Health

(NEW YORK) — A Texas woman said she had to wait until she developed sepsis before physicians could provide her with life-saving abortion care.

Texas has several abortion bans in place that prohibit nearly all abortions, except when a mother’s life is at risk or there is a risk of serious bodily harm. The state has civil and criminal penalties for performing banned abortions.

One of the bans prohibits abortions after fetal cardiac activity has been detected, which meant that doctors couldn’t provide her immediate emergency care, which she would have had access to in states where abortion is not banned or restricted.

Kristen Anaya’s medical records, obtained by ABC News, show she waited 22 hours between when she was admitted to the hospital to when she delivered her baby, despite her spiking a fever and shaking uncontrollably within an hour of arriving.

Anaya said she and her husband Stephen went to see a specialist two years into their marriage, hoping to get pregnant.

After her husband underwent a medical procedure and she went through two rounds of egg retrials for in vitro fertilization, doctors told them they had one embryo, she said.

Anaya said she had the embryo implanted in January and found out she was pregnant nine days later. The couple was elated. Anaya has one 20-year-old son, but this would be her husband’s first child.

Four months later, Anaya said her water broke and she began leaking amniotic fluid — which is essential to keep a fetus alive.

After consulting with her OB/GYN, the couple drove to the hospital and Anaya lost a significant amount of amniotic fluid within the next hour.

An ultrasound confirmed that she had lost nearly all her amniotic fluid, but the baby’s heart was still beating, according to Anaya’s medical records. As she was being examined by a doctor, Anaya began having rigors — shaking uncontrollably — and spiked a fever, both an indication of an infection which could lead to sepsis, the medical records show.

“The pregnant patient has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy, That condition places the pregnant patient at ‘risk of death;’ That condition poses a ‘serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function’,” doctors wrote in her admission medical records.

It was only a few hours later, when they spoke with Anaya’s OB/GYN, that the couple said they realized their baby girl — who they named Tylee — would not survive.

But the couple had no time to process the devastating news — Anaya’s OB/GYN told her she would “get very sick,” before doctors could help her, she told ABC News.

“So it would have been avoidable — me going into sepsis — if they were able to induce labor. The quicker they could get Tylee delivered, the better chance they had at me not going into sepsis. However, Tylee still had a heartbeat,” Anaya said.

“My husband and I are being told that ‘not only did we lose Tylee, but now you’re gonna go into sepsis and there’s nothing we can do about it other than watch you because of the abortion laws in Texas,'” Anaya said doctors told them.

According to her medical records, Anaya’s physician “initiated contact with the termination committee” — a committee of physicians who must approve any abortion care at the hospital — upon her admission to the hospital, a step which is not required of physicians in states where abortion is legal, according to Dr. Aileen Gariepy, an OB/GYN and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. Gariepy was not involved in treating Anaya.

If Anaya was a patient in New York, she would have been able to get abortion care immediately. The fever and chills were an indication of an infection and left untreated, sepsis is fatal, Gariepy told ABC News.

“That would be an indication to proceed immediately to start some kind of intervention to end the pregnancy. We can give antibiotics, but the cure is to deliver the pregnancy,” Gariepy said.

“There would be no state laws prohibiting us from giving her the highest level of medical care,” she said.

An ethics committee also had to approve the abortion, Anaya and her husband said.

“As a husband, now I’ve lost my daughter and now I could potentially lose my wife and the doctors kind of have to let it happen. That doesn’t make sense,” Stephen Anaya said.

Kristen Anaya said she then began to get sicker, with a high fever, shaking uncontrollably for hours and vomiting at least 8 times.

“They were going to be monitoring me, doing bloodwork every three hours, monitoring my vitals and ‘building a case’ to prove that my life was in great danger and they needed to induce labor,” she said.

Medical records show that Anaya’s lactic acid reached 2.8 mmol/L before she was induced — the normal range is between 0.4 to 2.0 mmol/L. Her white blood cell count went up to 17.6 k/uL, while the healthy range is between 4.5 to 11 k/uL.

When she was admitted to the hospital, her lactic acid was 1.5 mmol/L and her white blood cell count was 12.3 k/uL, according to her medical records.

“I was crying, asking for help. And I remember them literally not saying anything. [The doctors and nurses] would just literally look at me and look at Stephen and they’re just blank. There’s literally nothing they could do,” Anaya said.

She added, “I’m freezing, shaking so hard that I had body aches for a week after getting discharged from the hospital because my body was so tense and just shaking uncontrollably.”

Once Anaya’s test results met the threshold doctors had set, the hospital approved the abortion. She still had to wait from 30 minutes to an hour until the paperwork was in the system before her labor could be induced, according to her.

Despite a dilation and evacuation procedure being more effective at removing all the fetal tissue and the placenta, according to Gariepy, Anaya said she was only offered a labor induction.

The placenta usually detaches itself once a pregnancy is full term. By inducing labor and not performing the surgical procedure there is a risk the placenta will not be delivered, Gariepy said.

“There’s a 25% chance of still needing surgery [after induction] because the placenta get stuck,” Gariepy said.

Even after receiving four rounds of induction medication, Anaya’s placenta was not delivered, according to her medical records.

She has since needed two dilation and curettage procedures to remove the placenta and stop her bleeding. The first was during her 5-day hospital stay.

Then, Anaya began bleeding heavily in early May and needed a second procedure to remove placenta tissue, her medical records show.

The hospital where Anaya received care, and her physician did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

She said she is still having pain and complications and her cervix was still dilated at an appointment last week, despite delivering on April 16. Doctors said her uterus still does not look normal, Anaya said.

“I’m kind of in a gray area, I’m not taking the path of recovery that they would expect. Because I’m still having some complications,” Anaya said. “They’re really unsure as to why I’m still feeling the way that I’m feeling and so we’re kind of gonna wait and see.”

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(NEW YORK) — Actress Tori Spelling is sharing a warning with other parents about mold in their home after experiencing a “spiral of sickness” with her own children.

Spelling, who shares five children with her husband Dean McDermott, shared photos on Instagram Wednesday of herself with at least four of her children at an urgent care clinic.

Spelling said in the photos’ caption that she was prompted to look for answers after her kids were in what she described as a months-long “continual spiral of sickness.”

“Used to think… well that’s what happens when you have young kids in school. They just continually bring sicknesses home,” Spelling wrote. “But, when it gets to the point where they are at home sick more than being in school we had to reassess what was going on.”

Spelling wrote that among the symptoms her children have experienced are skin rashes, extreme fatigue, dizziness, fevers and respiratory infections. Her five children range in age from 6 to around 16.

Spelling said a professional mold inspection company found “extreme mold” in the family’s California home, which she said they had been renting.

“It’s hard to just uproot a huge family especially in midst of all feeling so sick and in bed,” she wrote. “But, we now will vacate the home asap.”

How to reduce kids’ exposure to mold at home

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mold can cause health effects ranging from skin rashes and burning eyes to coughing and sneezing and a sore throat.

The effects of mold may be more severe, according to the CDC, for people with asthma and those with mold allergies, as well as people who are immune-compromised and who have chronic lung disease.

Inside a home, mold can enter through everything from heating and air conditioning systems to open doors and windows, vents and even on clothing, shoes and pets, according to the CDC.

When looking for mold in the home, the CDC notes that mold shows up as spots and can be different colors. It also has a musty smell.

Mold may also be hidden, in which case a professional would need to find the source.

Mold growing in the home should be removed immediately, according to the CDC, by using soap and water, a mold-removing product or a bleach solution.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a comprehensive online guide with tips to prevent mold from growing in the first place.

The most important tip is to control moisture inside the house, according to the agency.

The EPA recommends cleaning indoor water leaks and spills quickly, cleaning and repairing roof gutters frequently and keeping the air conditioning system clear and unobstructed so moisture doesn’t accumulate.

In addition, the agency says to keep indoor humidity below 60% relative humidity, which can be measured with a moisture or humidity meter.

Tips for reducing humidity in a home include using a de-humidifier when needed and running exhaust fans or opening windows when showering, cooking and washing dishes, according to the EPA.

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(NEW YORK) — A patch that sits on a person’s skin could help reduce the risk of severe allergic reactions in toddlers with peanut allergies, according to the newly published results of a small clinical trial.

The results, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that toddlers who wore the patch for 22 hours a day for one year were able to tolerate the equivalent of one to four peanuts, meaning their sensitivity to peanuts had been reduced.

The phase 3 trial, led by a physician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, involved more than 300 children ages 1 to 3, all with peanut allergies.

The patch, named Viaskin, works by releasing small doses of peanut protein powder that are absorbed into the skin, thereby exposing the child to peanuts, according to DBV Technologies, the biopharmaceutical company behind Viaskin.

The Viaskin patch is designed to be switched out daily and worn between the shoulder blades.

The latest medical guidelines recommend that if a child does not have any eczema or food allergy, a parent may start exposing them to peanut-containing foods as young as 6 months of age in order to reduce the risk of developing a peanut allergy, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Peanuts are one of the eight foods that “account for the most severe allergic reactions in the United States,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . A food allergy affects 1 in 13 children in the U.S., according to the CDC.

Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, a lead author of the trial, said in a statement released by DBV Technologies that the patch has “the potential to give new hope” to families.

“This publication shows that, if approved, the Viaskin Peanut patch has the potential to give new hope to toddlers and their families who currently have no approved treatment options and must instead rely on avoidance, which can severely impact quality of life,” Greenhawt said. “The EPITOPE data are a meaningful advancement in potentially offering the first-ever FDA approved treatment option for peanut-allergic toddlers.”

DBV said in a statement it is “advancing regulatory efforts” to get Viaskin approved for children ages 1 to 3.

People with a peanut allergy must, in most cases, avoid peanut products in their diet and carry an injectable epinephrine — also called an EpiPen — for immediate use.

There is currently not an approved treatment for children under age 4 with a peanut allergy.

In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug designed to minimize the frequency and severity of a child’s allergic reaction to peanuts.

The drug, Palforzia, is a powder that comes in the form of pull-apart capsules. The powder is emptied from the capsules at the time it is taken and mixed into a semisolid food, like applesauce or yogurt, according to the FDA.

Palforzia is taken in three phases over the course of several months.

It is currently approved only for kids ages 4 to 17 with a “confirmed diagnosis of peanut allergy,” according to the FDA.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration has dropped all restrictions specific to gay and bisexual men donating blood, a move long anticipated by public health experts and gay rights activists.

The new guidance, first proposed in January and finalized Thursday, will not restrict donations based on someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and instead move towards an “individual risk-based” approach to reduce the risk of accidental HIV infection through the blood donation system.

The FDA originally banned donations from gay and bisexual men in the midst of the 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis. In recent years, the FDA relaxed these rules, but had not lifted them completely.

Now, the new blood donation risk assessment will be the same for every donor regardless of how they identify.

It’s a move that public health experts and advocates have long argued for. Advocates say the HIV crisis has changed significantly since the 1980s, undercutting the rationale for restrictions based on sexual orientation. For example, the HIV epidemic has spread far beyond gay and bisexual men, with women accounting for roughly 1 in 5 new HIV diagnoses in the United States, according to the most recent CDC data available.

Meanwhile, testing of the blood supply improved, dramatically reducing the risk of blood-borne transmission through the blood donation system.

“This change reflects advancements in molecular tests as well as the accrual of reassuring data from other countries that implemented similar individual behavior (not population) based testing,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.

In 2015, the FDA relaxed an outright ban on donations from gay and bisexual men, but the 2015 guidance asked men to abstain from sex for at least one year before donation.

Under Thursday’s finalized guidance, every prospective donor will be asked about their sexual history within the past three months – regardless of their sexual orientation. If they report a new sexual partner, more than one sexual partner, or having anal sex, they will be deferred. In addition, any person who takes HIV medications intended to treat or prevent infection will be deferred.

The FDA says this move could expand the pool of people eligible to donate blood.

“As a physician I feel a sense of relief, this will likely lead to the increased supply and availability of a vital resource needed for life saving and life sustaining treatment,” said Dr. Darien Sutton, an emergency medical physician and ABC News contributor.

In a press release, the FDA said it has “carefully reviewed numerous data sources” that give the agency “a solid foundation to support this new policy.” The FDA said it strongly believes this new recommendation will not compromise the safety of the blood supply.

In prepared remarks, Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA’s CBER division that handles blood donations, said the new recommendations “represent a significant milestone for the agency and the LGBTQI+ community.”

Chin-Hong added, “As a doctor I enthusiastically welcome this news … Above all, this is a victory of science over stigma.”

“The FDA’s decision to follow science and issue new recommendations for all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation, who selflessly donate blood to help save lives, signals the beginning of the end of a dark and discriminatory past rooted in fear and homophobia,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement Thursday.

Ellis, however, took issue with one part of the updated recommendation, which urges deferral for anyone taking HIV medications — including people who are HIV negative who are taking medications called PrEP to prevent infection.

The deferral period could continue to erect barriers to LGBTQ blood donors, she said.

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(NEW YORK) — Medical and scientific experts advising the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of allowing a birth control pill to be sold without a prescription.

The vote could sway the FDA, which ultimately needs to sign off. But if the FDA agrees, the progestin-only pill Opill could be on shelves this summer as the first over-the-counter pill sold in the U.S.

“The large body of evidence on the safety and effectiveness is very reassuring,” said Dr. Kathryn Curtis, a reproductive health expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after voting in favor of easing access.

Opill, made by the French drugmaker HRA Pharma, which is owned by Perrigo, has been on the market since the FDA approved it in 1973. Known as a “mini pill,” the drug is considered by doctors to pose fewer risks than combination pills that rely on estrogen.

Still, the FDA has posed questions about whether women could screen themselves for risks. For example, certain breast cancer survivors shouldn’t take the drug and women shouldn’t ignore abnormal uterine bleeding while on the drug, which could be a sign of an unrelated medical problem like an ectopic pregnancy.

Another concern was whether there was enough data on how teens would use the pill and if young teens in particular – ages 11 to 14 – would read the labeling and take the medication correctly.

But after two days of discussion, panel members said they didn’t think those concerns were serious enough to insist that a person see a provider first — a hurdle that keeps many patients from preventing unwanted pregnancies. Of particular concern was the lack of health care access by people of color and those who struggle to find child care or transportation.

Dr. Eve Espey, an FDA adviser and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of New Mexico, said an over-the-counter birth control pill is particularly needed in rural states like hers.

“I see it firsthand — people who face all of these barriers and who also experienced the maternal … mortality that goes along with unintended pregnancy,” Espy said.

“From my perspective, despite the FDA concerns about the study design and different interpretations of the studies, the overall very rare and unlikely harms are outweighed by the tremendous benefits of improved access without any restrictions,” she added.

Perrigo President and CEO Murray Kessler called the vote a “new, groundbreaking chapter in reproductive health,” while advocacy groups cheered the move as historic.

“It is past time for an over-the-counter birth control pill, which has the potential to advance reproductive justice and expand health equity,” Victoria Nichols, project director at Free the Pill, said.

Manufacturers of the drug haven’t said how much Opill will cost if sold without a prescription, although officials say the plan is to ensure it will be affordable.

ABC News’ Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — In the first guidance of its kind, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued sweeping recommendations intended to help teenagers use social media safely.

The guidance is primarily directed toward parents and formalizes prior recommendations around social media use, including setting time limits, family discussions about social media and parental monitoring.

The recommendations acknowledge that more research is needed to understand the full impact social media has on mental health.

“Social media is neither inherently harmful nor beneficial to our youth,” said APA President Thema Bryant in prepared remarks. “But because young people mature at different rates, some are more vulnerable than others to the content and features on many social media platforms that science has demonstrated can influence healthy development.”

During the pandemic, for example, social media helped ease loneliness. Used in the wrong context, however, it can be harmful to mental health.

“Overall, I think the advisory is great. I appreciate that the APA took a balanced approach and discussed both the benefits and risks. This highlights the importance of taking an individualized approach to every child,” said Ariana Hoet, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital who was not involved in making the guidance.

The guidance contains 10 recommendations designed to ensure that teens get the proper training on how use social media safely. For most families, that means staring with an active discussion about which sites teens are using, how often and how those experiences make them feel.

Psychologists say that adolescent brain development starts around age 10 and continues through early adulthood. APA cautions that sites that use “like” buttons and artificial intelligence to encourage excessive scrolling “may be dangerous for developing brains” and recommends limiting social media use on these types of platforms through phone settings.

In addition to setting limits, APA strongly encourages ongoing discussions about social media use and active supervision, especially in early adolescence. Parents are encouraged to model healthy social media use, including taking social media “holidays” as a family.

Children should also be monitored for problematic social media use, including interference with normal routines, choosing social media over in-person interactions, lack of physical activity, strong cravings to check social media and lying to spend more time online. In these cases, a mental health provider might be able to help.

Parents should also teach social media literacy, which includes educating teens about the pitfalls of social media. They shouldn’t place too much emphasis on “likes” as a measure of their own self-worth, experts say, and they should understand that social media is often a highly sanitized or glamorized version of the real world.

“The APA advisory outlines that there are two things we can do for best outcomes: limits and boundaries and open discussion and coaching,” said Hoet, who runs a program called On Our Sleeves that offers free-downloadable resources for families, including conversation starters for parents who don’t know where to start.

“Parents and caregivers have to remember that children’s brains are still in development, so they need monitoring and support in order to make the healthiest choices,” Hoet said.

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(BURLINGTON, Vt.) — Jes Kraus was supposed to be going to the University of Vermont Medical Center every day for aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments to fight stage three colorectal cancer, for which he was diagnosed in September 2020.

But at the end of October 2022, the hospital called to tell him not to come in for his appointments until further notice. The medical center had just been hit by a cyberattack, which infected computer systems across the state and locked out health care workers from his treatment plan and other critical tools.

“Radiation was canceled for a week,” Kara Kraus, Jes’s wife, told ABC News. “We were afraid. We weren’t sure if that would affect the outcome. Again, the tumor, would it start growing back within that week? What was going to happen?”

The Kraus family’s experience is an increasingly common one, research shows. Hospitals have become a top target for ransomware gangs, which take control of vulnerable online networks and demand a ransom to unlock them, severely disrupting patient care in the process.

The number of attacks on U.S. hospitals each year doubled between 2016 and 2021, from 43 to 91, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Last year saw an even greater number of incidents, the American Hospital Association said.

Health care systems are often underprepared to stop these attacks, cybersecurity experts said, even though research shows they come with very real health risks for patients.

“These are direct threats to patient safety,” John Riggi, national advisor for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association, told ABC News.

When ransomware attacks hit hospitals, internet-based tools critical to patient care, which can include patient health records, imaging and lab results, communication links with other departments and hospitals and more, are suddenly frozen.

When UVM Medical Center’s computers went down, the impact on patient care was “significant,” hospital President and COO Dr. Stephen Leffler, who was seeing patients as electronic communications went down, said.

“When the laboratory had a critical lab result on someone, they couldn’t put it in the electronic medical record,” he told ABC News. “They couldn’t call the floor. And so we literally had our administrators start going in the lab, standing there and running a paper result to the floors.”

“Everything that we do and rely on was down,” he said. “We actually sent some staff to Best Buy to buy Walkie Talkies!”

The attack disrupted UVM systems for 28 days, costing more than $50 million in damage.

For years, discussion of cyberattacks at hospitals has focused on threats to privacy. Hacks could expose personal information about patients and subject hospitals to fines under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. But experts now say privacy concerns are increasingly overshadowed by potential harm to patients when a medical facility is forced to delay treatments and divert ambulances.

“This is not just a patient privacy issue,” Josh Corman, a leading expert on cybersecurity and health care, told ABC News. “This is a patient safety issue.”

Using data from the state of Vermont during the UVM ransomware attack, Corman and colleagues found that hospitals experiencing a ransomware attack hit a stress level linked to more patient deaths. The findings were published by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

And cyberattacks don’t just affect an individual hospital hit with the ransomware.

Newly published research in the journal JAMA Network Open documents a ripple effect that can impact health care and the patient experience across an entire region.

The study looked at fallout from a single ransomware attack on a single San Diego hospital in 2021. It found that emergency rooms at adjacent hospitals had more ambulances arrive and saw more patients than normal, and had longer wait times for all patients seeking care. The number of situations where a patient left without being seen by a doctor rose by 127%.

“Patients don’t stop getting sick just because a hospital is hit by a ransomware attack,” Dr. Christian Dameff, lead author on the study and emergency physician at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. “They have to go somewhere. So what this research shows is that those patients go to neighboring hospitals that can be overwhelmed.”

Dameff calls it the blast radius.

“It truly affects the entire community,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded in an April report that cyberattacks are the single “largest threat” to America’s hospitals, deserving “immediate attention” because of the “threat to life.”

Most hospitals still aren’t adequately prepared to prevent and respond to the threat, experts say. Bigger hospitals generally have the resources to invest in cybersecurity, but smaller ones don’t — particularly after the financial strain of the pandemic. Nearly all hospitals surveyed in the HHS report said they use software with “known vulnerabilities;” only half said they had a plan to address those shortcomings.

“We’re not yet in a place where we can reliably say the hospital your family depends upon in most of America is, at a minimum, cyber hygiene-level sufficient to fend off preventable attacks,” Corman says.

It’ll take investment and more federal regulation to fill those gaps, Corman said. There’s some movement: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now requires that medical devices meet cybersecurity standards, and members of Congress are considering introducing legislation that would set mandatory cybersecurity minimums for hospitals.

There also needs to be more cybersecurity and preparedness education for healthcare workers, Dameff said, so that doctors and nurses are prepared for a situation when their networks do go down and they’re not able to rely on digital tools.

“It can happen to you – even when you think it’s impossible,” said Leffler of his message to other hospital administrators.

Raising awareness and encouraging action around health care cybersecurity has been difficult, Dameff said. People in the field worry that talking about it will discourage patients from trusting healthcare institutions, for example, he said.

But more and more leaders in health care are starting to recognize the issue.

“These attacks are becoming so frequent and so sophisticated. Hospital defenses aren’t nearly up to snuff to prevent these types of things from happening,” Dameff said.

Hospitals are, instead, left scrambling when an attack hits. That’s what happened with Jes Kraus’ care at UVM. Luckily, his oncologist was able to get his radiation treatments moved to another hospital, and his cancer is currently in remission. Still, it was stressful to figure out and coordinate a new way to get care.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s easy to look at it now and say, okay, yeah, it was a week delay [in treatments] and it didn’t really impact [my prognosis], but I hope that it’s been a lesson learned to hospitals,” Kraus said.

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(NEW YORK) — Nine months ago, near the end of August, Jonah Barrow, a high school senior, attempted to take his own life.

Now, the 18-year-old from Katy, Texas, is speaking out about his survival to share a message of hope amid a mental health crisis in the United States, particularly among teenagers.

“I hope that I can change the mind of at least one person. That’s all I care about,” Barrow told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “If I can change the mind of one person or encourage someone to speak out, relieve themselves of their suffering, that’s all I can hope to dream.”

Barrow said his mental health struggles began in middle school, as he faced difficulties transitioning to a new school and new friends.

When he entered high school a few years later, Barrow said he began to struggle with his mental health again. An accomplished piano, cello, ukulele and guitar player, he found his niche playing guitar in a rock band.

Yet on that day last August, Barrow said he struggled to see a future for himself.

“I felt lost, worthless,” he said. “After the suicide attempt, it’s kind of jarring to think that before that moment, I had thought that I didn’t have a future.”

Barrow said in the moment, he also struggled to see the support he had all around him, everyone from his therapist to his friends and family.

“That day, if I kept calling other people, other family members or other friends, if just one person had answered the phone, I would be in a much different place today,” he said. “It is so important to keep reaching out and keep talking about things.”

Barrow’s mother, Lori Barrow, said she remembers wishing too that her son had reached out and called even more people who love him in his most difficult moment.

“He could have called me, his grandmother, his aunts, his cousins, there’s so many people,” Lori Barrow told GMA. “That’s why it’s important to keep reaching out. Reach out to the people that you know are going to be available, and don’t stop trying.”

As a teen who has attempted suicide, Barrow is far from alone, data shows.

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.

While the past three years of the coronavirus pandemic have 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.”

A CDC report released last year, just one month after Barrow’s own suicide attempt, found an 8% increase in the suicide rate among males ages 15 to 24 from 2020 to 2021.

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.

Jonah Barrow said that through his own journey, he has learned that simply speaking out loud about his mental health struggles has helped.

“The second you start talking about it, it gets easier,” he said. “I would say that’s the most important thing.”

Experts too say one of the most important suicide prevention steps parents can take is to talk to teenagers about suicide.

“Talk with your kids about suicide because there is a big misconception that we’re going to somehow put an idea in our kids’ heads and it’s going to make them more likely to do something risky or bad. That is absolutely incorrect,” Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., chief science officer for the American Psychological Association, told GMA earlier this month. “You’re not putting an idea in their head, but what you are doing is communicating when they talk with you about it, they’re going to feel safe and they’re going to feel like they can open up to you.”

Lori Barrow noted she has seen the importance of not just talking to kids about mental health and suicide, but also listening to their replies.

“The biggest thing that I think parents can do is to listen, to not talk at them, to not talk about their experiences,” she said. “Because it’s easy for somebody to say, ‘I know how you feel. I’ve been there,’ but we really haven’t. Their experience is completely different from our experiences.”

Finding hope in music

In addition to finding healing in talking about his mental health, Jonah Barrow said his passion for music has restored hope in his life.

After suffering multiple injuries in his suicide attempt, including being temporarily paralyzed, Jonah Barrow has spent much of the past nine months hospitalized and undergoing rehabilitation.

While recovering at TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation center in Houston, he began working with Ty Walcott, a board-certified music therapist.

“I remember I was challenged with trying to stand on my feet for as long as I could and could only stand for about three minutes,” Jonah Barrow said. “But when Ty Walcott came to visit me and we started playing songs and listening to music, I was able to stand for about 15 minutes.”

“It’s like magic,” he said of the effect music has had on his recovery.

Walcott said she used music as a way to help Jonah Barrow regain his mobility and endurance in relearning how to talk, in addition to using it as a tool to help regulate his emotions.

“Music acts as a medium for processing those emotions and trauma and grief,” Walcott told GMA. “And it helps as a calming agent just because of the way that it affects the brain. It’s affecting all parts of the brain differently, as opposed to us trying to do it by sheer will.”

Over several months of therapy with Walcott, Jonah Barrow went from not being able to sit up in bed long enough to play an instrument to performing onstage with Walcott at a local music festival.

“Not being able to hold your instrument is like losing an arm, losing your hands, losing your feet, because it’s a part of you. It’s what makes you you,” Walcott said. “So it was a huge milestone for him to not only be able to play, but to be able to play for other people, because that’s what he wants to do.”

Jonah Barrow said he sees reconnecting with music as a turning point in his recovery.

When he arrived at TIRR Memorial Hermann, he said he was still struggling with the “internal conflict” of his feelings over the fact that he had survived.

“Because I was still depressed, part of me was still battling with ‘I wish it worked,’ ‘I’m happy that it didn’t,'” he said, adding, “But when I started working on myself every single day, and knowing that if I just keep trying and go with this with a positive mindset and a goal to get better, it worked wonders for me.”

Jonah Barrow will graduate from high school this month, and has plans to attend college, with a goal to work in music as a career.

He said he wants people to know that suffering looks different for different people, and that there is no shame in speaking out about mental health struggles.

“I believe many people suffer in silence,” he said. “And I can only encourage them to just speak their truth, whatever that may be.”

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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(NEW YORK) — Most women with average risk should start screening for breast cancer at age 40, and they should get screened every other year through age 74, according to new draft guidance Tuesday from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally appointed group whose decisions guide insurance policies.

Prior task force recommendations said women should start screening at age 50 but said women in their 40s with higher risk factors should consider screening at younger ages.

The new guidance comes on the heels of mounting evidence showing higher rates of breast cancer among women in their 40s, including a sharp 2% annual increase from 2015 to 2019.

“Whenever you have more people in a given decade getting a condition, then the value of screening at a younger age goes up,” said Dr. Carol Mangione, immediate past chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

“The goal is to find cancer earlier, when it’s treatable and curable,” said Dr. Maxine Jochelson, chief of the breast imaging service at Memorial Sloan Kettering. “I do think that by screening women earlier and more frequently, we will find smaller cancers more frequently.”

Breast cancer outcomes are not felt evenly across society, with Black women more likely to get aggressive cancers at a younger age and 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women, according to a recent study.

The new guidance seeks to drop the screening age for women of all races to help ease this disparity — although Mangione cautioned that screening alone won’t be enough to eliminate inequities.

The new draft recommendation applies to cisgender women and all other people assigned female at birth who are at average risk of breast cancer. It does not apply to people who have a significantly higher-than-average risk of breast cancer, including breast cancer survivors and those who are predisposed because of their genetics, family history or personal medical history.

Medical experts say there are risks to screening too early or too often, including the risk of false positives.

Still, the updated task force guidance may bring it more in line with guidance from other major medical groups, which already recommend that women start getting screened at a younger age.

The American Cancer Society, for example, says mammogram screening is optional for those ages 40-44. They say women ages 45-54 should get mammograms every year and after that, women can choose to drop down to every other year if they wish.

“We’re very happy that the [task force’s] age to begin screening for mammography has been lowered to 40. We do think that’s wonderful news,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society.

Dahut said women should “be aware that these guidelines, again, are just guidelines for average risk,” and it’s important for women to understand their own individual risk and “not be afraid to advocate for screening when it’s appropriate for them.”

Mangione agreed that any woman with symptoms, including a lump or change in the nipple, should get screened immediately, even if she is younger than 40.

“It’s really important that primary care doctors understand [these] recommendations are for average-risk women without symptoms,” Mangione said.

The task force said more research is urgently needed about the benefits of additional screening for women with dense breasts.

About half of women have dense breast tissue, which increases cancer risk and means mammograms may not work as well for them.

The task force stopped short of a recommendation, but other experts interviewed by ABC News said they recommend additional imaging for their patients with dense breasts, which can include ultrasound or MRI.

The task force also said more research is needed about the benefits and harms of screening in women 75 and older. Currently, there isn’t enough evidence for the task force to recommend for or against screening after 74.

The task force will hear comments until June 6 and finalize its guidance after.

“Science is not stagnant,” Mangione said. “It would be irresponsible if we saw evidence that we could save lives and we didn’t change the recommendation.”

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(NEW YORK) — Advisory committees of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to review the first-ever application for an over-the-counter birth control pill.

At a joint meeting, the Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee and the Obstetrics, Reproductive, and Urologic Drugs Advisory Committee will discuss whether pharmaceutical company Perrigo can make its oral contraceptive Opill, which currently requires a prescription, to be available on store shelves.

First approved by the FDA in 1973, Opill is type of hormonal birth control pill known as the “minipill,” which some experts say poses fewer risks than combination pills that rely on estrogen.

Still, buyers would have to screen themselves for any health risk factors, much as they would other OTC medications.

During the meeting, the FDA will hear from the company as well as speakers who will advocate for the need of nonprescription birth control.

Committee members will debate the results of a study Perrigo conducted and there will be an opportunity for open public comment. A vote from the advisory committees is expected to come Wednesday.

If the advisory committees do recommend approval, the next step is approval from the FDA. Although the agency is not bound to follow the advisory groups’ recommendations, the FDA typically does not go against their guidance.

The FDA is expected to make a decision by the summer. If the OTC pill does get greenlit, it would not become available as quickly as COVID-19 vaccines, which were speedily rolled out after the advisory committee meeting to approve them due to the global emergency.

Perrigo, which filed the application in July 2022, argued that changing its pill from prescription to OTC use will improve access to affordable birth control.

“Women’s needs are nuanced, and it’s about time their health options reflect that,” Frederique Welgryn, global vice president for the Women’s Health initiative at Perrigo, said in a statement in March. “At Perrigo, we’re not only committed to prioritizing women’s health — we’re committed to being active champions for it. We’re reimagining a new world where people are empowered to determine their own sexual health journey and access the solutions they want.”

Groups such as the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists support making OTC birth control available to improve access, such as for those living in contraceptive deserts, where access to birth control is lacking.

“We know that barriers to accessing contraception contribute to non-use or inconsistent use of contraception,” Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, CEO of nonprofit group Power to Decide, said a statement. “For people to achieve reproductive well-being and have the power to decide when and whether to become pregnant, we need to dismantle those barriers.”

She added, “As a practicing OB-GYN, I know that people can safely and effectively use a birth control pill without a prescription and without a doctor’s visit.”

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