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(WARSAW, Poland) — Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland has taken in 300,000 Ukrainian refugees, according to Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
While Trzaskowski told ABC News’ Linsey Davis Tuesday that the city and its residents have welcomed these families and doing their best to accommodate their needs, they still face uphill challenges as more refugees arrive.
“We are going to welcome whoever needs help, but if a strain on the public services, schools, [and] health system [becomes] huge, the solidarity might wane in a few weeks,” the mayor told ABC News.
As the number of refugees is expected to grow while the conflict continues, Trzaskowski is calling on leaders around the world to assist with the refugee efforts.
As of March 29, over 4 million Ukrainians have fled to nearby countries to escape the war, according to data from the United Nations. Poland has taken the majority of those citizens, 2.3 million, according to the U.N.
Trzaskowski said his city’s refugee response has been “improvised” as the local government, regular citizens and organizations have come together to provide the hundreds of thousands of families with support.
Ukrainian citizens have been granted access to free education and free health care in Poland and 13,000 Ukrainian children are already attending Warsaw schools, according to the mayor.
“This is really a huge challenge also financially, but you know, we have to organize it,” Trzaskowski said.
He added that the city’s social workers are overburdened with the daunting task of registering over 300,000 people with Polish social service agencies and programs.
“So now I’m thinking how to put more people at a task of doing it as quickly as possible,” he said.
The mayor tweeted on Monday that the city’s refugee assistance efforts requires more investment and personnel and called on the European Union to offer direct support.
“We need a system because we don’t know [if] maybe we are going to have another wave of refugees in just in just a week or two. We need to be prepared,” he said.
World leaders have recently pledged to help the growing number of families who are fleeing Ukraine.
Last week, President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, and other countries, such as Canada have promised to take them.
Trzaskowski said he is hopeful that more countries and the United Nations will step up their efforts and alleviate some of his country’s burdens, but in the meantime he pledged that his citizens will continue to welcome the refugees as one of their own.
“Ukrainians are among us but they’re with us they’re not as if relegated to the margins of the society they’re in our homes they are participating in our life and that’s that’s the beauty of it,” he said.
(KYIV) — A group of Ukrainian volunteers are attempting to rescue animals from a private zoo near the capital that was abandoned after the Russian army bombed and occupied the area.
Vitaly Mukhanov told ABC News that he had volunteered to help bring supplies to Ukrainian soldiers when he came across the Yasnohorodka family ecopark, about 30 miles outside Kyiv.
The park appeared to have been damaged by shelling, Mukhanov said. Animals, including camels and ostriches, were left with no food. Some were injured, while others were dead, he said.
“You could tell that many of the animals starved to death.” Mukhanov said.
Videos and images Mukhanov took of the scene and posted on Facebook on Monday quickly went viral and he said he was subsequently contacted by the zoo’s owner, who asked for his assistance.
In one of the videos, Mukhanov comes across a wounded ostrich. The bird appeared to be taking its last breaths as he gently stroked its head.
“You can see from the images that the animals were in a very bad way,” Mukhanov said.
“The town nearby was liberated from the Russians two days ago, so the owner is now returning to the zoo and they hope to evacuate the animals in the next couple of days,” he said.
As of Wednesday morning, Yasnohorodka family ecopark posted on their Facebook page that the animals were being rescued and evacuated from the area.
Mukhanov explained that due to the area being bombed and occupied by Russian forces, the owners and staff were in fear of their lives and had to flee the zoo as quickly as possible, forcing them to leave the animals behind.
“As of now this area has been freed and our Ukrainian troops are there, so we have organized and guaranteed the owner safety so he can evacuate the animals,” he said.
The owner will be returning back to the area hopefully by tomorrow, he said, but there are currently staff and volunteers on-site feeding the animals and safely beginning to evacuate some of them.
ABC News reached out to park operators but have not received a comment.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Sophia Simons
(NEW YORK) — One crew member is dead and two were rescued after a Navy aircraft crashed off the Virginia coast Wednesday, according to the U.S. Navy.
The E-2D Hawkeye, which was assigned to an East Coast Airborne Command and Control Squadron, crashed at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the vicinity of Wallops Island and Chincoteague, Virginia, officials said.
Two crew members were rescued by U.S. Coast Guard search and are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The third crew member was found dead on the aircraft, the Navy said.
The Navy said the name of the crew member killed would be released once next of kin are notified.
The cause of the crash is not known at this time.
U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., tweeted that she is monitoring the situation.
“I’m keeping our naval aviators, their families, and our first responders in my thoughts and prayers tonight as rescue and recovery efforts continue,” Luria said.
(NEW YORK) — Russian forces are continuing their attempted push through Ukraine from multiple directions, while Ukrainians, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are putting up “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The attack began Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation.” Heavy shelling and missile attacks, many on civilian buildings, continue in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as well as other major cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Mar 31, 4:32 am
Putin ‘massively misjudged’ invasion of Ukraine, UK spy chief says
Russian President Vladimir Putin has apparently “massively misjudged” his invasion of Ukraine, a U.K. intelligence chief said Thursday.
“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people. He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime, and he overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory,” Jeremy Fleming, head of the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), said during a speech in Australia’s capital, Canberra.
“We’ve seen Russian soldiers, short of weapons and morale, refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” he added.
While Fleming agreed with a recent assessment by U.S. intelligence that Putin’s advisers were believed to be too afraid to tell the truth, he said the “extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.” He warned that Russia is searching for cyber targets and bringing in mercenaries to reinforce its stalled military campaign in Ukraine.
(NEW YORK) — If the United States switched completely to cleaner energy vehicles and power plants, it would not only benefit the environment but also save an estimated 110,000 lives and $1.2 trillion in health costs over the next 30 years, the American Lung Association says in a new report.
“These numbers are enormous,” said Will Barrett, the national senior director of clean air advocacy for the health organization. “It’s hard to wrap your head around. $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and 100,000 lives saved.”
Pollution from traditional cars and other vehicles has long been known to affect human health, leading to higher rates of lung disease and other illnesses.
“Right now, today, people’s health is suffering because of our dependence on combustion technologies for energy for transportation,” said Barrett, the lead author of the new report.
“We know that kids and seniors along with people with asthma, lung disease, and heart disease, are at risk due to unhealthy air,” said Dr. Philip Harber, an adjunct professor at the University Of Arizona’s College Of Public Health, who was not a coauthor of the new report.
The report finds that additional health benefits include avoiding nearly 3 million asthma attacks nationwide.
The harmful impacts of pollution disproportionately affect lower income communities and communities of color, more often living near major sources of pollution such as highways, power plants and refineries, the report says.
About 3% of U.S. counties with the highest populations of people of color would disproportionately benefit from a transition to electric vehicles and non-combustion electricity generation, the report estimates.
Currently, about 11% of cars and other vehicles sold in the 4th quarter of 2021 use clean energy, and roughly 20% of power plant generation is green, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Experts say the nation doesn’t need a full transition all at once, and even modest improvements now will start saving lives.
“Even without fully green power production, the results will be worthwhile,” said Harber.
“Not being able to do a complete transition is not a reason to delay doing what is feasible now,” he said.
The recently-passed federal infrastructure bill includes of $2.5 billion for zero-emission school buses and $7.5 billion to expand the national infrastructure for electric vehicles.
“That this is a down payment on what we really need is a much larger broader investment in incentive programs for purchases of vehicles,” Barrett said.
Harber says the transition to electric vehicles can start small. Even if you “only get one local pizza chain to use electric vehicles, that symbolism matters to a community,” he said.
“If we put more money into fossil fuel infrastructure today, it’s going to be there for decades. And it will continue to do damage to people’s lungs, people’s hearts, and our environment,” Barrett said.
Matt Feeley, MD, is a resident physician in Occupational and Environmental Medicine from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — The antiparasitic drug ivermectin did not reduce the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19, according to a large study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Ivermectin was popularized as an alternative COVID-19 treatment despite a lack of strong evidence it helps. The recent study is among the largest that has failed to show a benefit.
In the study, researchers in Brazil compared more than 1,300 patients, some given ivermectin and others given placebo, and found no difference between the groups.
Early in the pandemic, lab experiments on cells suggested ivermectin could have some promise, but studies in people failed to back that up.
Some studies on ivermectin are ongoing, but today, we have several highly effective vaccines and COVID-19 treatments, with robust studies in people showing they work to dramatically reduce COVID-19 risk.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is facing a time crunch as investigators scramble to piece together former President Donald Trump’s words and actions on Jan. 6, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., acknowledged Tuesday.
“We’re playing ‘beat the clock’ here against Trump’s inner coterie, which thinks they can impede our investigation,” Raskin told reporters.
The committee, which hopes to begin public hearings in May, is trying to wrap up dozens of witness interviews in the coming weeks.
Multiple senior Trump administration officials, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, are expected to appear virtually before the committee this week. Another senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Chris Hodgson, was spotted at the panel’s offices for an in-person deposition Wednesday.
“We’re going to do everything we can to get everyone’s cooperation that we can,” Raskin said.
That ticking clock is having an effect on how far investigators are willing to go to secure the testimony of witnesses and obtain documents.
Given the committee’s hearing schedule and self-imposed deadline to issue a final report in the fall, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that discussions with Vice President Pence and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will result in interviews with congressional investigators.
The panel is also grappling with the fallout from reports that investigators have obtained text messages from conservative activist Ginni Thomas — the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas — pressing then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to attempt to overturn the election results.
Committee members have discussed whether to invite her to testify publicly, but have not publicly shared how they want to proceed.
They are also working to fill “quite a few gaps” in White House telephone logs obtained by the committee and first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Tuesday.
Official records of Trump’s switchboard phone calls include a more than 7-hour gap in activity during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, during which time multiple phone conversations Trump is reported to have had with GOP lawmakers may have been made using the cellphones of key aides.
Schiff said the committee is working to determine what Trump was doing during that time.
While Schiff declined to get into specifics, the committee has repeatedly subpoenaed the cellphone records of Trump aides and allies, and has issued blanket preservation requests to telecommunications, social media and email companies and platforms.
“We have multiple sources of information, both in terms of gathering records, as well as witnesses who have come to appear before the committee who have described the president’s actions that day,” Schiff said. “We are putting together as complete a picture as we can, and not relying on any one source of information.”
While some committee members and staffers believe the panel should be taking more aggressive steps in trying to enforce subpoenas, any potential legal disputes might not be resolved before the end of the year, when Republicans may take control of the chamber.
On Monday, the panel recommended the full House hold two Trump White House officials, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, in contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas for records and testimony. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Wednesday that the House is planning to vote on the matter next week.
Trump ally Steve Bannon was indicted for defying the committee’s subpoena last November after the full House voted to hold him in contempt. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial isn’t set to begin until May at the earliest.
Meadows was also held in contempt by the House in December, but the former chief of staff has yet to face charges from the Justice Department — leading some lawmakers to criticize the DOJ for its failure to take action.
The committee has made clear in court filings that it believes Trump broke the law in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. And while a federal judge wrote this week that it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed felonies in the course of his actions, the Justice Department appears to be no closer to charging — or even considering charging — the former president with a crime.
“Attorney General Garland: Do your job, so we can do ours,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said in a committee meeting Monday.
“We would, as a committee, like every entity around with some authority to move,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, R-Miss., told reporters Tuesday. “But obviously that’s out of our bailiwick.”
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Over the last 24 hours, the Pentagon has seen “less than 20%” of the Russian troops that had been around Kyiv moving northward as they “reposition” into Belarus so they can be re-equipped for possible action in eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Wednesday.
Also, The White House said Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his top advisers about military developments in Russia, a development that the Pentagon labeled as “disconcerting.”
“We have seen over the last 24 hours the repositioning of a small percentage of the troops and the battalion tactical groups that Russia had arrayed against Kyiv,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Wednesday. “Probably in the neighborhood of 20% of what they had, they are beginning to reposition some of those troops.”
Specifically, Kirby said the Russian troops near the Hostomel airport north of the city have been seen moving north towards Belarus. The airport had been the scene of heavy fighting from the opening hours of Russia’s invasion.
Separately, a senior U.S. defense official said some Russian troops had also been seen moving out of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. However, it remained unclear if they would all be leaving.
Some of those troops are being moved into Belarus, said Kirby, who added that none of the units have been seen returning to their home bases.
“If the Russians are serious about de-escalating, because that’s their claim here, then they should send them home, but they’re not doing that, at least not yet,” Kirby said. “That’s not what we’re seeing.”
Kirby said he was intentionally using the term reposition instead of a withdrawal to describe the movement of Russian forces “because the way it’s being spun by the Ministry of Defense is that they’re that they’re pulling back and they’re trying to de-escalate and depressurize the situation and we just don’t believe we haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
Instead, Kirby said the U.S. assesses that the Russians are “going to refit these troops, resupply them, and then probably employ them elsewhere in Ukraine.”
A senior U.S. defense official said U.S. intelligence believes that Russia may intend to shift some of these troops towards the fight in the Donbas region, which would be in line with public statements from Russian officials that they want to make that region a priority of their operations.
Even as some of the Russian troops around Kyiv move away, Kirby and the rest have established defensive positions. Kirby noted that Russian forces continue to launch missiles and artillery at the city and surrounding suburbs.
Kirby said that without getting into intelligence, the Pentagon concurred with comments in news reports attributed to a U.S. official that Putin is not being fully advised of Russia’s performance on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“We would concur with the conclusion that Mr. Putin has not been fully informed by his Ministry of Defense at every turn over the last month,” Kirby said Wednesday.
Kirby described that assessment as “disconcerting” and “an issue of concern.”
“The fact that he may not have all the context, that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that’s a little discomforting, to be honest with you,” Kirby said.
“If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring? Certainly one that respects Ukrainian sovereignty,” he added.
“The other thing is you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news,” Kirby said. ‘
(WASHINGTON) — Early voting for Ohio’s May 3 primary starts in less than a week, and Election Day is just five weeks away. Yet the state’s congressional and legislative maps are still being litigated, leaving the approaching election in limbo.
As the redistricting process plays out throughout the country, states including Ohio, Missouri and Florida are scrambling as court cases drag on. Other states, including North Carolina, have already made the tough decision to delay their state primaries as a result.
Redistricting takes place every 10 years following a U.S. Census count and involves drawing lines that form congressional and state legislative districts from which public officials are elected. The process plays a significant role in shaping the political landscape for elections and determining which party gains control of Congress. That spells extensive legal battles as partisan players try to secure the advantage.
Federal judges are set to hear arguments Wednesday weighing different options for Ohio’s May 3 primary, which include pushing it back, holding two separate primaries or enacting previously rejected legislative maps.
The state Supreme Court has three times rejected state House and Senate maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, saying they unconstitutionally favor Republicans and don’t correspond closely to the preferences of Ohio voters.
“Resolving this self-created chaos thus depends not on the number of hands on the computer mouse but, rather, on the political will to honor the people’s call to end partisan gerrymandering,” the court wrote in its most recent decision.
Though the Ohio Redistricting Commission has drummed up a fourth set of maps, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said it was impossible the issue would be settled in time for the primaries. Last week, he ordered all boards of elections to remove the state House and Senate races from ballots with the warning they might be added back if federal courts intervene.
“This has been so unpredictable, so I don’t know what to tell you,” Aaron Sellers, a spokesperson for the board of Elections of Franklin County, one of the largest counties in Ohio, told ABC News. “We are preparing for a May 3 primary until we’re told not to.”
Sellers says options such as holding two primaries — one scenario would be to have one election with the old maps and another with the new ones to replace the initial results — could pose logistical challenges for election officials as well as uncertainty for voters about what could happen if the courts reject the maps after voters cast their ballots.
“It would be hard to imagine that once a race took place, that they would rule the maps unconstitutional and have to do it again. But yeah, I suppose that could happen.”
It’s not just legislative state House and Senate maps in question in Ohio. The state Supreme Court is also weighing a new set of congressional maps, including races for the U.S. House of Representatives, after previously striking down a Commission-approved map, also for unfairly favoring Republicans. The court’s decision, however, isn’t expected until weeks after the primary election is scheduled.
“There is no reason to expedite this case. At this juncture, it is abundantly clear that this case will not be litigated prior to the 2022 primary election,” the court argued in its brief laying out the schedule for arguments.
The court timeline means the congressional maps courts previously said were unfair will likely be used in the primaries. The courts advised state lawmakers to push back the primary; however, a Republican-controlled legislature was able to block those efforts.
The refusal to delay the May 3 primary is already causing a host of problems and missed deadlines. Overseas and military ballots were scheduled to be sent in mid-March; however, without finalized districts, LaRose reached an agreement with the federal government to postpone mailing ballots until April.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed his state’s newly drawn congressional maps approved by a Republican-controlled legislature Tuesday. DeSantis had long promised to do so and pushed his colleagues to consider his own congressional map, which would give Republicans more power. With a primary in August, the Florida legislature will have to be called back for a special session to draw new districts.
In Missouri, redistricting remains unfinished even though candidacy filing for the 2022 midterm ended Tuesday evening. Part of the delay resulted from infighting among Republicans about how to draw congressional districts that would better benefit the party. Last week, the state Senate approved a congressional map, but it was not brought for a vote in the House because Democrats were split. The general assembly was not able to finalize a congressional map before candidate filing for the 2022 midterms ended Tuesday evening.
Democratic attorneys filed a lawsuit asking the courts to step in and draw new congressional districts for the state.
Maryland and North Carolina, however, aren’t taking chances and have already rescheduled their primaries. Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals of Maryland issued an order pushing back the state’s primaries by three weeks as redistricting battles continue to play out in court. And last December, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered that the state’s 2022 primaries be delayed two months due to lawsuits challenging Republican-drawn congressional and legislative maps.
(NEW YORK) — As the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline prepares to launch its new three-digit number in July, mental health experts worry about workforce capacity issues hindering the ability to provide 24/7 crisis care.
The federal government has allocated a significant amount of funding to assist in the implementation of the new Lifeline number, 988, in a bi-partisan effort to address mental health concerns and assist in suicide prevention. The infusion of funding comes as mental health experts explore the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the nation’s population over the last two years.
Still, despite federal funding efforts to assist in the 988 implementation, call centers across the nation remain underfunded and understaffed at the state and local level. This means that calls from people seeking help may be funneled to one of the Lifeline’s national backup call centers, or go unanswered if the backup centers are overwhelmed.
At its current capacity, about 85% of calls to the Lifeline are answered at either the local or national backup level, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
“24 Months That Changed the World,” airs tonight at 10 p.m. EDT on ABC and tomorrow on Hulu.
The number of calls to the Lifeline is expected to increase following the adoption of the new number, according to SAMHSA.
“Fortunately, most [states] are taking this as an opportunity and are working towards increasing their Lifeline call centers within the network,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “But when somebody calls in, and they wait, and they hang up — we have one chance to get this right for a person. Lives are literally at risk. These are people who are in crisis, might be having suicidal ideation. It’s incredibly risky when those calls don’t get through.”
Wesolowski explained that local call centers connect people to mental health care providers in their communities, as well as other resources, while the backup centers may not be able to provide that service.
“We want to deescalate the immediate crisis, which is what those trained crisis counselors do, but we also want to connect them to resources so they stay well,” Wesolowski said. “We don’t want to just have them keep cycling into crises — crisis after crisis — it’s really important that they get connected to needed care so they can get well and stay well beyond that crisis situation. So it’s those local crisis counselors that can really make those connections. When there’s not that local capacity. It’s a huge concern.”
Despite concern over full readiness ahead of the 988 launch, Lifeline Executive Director Dr. John Draper told ABC News that efforts to support the network at the state level have grown.
“We’ve never seen this level of activity in terms of states committing interest, and then being dedicated to supporting local crisis centers,” Draper said.
He explained that crisis centers have typically been seen as “peripheral” to the mental health system, but after 20 years of research around the efforts of the Lifeline, the understanding of their importance has shifted.
“It’s basically a free mental health service for people who are in distress. So that’s what some states are starting to realize is by investing in these centers, they can actually save costs, they can keep people from unnecessarily going to emergency departments, they can people keep people from certainly unnecessarily engaging with police for mental health and suicidal crisis,” Draper said. “If we can engage [people in crisis] in ways through a system that is really designed to care for them, as opposed to scare them, then we are going to be much more effective in keeping them healthy in the community. And that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
The system Draper described is often referred to as a “continuum of care” for people experiencing a mental health crisis.
Activists say the ideal version of this continuum would include locally operated call centers, mobile crisis response teams and community care facilities, which are sometimes referred to as crisis stabilization units.
Wesolowski explained that about 80% of calls to the Lifeline can be deescalated over the phone. Of the remaining 20%, a large portion can be addressed appropriately by a mobile crisis response team, which includes mental health professionals, paramedics and social workers. Those that require further care could be taken to a crisis stabilization facility, where they can receive short-term psychiatric urgent care, rather than being taken to a hospital.
Mobile crisis response teams and stabilization facilities are even less prevalent across the nation than call centers, making their availability to someone in crisis dependent on that person’s location.
However, several cities have implemented pilot programs to provide mobile crisis response services as an alternative to a law enforcement response for people experiencing a mental health emergency.
Last August, Denver announced it would be expanding its Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program after what the city called a “successful one-year pilot,” in a press release.
In that first year, the city says the program handled 1,400 calls.
“Of those, there were no arrests, no injuries and no need for police back up,” according to the press release.
In areas where these services are not available, law enforcement is often called to respond to someone in crisis, which can lead to escalation of the situation including that person’s arrest or even their death.
“I think that’s a really important component, to take law enforcement out of it,” Wesolowski said. “We don’t ask law enforcement to respond to other health care crises. That’s not their job. We ask medical professionals to do that. And mental health is health. So it’s really important that we take a mental health approach to these crises and provide health, not handcuffs.”
Over the last two years, a more widespread focus has been placed on suicide prevention and mental health care as experts weigh in on the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the mental health of Americans.
Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy testified before the Senate Finance Committee about the dramatic impact the pandemic has had on the mental health of young Americans, in particular.
Suicide attempts among young people have increased during the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that emergency department visits for teen girls who had attempted suicide were up more than 50% at the start of the pandemic, compared to 2019.
Murthy will discuss the need to address the mental health crisis among America’s youth during “20/20” special, which focuses on the impacts of the pandemic over the last two years.
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.
