Health

(NEW YORK) — Ramon Benavides, 2022’s Texas Teacher of the Year, choked up, clutching his infant son as his mind raced with thoughts of the recent mass shootings in his home state.

From the attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 to the Uvalde school massacre, the tragedies conjure up unimaginable fears felt not only by parents — but by teachers.

“I can’t even find the words to really explain how I’m feeling,” Benavides said. “I held him [his son] super tight because many parents, teachers involved, you know, they’re, they’re not coming back to their families and their families aren’t aren’t going to be able to embrace their loved ones as I did with my little boy last night. And it’s painful, it’s hurtful, and like I said, it’s just so many emotions just going on.”

The El Paso educator said he is devastated by the killing of 19 children and two of their teachers at Robb Elementary School. The shocking news struck his “soul,” he said, and he is having trouble making sense of it.

“I’ve lived across Texas, so this is something that just hits us all,” he told ABC News. “It kind of leaves you breathless, it’s like a punch to the gut.”

Teachers’ mental health

Having to deal with school shootings is just one of the factors taking a toll on teachers’ mental health.

Educators cite a range of emotions, including anxiety and sadness during a pandemic — now in its third year — as reasons more than half of them plan to leave their chosen profession, according to a survey from the National Education Association. While burnout is a primary cause teachers want out of the classroom, now some are haunted by fears that they, their families and their students now won’t be safe — even at school.

In the almost 10 years since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, there have been more than 900 school shootings, according to the gun violence prevention organization Sandy Hook Promise and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The attack in Uvalde is the latest in a long series of acts of gun violence terrorizing students and teachers alike. Last year, there were 42 acts of campus gun violence at K-12 schools in the U.S.

“Mental health in this country is already bad with the pandemic,” Lee Perez, Nebraska’s 2022 Teacher of the Year, told ABC News. The Uvalde shooting, he said, “is only going to make it worse.”

He knows how the pressures can push teachers to their limits. Perez dealt with anxiety and depression due to stress from the pandemic and how the spread of COVID-19 disproportionately affected marginalized minority communities.

Teachers’ job-related stress levels and symptoms of depression were higher than most employed adults, according to Rand Corporation’s 2021 State of the U.S. Teacher Survey. A recent poll of over 3,000 National Education Association (NEA) members emphasized over 90% of educators believe stress is a serious issue.

Dr. Christine Crawford, associate medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that exposure to horrific events like the Uvalde shooting “can elicit symptoms that are consistent with a trauma response, almost.”

She explained that after hearing or reading about events like a mass shooting, people may notice they are more on edge or irritable and may experience other symptoms such as difficulty sleeping or concentrating. These symptoms, Crawford said, may present after repeated exposure to similar events, even if someone didn’t experience the trauma firsthand.

“We do know that there is this phenomenon known as vicarious trauma,” Crawford explained. “So, just hearing about a traumatic event, you can almost imagine yourself in that sort of scenario and that can further kind of exacerbate some of the symptoms that I just described.”

It highlights, she said, that even in a small community, “you don’t fully know each and every person and what it is that they’re capable of. And so this kind of sense of safety within the community can certainly be threatened.”

Benavides says he’s taking it “day-by-day.” But Perez, his state’s first Latinx and English as a Second Language (ESL) recipient of the top teacher honor, said the shooting in Uvalde also hit close to home.

“These beautiful brown babies [were] just murdered in cold blood,” he said, adding, “it puts people of color … puts us on pins and needles.”

Perez had his first child at the beginning of this month. He tearfully discussed “strategizing” to protect his baby girl, Natalia, if Congress doesn’t pass universal background checks or mental health red flag laws.

“It really adds to that anxiety that has been brought on by all the stuff that’s happened two years ago,” Perez said. “As educators, we always tell families, communities and our students, ‘you are safe at school,’ but then this happens, and then the question becomes, well, ‘are students safe at school? Is anybody safe at school?'”

‘It scares you,’ one teacher said

Teachers have faced mental health struggles throughout the pandemic that initially shuttered schools and has upended education over the last two years. Their fears of contracting a deadly virus, combating a nationwide staffing and substitute shortage and increasing demands on their time have made a tough profession — even harder.

“Teachers are doing amazing work, and they are providing work during a very challenging time. They already had to provide support – to teach kids during a pandemic, and then to have these events happen, can be further traumatizing for some of our teachers,” Crawford said. “And so we certainly do need to have compassion for these teachers, empathy for these teachers, because they really have been faced with a tremendous amount of stress and trauma over the last few years.”

Experts have been monitoring the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of Americans over the last two years. Since April 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been documenting self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, using Household Pulse Surveys. These metrics, compared with similar data collected in 2019, show a dramatic increase in symptoms.

Colorado’s Autumn Rivera was a 2022 finalist for the national teacher of the year award who says she considered seeking mental health counseling at her school after the Uvalde shooting. With the school year ending, Rivera is taking time to process her feelings because she can’t accept the fact that many of those slain were Latinx.

“Those are my students,” Rivera said, comparing the population she teaches to the students at Robb Elementary. “That is me and those two teachers, you know, very similar backgrounds, very similar situations, and it just broke my heart.”

For now, Perez struggles with the notion of when this might happen again, advocating for Congress to enact sweeping gun reform that could prevent future attacks on schools. Ultimately, he hopes his daughter has a safer future than today’s students who do lockdown and active shooting drills.

“It scares you,” he said. “Where is it safe? The fact that you have to ask that question scares, not just teachers, but everybody.”

The National Alliance on Mental Illness HelpLine offers resources and support to people experiencing mental health struggles. The HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m., ET at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or helpline@nami.org. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available toll-free, 24/7, to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress at 1-800-273-8255.

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(NEW YORK) — Over the past decade, the number of children overdosing on melatonin, a sleep aid, has increased by 530%, according to a new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The largest increase, a 38% jump, came in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, which the study’s authors say was likely because more children were spending more time at home.

In 2021 alone, more than 50,000 calls were placed to poison control centers in the United States about melatonin ingestion by kids, the study found.

“Most were unintentional exposure, meaning the parent did not give the child melatonin,” said ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, also a board-certified OBGYN. “So the implication is the child got into it themselves.”

Here are four things for parents to know to help keep kids safe:

1. Melatonin is a widely-accessible supplement.

Melatonin is a hormone that plays a role in sleep, according to the National Institutes of Health.

In the U.S., melatonin supplements are considered dietary supplements, which means they are accessible to the public without the regulations of a prescription drug.

Melatonin supplements come in the form of tablets, capsules, liquid and even gummies, which may make them more attractive to kids.

According to the study’s authors, “Increased sales, availability, and widespread use have likely resulted in increased access and exposure risk among children in the home.”

2. Melatonin has not been widely studied in kids.

There have not yet been enough studies on melatonin and kids to know the full impact of the supplement, according to the NIH.

Even in adults, according to the NIH, the long-term impacts of melatonin are not well-known, even if the supplement does appear to be mostly safe with short-term use.

With kids, because melatonin is a hormone, there is a possibility that taking it by supplement could impact hormonal development like puberty and menstruation, according to the NIH.

3. Melatonin ingestion by a child is a medical emergency.

According to Ashton, when a child ingests melatonin without adult supervision, it is a medical emergency that requires immediate action.

“You either want to bring them to an emergency room or contact a poison control center,” she said.

The phone number to reach a poison control center is 800-222-1222.

Symptoms of melatonin ingestion in kids includes abdominal pain, nausea or vomiting, excessive tiredness and labored breathing.

4. Parents should store melatonin out of kids’ reach.

Ashton said parents should keep all medications and supplements, including melatonin, out of the reach of kids, even young teenagers.

Bottle tops should also be kept securely closed, according to Ashton, who encouraged parents to talk to their kids about medication safety.

“You always want to use any medication exposure as an opportunity to really teach that child about medication, that it should only be given by an adult, is not candy and can have consequences both good and bad,” she said.

The CDC also has additional tips HERE for keeping medication safely away from kids.

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(NEW YORK) — Early in the pandemic, scientists and public health experts leaned on their experience with other viruses to make predictions about COVID-19, hopeful that when enough people developed immunity, the virus would be stopped in its tracks.

But in the years that followed, and even after the introduction of highly effective vaccines, vaccine scientists and public health experts interviewed by ABC News realized COVID-19 is unlikely to completely disappear.

Although herd immunity through widespread vaccination can be a successful strategy for certain viruses, such as those that cause smallpox and polio, scientists no longer consider it an appropriate management strategy for the virus that causes COVID-19, these experts said.

Herd immunity refers to a situation where a virus can’t spread because it keeps encountering people who are resistant to it. As a result, a small number of people who lack resistance can still be protected by the “herd” of resistant people around them, because the virus is less likely to spread to them.

But herd immunity depends on some hidden assumptions. First, that resistant people stay resistant. Second, that resistant (or vaccinated) people cannot transmit the virus. Scientists learned over the past two years that these assumptions do not hold for COVID-19.

Vaccine scientists and public health experts said herd immunity isn’t realistic for COVID-19 because of what we’ve learned about the virus itself.

Chiefly, immunity wanes relatively quickly, and vaccinated people can still transmit the virus, especially when confronted with rapidly evolving new variants. Meanwhile, human behavior has been hard to predict, with a slower-than-hoped vaccine rollout, and constant changes in social distancing hampering scientists’ ability to anticipate and prepare for the future.

Lessons learned about the virus itself

Rarely does a vaccine offer total and complete protection against infection. On the one hand, tetanus shots can stay durable for over 30 years. But for COVID-19, both infection- and vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time.

“When you get a vaccine, it induces two types of immune response,” Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told ABC News. “One response is to make antibodies, which last three to six months. Antibodies can protect against even mild disease.”

Antibodies are proteins that bind to virus particles to inactivate them. They also help prevent people from transmitting the active virus to others since they can bind the virus before it gets to someone new.

Antibody-based immunity against mild disease wanes after three to six months. However, immunity against severe disease remains because of the second immune response.

“The second response is to make memory B and T cells, which are longer-lived,” Offit said.

Memory cells tend to lay dormant and need a trigger before they start generating antibodies.

The virus that causes COVID-19 has a short incubation period. Most infected people become contagious within the first few days, long before memory cells activate to make antibodies.

Since memory cells eventually act about two weeks in, infections typically won’t progress beyond mild illness. But by then, many folks will have transmitted the virus to others.

“All the vaccines still provide robust protection against severe disease,” Dr. Dan Barouch, virologist and immunologist at Harvard Medical school, told ABC News. “None of the vaccines do a very good job at preventing infection.”

Lessons learned about human behavior

Fewer than 70% of Americans are fully vaccinated two years after vaccines became available. Worldwide, many countries have even worse vaccine coverage.

Leaving reservoirs of unvaccinated people is like leaving flammable material around a forest fire. With plenty of fuel to feed it, the fire keeps burning. Every new infection is a chance for the virus to grow and mutate. Some mutations could confer vaccine resistance.

“Currently, the vaccine and boosters are free […] and accessible through mass public vaccination sites,” Azra Behlim, PharmD, MBA, Associate Vice President of Pharmacy Sourcing & Program Services at Vizient, a health care services company, told ABC News.

Going forward, things may shift toward charging a fee, like for other vaccines.

“[Federal] decisions […] on whether or not to extend provisions on the COVID Relief bill will impact whether this shift will take place now or at a later date,” Behlim said.

Experts speculate that real herd immunity could happen if everyone received vaccines every three to six months, so antibodies never waned. But the logistics of vaccine rollouts and booster fatigue concerns make that impossible.

“The only reasonable goal of this vaccine is to prevent serious illness,” Offit said, noting the vastly lower death and hospitalization rates now that more Americans are vaccinated.

As experts shift away from herd immunity to the prevention of severe illness, they say social distancing policies will need to be determined at the local level.

But social distancing policies use assumptions about human behavior, not just virus behavior, experts said.

“We have a snapshot of what happened in time, but as people’s behaviors change, those assumptions become less valid and the models tend to erode,” Dr. John Brownstein, ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, said.

If more virulent and contagious variants appear, epidemiology models will have to change fast.

Genevieve Yang, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatry resident in New York City and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(WASHINGTON) — D.C. Health has reported the first positive orthopox case in a resident who recently traveled to Europe, and it sent samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test for monkeypox, the agency said Sunday.

The patient is isolating and doesn’t pose a risk to the public, and the agency is monitoring close contacts, it said in a release.

The orthopox family of viruses includes monkeypox, D.C. Health said.

There are currently 25 total confirmed monkeypox/orthopoxvirus cases in the U.S. as of Friday, according to the latest CDC data.

The first case of monkeypox in the U.S. this year was reported in Massachusetts.

Monkeypox is a cousin of the smallpox virus and causes similar, but milder, symptoms in humans, according to the CDC.

The incubation period from the time a person is exposed to when symptoms first appear can be anywhere from five to 21 days, according to the World Health Organization.

Typically, the disease begins with a fever, headache, fatigue, chills and muscle aches. Unlike smallpox, however, monkeypox also causes swollen lymph nodes.

ABC News’ Chad Murray contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Two weeks ago, federal health officials authorized COVID-19 boosters for children between ages 5 and 11.

Doctors think it will be a challenge to get this age group boosted when uptake for primary doses of the vaccine is so low, but they say town halls, providing information in multiple languages and offering the boosters in pediatricians’ office could help.

As of Thursday, only 35.9% of children under age 12 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An even smaller percentage, 29.2%, have been fully vaccinated.

“It absolutely should be much higher,” Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Urgent Care at Texas Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “Children can get seriously ill from COVID and children, even if they have very mild symptoms, are extremely proficient at spreading infection.”

And hesitant parents don’t seem inclined to increase these rates any time soon.

An April 2022 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found 32% of parents of 5- to 11-year-olds said their children will definitely not get vaccinated.

What’s more, 12% said they will only get their child vaccinated if it’s required for school and 13% said they want to wait and see.

How to talk to parents about boosters

Doctors stress it’s important that children not only get a primary series but a booster too so the immune system can get a “reminder” of fighting off COVID-19.

“What the science has shown is that our immunity starts waning around the fifth or sixth month after our primary series,” Dr. Shaquita Bell, medical director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, a community health center operated by Seattle Children’s, told ABC News. “Our immune system needs reminders and that’s what I think of the booster as. The booster is a reminder to help your body remember how to fight off the infection.”

To help alleviate parents’ concerns, Dr. Lalit Bajaj, chief quality and outcomes officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said he and his colleagues hold frequent town halls about the vaccine, sit on panels for community organizations to discuss the vaccine and provide information in other languages including Spanish.

“It’s normal to say, ‘I don’t understand this, I don’t know this, this seems brand new,’ and so you do a lot of listening as well,” he told ABC News. “So, we help folks really better understand what they need to learn to alleviate safety concerns.”

Spinner said his hospital is offering the vaccine at all outpatient facilities rather than specific hospital sites to increase vaccination and booster rates among children.

Physicians and staff also speak to parents every time a child comes into the office for a visit about the benefit of the COVID-19 vaccine and booster — even offering to administer the shots right then and there.

“I can tell you it’s made a huge difference,” he said. “When we would talk about getting the vaccine the family would have to go to one of the three hospital campuses [and] they often wouldn’t do it. But when you have the conversation in the office and you have the syringe ready to go … we are able to do a lot better in terms of getting these kids vaccinated.”

Why parents are hesitant to vaccinate their children

Bell said many adults still believe COVID-19 doesn’t impact kids severely.

“[They believe children] are at less risk of severe illness, less risk of death and, because of that, I think people are less convinced that the vaccine is necessary for children,” she said. “Whether or not the risk of getting the disease is lower in a child than it is in an adult, there is still a risk of getting the disease.”

Bell said this may be because when vaccines were first rolled out, the focus was on the elderly because of their high risk of dying from COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, it sort of backfired in that people now think kids don’t get COVID or aren’t going to get sick from COVID or won’t die from COVID,” she said. “And that’s not true. It’s certainly not at the same rate … but it’s still a possibility.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association report, as of May 26, 2022, nearly 13.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, almost 40,000 have been hospitalized, and over 1,000 children have died since the onset of the pandemic.

Dr. Richard Malley, a senior physician in pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital, added that booster shots are not easing the fears of hesitant parents.

“The hesitant parents are not going to become less hesitant because now we’re saying, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s not a two-dose series, it’s a three-dose series,'” he told ABC News. “Unfortunately, it makes people, in general, a little less inclined because they are like, ‘Do I really have to sign my child up to get vaccinated every five months?'”

The importance of booster shots

Malley and others think people have interpreted the rollout of boosters as a sign the vaccines are not effective.

Several studies, however, have shown that while immunity does wane, the vaccines are very effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death, and this is true in children who have been vaccinated.

“What we really want out of vaccines for respiratory viruses is to keep people out of the hospital,” Bajaj said. “And if we can reframe it as, ‘Yes, your child still may get COVID, but the vaccine protects them from getting severely ill,’ I think we may have a better chance of really trying to help folks feel more comfortable with it.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The White House is expecting vaccinations for kids under 5 to begin as soon as June 21, White House COVID coordinator Ashish Jha said on Thursday.

“We expect that vaccinations will begin in earnest as early as Tuesday, June 21st, and really roll on throughout that week,” Jha said in the White House briefing, though he cautioned repeatedly that the estimation hinges on the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention processes playing out as planned.

“As I talk through the process today, I want to be very clear that I am not here to prejudge the outcome of the process,” Jha said. “But the administration is hard at work planning all sorts of scenarios based on whatever the outcome is from the process that’s playing out.”

If and when vaccines are authorized and recommended, Jha said he expects appointments to be widely available within weeks.

“Our expectation is that within weeks, every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment,” he said.

The prediction was unusually specific, particularly for a vaccine that parents have been awaiting anxiously for months. And though a late-June kickoff for kids’ vaccines is likely, there are still many steps in the authorization process before shots can be administered.

First, the FDA’s panel of advisers will meet on June 15 to review the data on kids’ vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer. Moderna’s shot is two doses, while Pfizer’s is three.

After that meeting, the FDA can issue an authorization — which allows the federal government to start shipping doses out to states — but the process moves over to the CDC before shots can actually be administered.

The CDC’s advisory panel meets and then CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issues a recommendation, which is the final step before shots can go in arms. The CDC is expected to announce the dates for its review shortly.

On the planning front, Jha said the government would begin taking orders for vaccines starting Friday.

“We are going to make 10 million doses available to states, pharmacies and community health centers and federal entities to order initially. Starting tomorrow, states can begin to place their orders,” Jha said.

“We have asked states to distribute the initial tranche of doses to their highest priority sites, including those serving the highest risk children and hardest to reach areas. And we’ve also asked them to prioritize sites that can handle large volumes, such as children’s hospitals.”

Jha said he expects the majority of vaccinations to be administered in doctors’ offices rather than pharmacies, and he acknowledged there will likely be less demand in this age group.

A recent survey from KFF found that just under one in five parents are eager to get their children under 5 vaccinated right away.

More than a third of parents — 38% — said that they plan to wait and see how well the vaccine works for others, while 27% of parents reported they will “definitely not” get their child vaccinated, and 11% said that they will only do so if they are required.

More than half of parents said they feel they do not have enough information about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy for children under age 5, according to KFF.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have said their vaccines are safe and effective. They will be rigorously reviewed by the FDA and CDC in the coming weeks, and more vaccine company data will be made public.

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(LOS ANGELES) — The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products.

The ban, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2023, ends the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.

The ordinance does not ban the possession or use of flavored tobacco for those aged 21 and older.

It also exempts existing hookah lounges in the city that received tobacco retailer permits before January that sell shisha tobacco for either on-site or off-site use.

“We just took a huge step forward against Big Tobacco’s deadly agenda in Los Angeles,” Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who proposed the ban, tweeted Wednesday after it passed 12-0. “It’s time we put these protections in place for our youth and save lives.”

A version of the ordinance drafted last year exempted menthol cigarettes from the ban, but Black council members argued against the exemption due to high rates of menthol cigarette use among Black Americans.

Studies have found Black Americans are the most likely racial/ethnic group to use menthol cigarettes and are 25 times more likely than white Americans to do so.

“Menthol is included in this ban, as it should be,” Marqueece Harris Dawson, a Black councilman, said before the vote, according to City News Service. “It is a flavor just like every other flavor and it would have been extremely disappointing if we had said we’re going to protect people and children from uptake of tobacco, except for the flavor that we know Black people first and Latinos second use the most.”

The ordinance is now heading to the desk of Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is expected to sign it into law.

Anti-tobacco groups praised the vote and said the action will prevent children from becoming addicted to smoking and/or vaping.

“The Los Angeles City Council today took bold action to protect kids from tobacco addiction, save lives and advance health equity,” Matthew Myers, president of the advocate group Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, said in a statement to ABC News. “The Council’s landmark action will help prevent the tobacco industry from addicting another generation of kids.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said any use of tobacco products by children and teenagers is unsafe, but most use begins with flavored products.

The federal health agency found that, in 2021, 80.2% of high schoolers and 74.6% of middle schoolers who reported use of tobacco products in the past 30 days said they had used a flavored tobacco product in that period.

Additionally, 85.8% of high school students and 79.2% of middle school students who reported use of e-cigarettes — the most commonly used tobacco product among youth — in the past 30 days said they used flavored e-cigarettes.

Research has shown nicotine, the addictive drug found in tobacco products, can harm a developing adolescent brain and increases the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment.

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(NEW YORK) — The Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General is launching an audit into how the Food and Drug Administration responded leading up to the massive February recall of baby formula and closure of Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis plant.

OIG will examine whether the FDA upheld its duty “to safeguard the nation’s food supply, including infant formula and ensure all ingredients are safe” and if FDA regulators followed proper recall protocol once a deadly bacteria had been detected inside the plant.

The Sturgis, Michigan, plant was shut down in mid-February after contamination issues inside had been linked to four infants being hospitalized with a rare but serious bacterial infection, two of whom ultimately died.

The review of the FDA’s actions marks an extraordinary and uncommon move from the watchdog agency.

The American public and lawmakers alike have been searching for accountability on the ongoing infant formula shortage — a now-national supply crisis which was exacerbated by Abbott’s contamination issues and ultimate shutdown.

This is not first time Abbott’s quality control had come under questioning.

Federal regulators warned months ago of potential problems at a manufacturing plant for baby formula, according to documents and a public timeline of the events.

The FDA found sanitation issues at Abbott’s Sturgis plant in September 2021, saying it “did not maintain a building used in the manufacture, processing, packing or holding of infant formula in a clean and sanitary condition,” according to an inspection report.

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(NEW YORK) — The rate of young people taking their own lives with firearms in the U.S. has increased faster than for any other age group, and the youth suicide rate is at its highest point in more than 20 years, according to a new gun violence prevention report by Everytown For Gun Safety and first obtained by ABC News.

While firearm suicide overall increased about 2% during the pandemic, the rate among young people increased 15% and nearly half of all suicide attempts by young people involve a gun, researchers with Everytown For Gun Safety found.

Experts have not pinned down exactly what is causing more young people to turn to suicide with guns, the report notes. But increased anxiety and depression, likely exacerbated by the pandemic, along with the impacts of social media and cyberbullying are among the theorized drivers.

“The research shows pretty clearly that people who struggle with mental illness are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes,” Everytown research director Sarah Burd-Sharps told ABC News. “That said, certainly knowing the warning signs and learning to talk about mental health — particularly, we’re talking about young people — so the way we talk about mental health with young people in our lives is a huge part of the solution.”

“One of the most effective things we can do to help young people in crisis is to keep it out of their hands,” Burd-Sharps said.

The report’s authors point to “red flag” laws as a plausible solution that allow for temporary restrictions on firearm ownership when a person is determined to pose an extreme risk to themselves or others. So far, 19 states have passed such laws that allow local authorities and family members to petition in civil court for the restriction of a person’s firearm access, according to Everytown.

“Research shows they save lives,” Burd-Sharps said. “They very much prevent youth suicide, so it’s it’s one of the most important policies that can reduce this, tragic spike in youth gun suicide.”

Safe storage measures for parents who own guns as well as waiting periods for gun purchases are among tools that can help create a safety buffer when someone is in the throes of a mental health episode, Burd-Sharps added.

The firearm-related increases documented in the new report track with overall increases in teen and young adult suicide in recent years. Between 2007 and 2018 the suicide rate among those age 10 to 24 increased nearly 60%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The split-second between pulling the trigger of a firearm and the projectile’s impact makes suicide attempts with guns much more lethal too. Overall, acts of suicide are fatal in 8.5% of cases while acts of suicide involving a firearm are fatal 90% of the time, according to a 2019 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Suicides have long been a driver of firearm-related deaths. More than half of all gun deaths in 2020 were suicides, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.

Boys and young men are disproportionately afflicted by firearm suicide and are seven times more likely to kill themselves with a gun compared to their female peers, according to the CDC.

Racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S. are among those hit hardest by the increased suicide rate, Burd-Sharps said. A lack of access to mental health care resulting in higher rates of untreated depression as well as traumatic exposure to discrimination and racism are among the driving factors.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among children and young people ages 10 to 24, according to the CDC.

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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(NEW YORK) — From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the elderly have borne the brunt of the virus’ deadly wrath.

Now, newly updated federal data shows that despite widespread vaccination among seniors, virus death rates among older Americans surged to near-record levels during the first omicron wave.

Over 90% of seniors have been fully vaccinated, but about 30% of those fully vaccinated have yet to receive their first booster shot. To date, just under 10 million Americans 65 and older have received their second booster — representing about 28.5% of those who had already received their first shot.

Even with overall high vaccination rates in older populations, nearly three-quarters of the COVID-19 deaths reported in the U.S. have been among people over the age of 65.

Experts say the reason for the renewed surge may be due to a number of factors, including waning immunity, relatively low booster uptake compared to primary vaccination series and general vulnerability to the virus among the group. In addition, the sheer scale of the spread of the virus during the omicron wave was significantly higher compared to prior waves of the virus.

Although the number of virus-related deaths in Americans over 75 has consistently been higher than all other age groups, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were some lulls.

As the virus receded in late June 2021, and the group’s vacci​nation rate increased, the death rates for those older age groups approached levels comparable to younger people.

However, during the delta wave, in late 2021 and 2022, the disparities in death rates began to increase again with the more transmissible variant, which was better at evading vaccines. They further widened when the omicron wave hit the U.S. in the winter of 2021, a variant that was even more transmissible than delta.

In early January 2022, CDC death data — broken down by age group per 100,000 people — shows that people over 75 had a COVID-19 death rate that was 136 times higher than that of people between the ages of 18 and 29. Similarly, people between 65 and 74 had a COVID-19 death rate that was 45 times higher than that of people between the ages of 18 and 29.

Throughout the spring, overall death rates took a downturn again, as the first omicron wave receded, but as of mid-April, older Americans continue to see more deaths than younger populations.

In recent months, Hispanic Americans 75 and older have had a death rate per capita that was notably higher than other demographic groups of the same age.

During the omicron surge in January, Hispanic Americans over 75 were 2.7 times more likely to die from COVID-19, compared to white Americans and Asian Americans of the same age. They were also 1.7 times more likely to die from COVID-19, compared to their Black counterparts, and 3.7 times more likely to die compared to their American Indian/Alaska Natives.

Last month, the CDC announced that it is “strengthening” its recommendation for Americans over the age of 12 who are immunocompromised and those over the age of 50 receive their second booster shot.

“Only 38% of those 50 to 64 and 43% of those 65 and older have received a vaccine dose in the past six months. This leaves about 60% of older Americans without the protection they may need to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a meeting of the agency’s independent advisors in May. “We know immunity wanes over time, and we need to do all we can now to protect those most vulnerable.”

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