing in pediatrics prior to the pandemic,” Dr. Nathaniel Beers, executive vice president of community and population health at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study, told ABC News.
“I think certainly during the pandemic, we’ve seen actually worsening of this trend and have been doing a lot of work in the last year in particular to across the field of pediatrics to ensure that we were addressing the worsening vaccination rates beyond the those that were highlighted in the study that was published,” he added.
Ninety-three percent of kindergarten-age children had received the recommended vaccines, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted during the 2021–22 school year.
This is lower than both the 94% coverage reported during the 2020–21 school year, and the 95% coverage reported during the 2019–20 school year, prior to the pandemic.
Researchers identified factors for why some children started, but did not complete, the vaccine series including families moving across state lines, number of children in household and lack of health insurance.
“Certainly, maintaining and sharing adequately of medical records creates barriers to ensuring adequate care,” when people move across state lines, Beers said.
He continued, “We know people have been more transient for work or other reasons, and that certainly creates gaps in care for kids, particularly young kids who have frequent immunization needs in the first three years of life.”
Beers said another contributing factor is vaccine hesitancy, which is defined as delaying or refusing vaccination despite their widespread availability.
In 2019, the World Health Organization called vaccine hesitancy one of the top 10 threats to public health because it “threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases.”
We’ve seen vaccine hesitancy play a role in measles outbreaks in the U.S. including a recent outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, where 85 children were infected.
“There’s two components that are why we encourage people to get vaccinated,” Beers said. “So, it’s preventing the disease in yourself, but also preventing the spread of disease in the community.”
This helps create herd immunity, in which enough people have been vaccinated or are immune to disease, which then becomes unable to spread.
To help increase rates, the team re-highlighted some methods including more widespread adoption of systems that remind parents their child is due for or is late receiving their next vaccine dose, expanding vaccines to more places outside of a primary care setting, as well as speaking to hesitant parents.
“We certainly [need to] continue to work on vaccine education, making sure that we are providing that for patients and families,” Beers said. “Even for those families who have previously rejected the opportunity to get vaccines, making sure that we continue to offer them the opportunity to start those, and to continue that dialogue, because people do change their minds and continue to get good high-quality information is an important piece of helping people make a decision to move forward with vaccinations.”
(NEW YORK) — Fetal mortality rates declined among Black women in 2020 but were much higher than other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S., new federal data shows.
A report, published early Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, looked at data from the National Vital Statistics System.
Fetal deaths are deaths that occur at 20 weeks’ gestation — about five months of pregnancy — or later and affect 1% of all pregnancies in the U.S.
Researchers found that, overall, there were 21,105 fetal deaths in 2021, an increase of 1% from the 20,854 fetal deaths reported in 2020.
The 2021 rate of fetal deaths was relatively unchanged at 5.73 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.74 per 1,000 in 2020.
“Although they note that the number of fetal deaths increased, what’s actually important is that the overall rate was unchanged, because the number of fetal deaths obviously depends on the number of pregnancies, which presumably increased if the rate was unchanged,” Dr. Simon Manning, director of fetal care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, told ABC News.
The report also found Black women were the only racial/ethnic group to see a significant change for mortality rates, declining 4% from 10.34 to 9.89.
No significant changes in fetal mortality rates were seen for other groups including American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and white women.
However, Manning said it’s notable that the rate of 9.89 per 1,000 is nearly double the national rate of 5.74 per 1,000.
“Their rates are still almost double the average rate for all women,” he said. “So, it’s good to see that there is a small decrement in deaths for that group, but there’s still a fair way to go.”
“We can always be cautiously optimistic, but this is really early data and it will be important to document that this is a durable decrease, and not to rest on our laurels,” Manning added.
The report did not explore reasons behind the decline for Black women — or why other groups did not see a significant change — but Manning said there could be multiple reasons.
One reason could be that the racial reckoning that started in summer 2020 helped illuminate disparities experienced between Black women and other minorities compared to white women.
“So maybe there’s been more attention to improving access and care for Black women, one would hope hypothesize that,” Manning said.
He said another potential reason could be that unemployment among Black Americans has been falling, which could lead to them having more access to health care.
“You shouldn’t think that there’s something genetic or inherent about Black pregnant people that causes them to have worse outcomes,” Manning said.
The report also looked at fetal mortality rates by state and found, between 2019 and 2021, rates were highest in Mississippi at 6.38 per 1,000 and other states in the South and lowest in New Mexico and Connecticut at 2.60 per 1,000 and states in the West and Northeast.
Additionally, the fetal mortality rate for women who smoked during pregnancy was 9.62 per 1,000, almost double the rate for women who did not smoke during pregnancy at 5.08 per 1,000.
“We know that smoking causes blood vessels to constrict and we know that it causes babies to not grow as well and that occurs most likely because it affects placental blood flow,” Manning said. “So there is a direct biological correlation between smoking and poor fetal outcomes and this is yet another reminder, as if we needed more reminders, that stopping smoking is one of the most effective ways you can improve your health and the health of your baby.”
(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) — The first baby has been born from a transplanted uterus, outside of a clinical trial, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced Monday.
UAB said the birth occurred via a planned cesarean section in late May, and mom Mallory — who prefers to be identified only by her first name for privacy reasons — and her baby boy are healthy.
Mallory had been diagnosed over two decades ago with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, a rare condition characterized by the absence of a uterus or an underdeveloped uterus and vagina, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“I had come to terms with knowing that, OK, I won’t be able to carry my own children; but for me, it always felt like something that was lacking,” Mallory said in a statement.
Mallory was accepted into and joined the uterus transplant program at UAB Medicine, and she and her husband Nick and their daughter had to relocate to Birmingham for over a year. She received a donated uterus from a deceased donor through the nonprofit Legacy of Hope.
Aside from a uterus transplant, Mallory also underwent an in vitro fertilization process before a high-risk pregnancy and delivery. The entire process took nearly 18 months, according to UAB.
Mallory’s son is the first baby born from UAB’s uterus transplant program — only one of four in the U.S. — and the university’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute.
“We are thrilled for Mallory and her husband, Nick, and humbled that they entrusted our UAB Medicine care team to guide them through this long, difficult — and exciting — journey of transplantation, pregnancy and childbirth,” Dr. Anupam Agarwal, UAB’s senior vice president for medicine, said in a statement.
“Our goal and dream for this program is to make this routine for women who want to experience pregnancy and childbirth but can’t for a variety of health reasons. We have the expertise and the multidisciplinary teams in place here to help make this reality. Their work with Mallory and our other transplant recipients and pregnancies to date has just been phenomenal,” Agarwal added.
With the arrival of their son, Mallory and Nick are now parents of two. The couple also have a daughter, whom they welcomed with the help of Mallory’s sister, who was their gestational surrogate.
(NEW YORK) — More than a dozen people across four states have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to ground beef, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Sixteen people in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts have been sickened in the outbreak, the CDC said in an investigation notice published on Tuesday. Among those, six people have been hospitalized, it said.
All of the people who remembered the type of ground beef they ate and where they bought it reported eating 80% lean ground beef purchased from ShopRite locations in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York prior to getting sick, the CDC said. Illnesses started on dates ranging from April 27 to June 16, according to the CDC.
“Ground beef is the only common food people reported eating,” the CDC said. “Investigators are working to identify the source of the ground beef sick people ate.”
No recall has been issued and an investigation is ongoing, the CDC said.
The number of illnesses in the outbreak is likely “much higher,” as many people tend to recover from salmonella illnesses without medical care and are not tested for the bacteria, the CDC said.
Symptoms of salmonella infection include fever, diarrhea and stomach cramps and usually start six hours to six days after swallowing the bacteria. Most people recover without treatment within a week, the CDC said.
Raw, undercooked ground beef is a known source of salmonella. To avoid getting sick, ground beef should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, according to the CDC’s Four Food Safety Steps.
Another step when shopping for ground beef, it should be separated from other foods and placed into individual plastic bags to avoid cross-contamination. It should also be stored in a leakproof container in a fridge or freezer.
The CDC also recommends any utensils, bowls and surfaces that come into contact with raw ground beef should be cleaned before being used to prepare other foods. You should also wash your hands for at least 20 seconds after preparing raw ground beef.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s administration plans to try to force private insurance companies to offer the same coverage for mental health services as they do for physical health services, improving upon a well-known hole in America’s health care system, according to the White House.
The new policy is part of a broader push by Biden to improve mental health care in the United States — an issue he raised during one of his State of the Union speeches. The proposed rule, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday afternoon, will attempt to enforce compliance from private insurers with a 2008 law that already requires equality between the way insurance companies cover mental health and physical health, but is hardly ever adhered to.
“That law was passed to ensure that mental health care was treated by our health care system, like physical care,” Biden’s domestic policy adviser, Neera Tanden, told reporters during a recent telephone call. “Insurance couldn’t make you pay more for a visit to a mental health provider than your physician.”
“But in the years since, we’ve learned that insurers are evading the mandate of law,” she added. “Insurers make it difficult to access mental health coverage in-network, and then consumers are often forced to seek care out-of-network at significantly higher cost and pay out of pocket. Or — and this is this is also a real challenge — they defer care altogether.”
The new rule will attempt to crack down on violations of this law by creating more reporting standards and also try to get more mental health professionals to offer in-network care as well as reduce the “red tape” to qualify for mental health coverage, according to senior White House officials.
After monitoring the way the current system works for the past few years, one official called it “incredibly disappointing” and largely not compliant with the 2008 law. Analyses showed that people can access nutritional counseling if they have diabetes, for example, but not if they have eating disorders.
The proposed policy, an official said, will “put a lot more teeth around how health plans have to actually measure parity.”
Exactly when it will be enacted was unclear, though officials said “sometime in the near future.” The policy will undergo a 60-day public comment period before implementation. The effectiveness of the rule will be under the watchful eyes of mental health advocates.
Tuesday’s announcement follows through on a pledge the president made during his State of the Union address in March 2022.
“Let’s get all Americans the mental health services they need,” Biden said at the time. “More people they can turn to for help, and full parity between physical and mental health care.”
Around the same time, the Biden administration began to move nearly $1.7 billion of mental health funding from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which the president signed in June 2022, to schools and communities across the country. That included $240 million for programs increasing awareness of mental health support for school-aged kids, $80 million for grants for children’s mental health services and $60 million to train pediatric providers. In addition, that law had $150 million to help implement the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, a hotline for people to contact when they’re in need.
It was all part of a major push by Biden to improve the nation’s mental health care, including $300 million in grants focused on mental health services that were part of his fiscal year 2022 budget.
In May, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory about the impact of social media usage on teenagers’ mental health — an issue Biden also highlighted in his State of the Union speech.
(NEW YORK) — As the U.S. Women’s National Team tries for a history-making third consecutive World Cup, the team’s focus will also be on a critically important cause, mental health.
The cause is a personal one for two of the team’s players, defender Naomi Girma and forward Sophia Smith, whose former teammate at Stanford University, Katie Meyer, died by suicide last year.
Girma and Smith have dedicated this year’s Women’s World Cup tournament to Meyer, a goalkeeper who helped Stanford win the national championship in 2019.
In an essay published last week on The Players Tribune, Girma described Meyer, who was 22 when she died, as both the “truest friend I ever had,” and “the last person you’d think would take her own life.”
“Her death shocked the entire Stanford campus, and the entire soccer world,” Girma wrote. “For me, and for the rest of her close friends, it left a void in our lives that is so deep that it’s impossible to put into words.”
In her essay, Girma announced that with Meyers as their inspiration, the USWNT is launching a new mental health initiative in partnership with Common Goal, a nonprofit organization focused on using soccer to help provide a “more sustainable and equitable future for all,” according to the organization’s website.
“We know first-hand how many people, especially student athletes, are struggling in silence, and we want to use our platform in this huge moment for something bigger than soccer,” Girma wrote. “It’s exactly what Katie would have done. But she never would have stopped there.”
As part of the initiative, Fox Sports, the broadcaster airing the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in the U.S., will dedicate 1% of its coverage to “spotlighting the importance of mental health,” according to Common Goal and Girma.
Following the tournament, taking place this year in New Zealand and Australia, Common Goal said it plans to provide mental health training to youth sports coaches in under-resourced communities in the U.S.
“It’s long overdue that our soccer communities put mental health at the forefront when we discuss player care,” Lilli Barrett-O’Keefe, executive director of Common Goal USA, said in a statement. “We are determined to create a culture shift, at all levels of the game, following this summer’s World Cup. We are grateful for the players that are pushing this narrative forward and holding us all accountable to not only talk but act.”
Girma wrote that extending the mental health initiative beyond the World Cup is part of the team’s goal to do more than just raise mental health awareness.
“We want to make sure that young people have the tools to cope with depression, anxiety, stress, and the very bad days, when it feels like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, and it can never get better,” she wrote. “It can always get better.”
The USWNT’s effort to focus on mental health during their World Cup run comes amid a growing mental health crisis in the U.S., especially among young people.
Last year, nearly 24% of female high school students and nearly 12% of male students in the U.S. reported making a suicide plan, according to the latest results of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although suicide is the 11th-leading cause of death overall in the United States, it is the third among U.S. high school students between the ages 14 and 18, accounting for one-fifth of all deaths among this age group, according to the report.
And while the past three years of the coronavirus pandemic put a spotlight on teens’ mental health struggles, particularly when it comes to suicide, the issue has been a concern for many years, data shows.
“In the decade prior to the pandemic, there was a 57% increase in the suicide rate among young people,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an April 30 interview with “GMA.” “And today, nearly half of high school students are telling us that they feel persistently sad or hopeless.”
Common risk factors for suicide include a history of depression and other mental illness, bullying, loss of relationships and social isolation, according to the CDC.
The USWNT’s willingness to spotlight mental health also comes as more and more professional athletes are willing to publicly talk about their mental health and the pressures they face.
At the Tokyo Summer Olympics, held in 2021 due to the pandemic, gymnastics superstar Simone Biles withdrew from three of her event finals, citing her mental health.
In an interview following the Olympics, Biles said she “learned a lot” about herself in the process.
“I wouldn’t change anything because everything happens for a reason,” she told New York Magazine. “And I learned a lot about myself — courage, resilience, how to say no and speak up for yourself.”
Just months prior to Biles’ experience in Tokyo, tennis star Naomi Osaka withdrew from two Grand Slam tournaments — the French Open and Wimbledon — in order to preserve her mental health.
Both Biles and Osaka have joined other athletes in continuing to speak out about mental health ever since.
Smith, the USWNT forward, said as the team moves forward in this year’s World Cup, she and her teammates are supporting each other’s mental health.
“I think a big thing is leaning on your teammates and knowing that we’re all in this together, whatever those emotions may be,” Smith said, according to ESPN.
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(NEW YORK) — The amount of time that young people spend watching screens — instead of physical activity like sports, hikes or gardening — could be linked to health issues in adulthood, according to a new study.
Children and teenagers who spent more time watching television had less efficient oxygen use during exercise, higher blood pressure, and higher rates of obesity in mid-adulthood, even when accounting for sex, childhood body mass index and the family’s economic situation, the study published in Pediatrics says.
The researchers started tracking hundreds of children in New Zealand in 1973 and followed them until they turned 45 years old.
The study can’t prove that watching TV caused those health effects, says study author Dr. Bob Hancox. But there are possible reasons the two could be linked, he says. Kids who have more screen time might do less physical activity, because of the sedentary activity of sitting down and watching TV. They may also have poorer eating habits, due to seeing ads for junk foods, Hancox says.
“If you’re sitting watching TV, you’re not being active and therefore that increases your risk of being overweight and being less fit,” Hancox says.
The study started in the 1970s, when there were fewer screen time options than today. But experts say the findings still offer important information for how parents can guide screen time usage today.
“This really highlights the importance of critical development years. To emphasize – from a structural societal level, systems level, the need to set up programs, schooling, and support to allow parents to be successful in helping their children be more physically active,” says Dr. Veronica Johnson, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics focusing on obesity medicine at Northwestern Medicine.
Parents should pay close attention to children’s screen time, experts say. The American Academy of Pediatrics said that parents should limit unnecessary screen time, view screens with their child, and focus on content and communication around screen time to help children’s emotional, social, brain and identity development.
“Screen time is inevitable,” says Johnson. “It’s important to set some guidelines or expectations for your children as far as when you should be using the screens and how the screens should be utilized.”
Parents can also focus on the factors associated with screen time that could lead to problems later on, like diet and physical activity. The CDC recommends drinking water with fruit instead of sugary drinks, slicing up vegetables to use as quick snacks, and flavoring your meals with lemon juice, herbs, or no-salt spice blends instead of salt. The USDA’s MyPlate has recommendations for every age and activity level.
“Finding a meal plan that works for the individual is very personalized,” says Dr. Amanda Velazquez, director of obesity medicine at Cedars-Sinai. The best diet plan is the one that fits in with someone’s schedule, cultural preferences, and eating patterns — because that’s what they’ll be able to stick to, she says.
Families can increase their level of physical activity by spending time in parks, experts say, or incorporating activity into daily tasks. “Instead of driving, a parent can walk with their child to school or commute to work by foot. Some communities have sidewalks,” says Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Center of Weight Management and Metabolic Clinical Research at Weill-Cornell Medical College, “Anything besides sitting on the couch or sitting in a room watching a screen.”
With screens involved in all parts of our lives, screen time does not always have to be a bad thing for children, experts say. Developmentally appropriate educational programs, talking to family over video chat and exercise videos have benefits for families.
“Watching something with high-quality educational content that is engaging or FaceTiming with grandparents is going to have a different level of engagement and stimulation versus passively watching television shows in the background,” says Velazquez.
Screens have also evolved over time, from having two channels that did not have 24-hour programming to now we have many different screens at all times of the day, Hancox says. “It’s the dose that makes a difference. The dose of TV and screen time we’re having at the moment, from a physical health and probably mental health point of view is clearly a bad thing when we’re doing too much.”
Barrington Hwang, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
