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COVID worsened depression among Southern California youths

Kids, teenagers and younger adults in Southern California had been grappling with rising charges of despair and nervousness for years earlier than the pandemic. Then COVID-19 came along and made their mental health struggles even worse.
Amongst 1.7 million younger sufferers who had been a part of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California well being system, the prevalence of clinically identified despair was 60% increased in 2021 than it had been 5 years earlier, in accordance with a brand new research. The prevalence of tension amongst younger sufferers who didn’t have despair additionally rose by 35% throughout that interval, researchers discovered.
For each circumstances, the annual charge of enhance was considerably increased through the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 than within the three years that preceded them.
What’s extra, the pattern was seen throughout all demographic teams no matter age, gender, race, ethnicity or earnings, in accordance with the report revealed Tuesday in JAMA Community Open.
“COVID initially was thought of an infectious-disease disaster,” mentioned Dr. Siddhartha Kumar, a baby and adolescent psychiatrist at Kaiser and the research’s senior writer. “This was one other aspect of COVID. The unwanted side effects on psychological well being are long-lasting and impacted the society in a really main approach.”
It’s no secret that younger individuals have been struggling.
In 2016, when the National Survey of Children’s Health requested mother and father and different caregivers how their kids had been faring, their responses indicated that 3.1% of youngsters ages 3 to 17 had been depressed. By 2020, that figure was 4%.
That survey additionally discovered that the prevalence of tension amongst these kids elevated from 7.1% to 9.2% throughout the identical interval.
One other research of adolescents ages 12 to 17 who participated within the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health discovered that 20% of them had skilled main depressive dysfunction up to now 12 months.
And U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy focused the nation’s attention on the issue by issuing a public health advisory about youth psychological well being in 2021. The advisory cited research that discovered 25% of kids and teenagers ages 4 by 17 from world wide had skilled signs of despair through the pandemic whereas 20% had signs of tension. Both measures had doubled because the begin of the pandemic.
The brand new research is believed to be the primary large-scale examination of youth psychological well being within the COVID period based mostly on official diagnoses relatively than survey information, in accordance with Kumar and his colleagues from Kaiser Permanente Southern California, whose territory extends from Ventura County to the Inland Empire and from Kern County to San Diego.
The research authors targeted on the roughly 1.7 million well being plan members who had been between the ages 5 and 22 on the primary day of a minimum of one of many years between 2017 and 2021.
These kids and younger adults mirrored the range of Southern California as a complete, the researchers wrote. About half had been Latino, 23% had been white, 8% had been Asian and eight% had been Black. (Information had been lacking for some plan members.)
Barely greater than half — 55% — had been from households with an annual earnings of $50,000 to $99,999. A further 29% had been from households that earned much less, and 16% had been from ones that earned extra.
The researchers checked whether or not the younger sufferers had been formally identified with some type of medical despair. To qualify, a physician needed to decide {that a} affected person was experiencing a “unhappy or irritable temper or lack of curiosity in actions” that prompted “important impairment in day by day life.”
They discovered that 1.35% of the sufferers had been newly identified with despair in 2017. That determine rose to 1.58% in 2018, 1.76% in 2019, 1.84% in 2020 and a pair of.1% in 2021, with the incidence rising for all teams no matter age, gender, race, ethnicity or earnings.
Teenagers of highschool age, 14 to 17, and younger adults sufficiently old to be in school, 18 to 22, had the very best incidences of despair all through the research, the researchers discovered. Usually talking, women and girls had been extra prone to be identified with despair than boys and males, and the chance was constantly increased for sufferers who had been white and who got here from households with the very best incomes.
When the researchers tallied all the youngsters and younger adults with a brand new or present despair analysis, they discovered that the prevalence was 2.55% in 2017, 2.92% in 2018, 3.27% in 2019, 3.53% in 2020 and 4.08% in 2021. The annual charge of enhance was increased through the pandemic than earlier than it, and the distinction was giant sufficient to be statistically important, the researchers mentioned.
In addition they examined sufferers identified with nervousness, a situation they mentioned was characterised by “extreme emotions of fear or persistent, even intrusive ideas about sure fears or fixed concern basically.”
Almost 37% of the younger sufferers with nervousness had additionally been identified with despair. The researchers set them apart and targeted on those who had nervousness alone.
By that measure, the incidence of newly identified circumstances was 1.77% in 2017, 2.03% in 2018, 2.1% in 2019, 1.93% in 2020 and a pair of.32% in 2021.
School-age younger adults had the very best incidence of tension with out despair. The chance was additionally increased for individuals who had been white and had been within the highest earnings bracket, in accordance with the research.
The prevalence of latest or present nervousness in sufferers with out despair adopted an analogous sample — 3.13% in 2017, 3.51% in 2018, 3.75% in2019, 3.61% in 2020 and 4.22% in 2021.
Each new and complete circumstances of tension with out despair elevated considerably extra within the COVID years than within the ones previous it, the researchers discovered.
“Anxiousness, gentle despair, hopelessness, disappointment — these are frequent emotions all of us have sometimes. But it surely’s one other factor when it reaches a medical stage,” Kumar mentioned.
And when that occurs to younger individuals, the results could be enduring.
“The teenage years are while you construct your sense of self,” he mentioned. “When adults undergo aggravating conditions of their lives, typically their reactions are based mostly on how their sense of self was once they had been younger.”
Christina Bethell, a social epidemiologist and director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative at Johns Hopkins College, agreed that the pandemic had exacerbated a psychological well being disaster affecting younger individuals nationwide. However she mentioned medical data couldn’t seize the complete scope of the issue.
Sufferers with despair or nervousness might not have entry to a physician, and people who do may not really feel snug searching for remedy, she mentioned. Major care docs are speculated to display adolescents and adults for despair, however that doesn’t all the time occur. Even when it does, sufferers might not reply screening questions actually. Generally docs make errors that result in misdiagnosis. And generally a affected person who was appropriately identified recovers from despair or nervousness, however their medical data aren’t up to date to replicate that.
“Medical data are sometimes improper, incomplete and solely out there for these in healthcare,” mentioned Bethell, who wasn’t concerned within the research.
In her view, an important query isn’t whether or not somebody has a analysis of despair or nervousness, however how they’re truly faring.
“There are a complete bunch of individuals with a analysis who flourish, and there are individuals with no analysis who don’t flourish,” she mentioned. “We need to hold our eye on the prize, which is youth well-being.”
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GOP widens UC antisemitism investigations, hitting UCLA, UC San Francisco medical schools

The UCLA and UC San Francisco medical schools have been given two weeks to submit years of internal documents to a Republican-led congressional committee about alleged antisemitism and how the schools responded, widening the federal government’s far-reaching investigations into the University of California.
The demands from House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) cited reports of Jewish people “experiencing hostility and fear” at each campus and that universities had not proved that they “meaningfully responded.”
Walberg’s letters said the committee would be investigating whether the schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
The additional investigation comes as top UC officials and the Justice Department have begun negotiations over allegations that the UCLA campus overall has been hostile to Jewish students, staff and faculty. The federal government has suspended more than $500 million in health, medical and energy research grants from UCLA and is seeking $1 billion and major campus changes before restoring the funds.
The Trump administration cited alleged Title VI violations when pulling the money.
The House committee said Monday it wanted “all documents and communications” since Sept. 1, 2021, tied to complaints of antisemitic incidents at UCLA and UC San Fransisco. A similar letter was also sent to the University of Illinois College of Medicine.
Some UCLA medical school faculty are members of a broader campus organization, the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, that has aired complaints publicly for months at UC regents meetings about antisemitism.
The group’s chair, medical school assistant clinical professor of psychiatry Kira Stein, is mentioned in the Monday letter to UCLA as a faculty member who has reported anti-Jewish incidents.
“Federal lawmakers, in their letter released today, echoed what many of us have experienced firsthand: Antisemitism at UCLA is common, corrosive, and continues to be met with silence and inaction from the university administration and local leaders,” Stein said in a statement Monday.
The committee has asked for communications with UCLA’s medical school dean, administrators who work on diversity or restorative justice-related programs, and several other positions as well as data on specific events and courses, including one on “structural racism and health equity.”
It also asked for emails from administrators “referring or relating to antisemitism or the terms Jewish, Israel, Israeli, Palestine, or Palestinian.” And it requests information about a January report focused on the medical school that a UCLA task force on anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism prepared.
That 35-page report said “students, residents and faculty in the David Geffen School of Medicine who express support for Palestinian human rights, and who offer any criticism of Israel’s violation of them, face harassment from within and outside the medical school.”
The House committee has asked for “all documents and communications since October 7, 2023 in the possession of the office of the executive vice chancellor” — UCLA Provost Darnell Hunt — related to that task force. Members of the task force have accused UCLA of not taking complaints of bias incidents against Muslims, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans as seriously as it has reports of antisemitism.
Walberg said that, in addition to Title VI enforcement, he would use the documents to “aid the committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination, are needed.”
The UCLA medical school is also under a Department of Health and Human Services investigation over accusations that it “discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national origin in its admissions.” UCLA denied the charges and the department has not formally announced the results of its investigation that began in late March. But when it canceled hundreds of millions in grants to UCLA last month, the Trump administration said the action was due in part to its belief that the university illegally uses race in admissions.
In a Monday statement, a spokesperson for the UCLA medical school said it opposed antisemitism.
“Antisemitism has no place at UCLA’s medical school. Protecting the civil rights of our Jewish community members remains a top priority,” the statement said. “We are committed to fair processes in all our educational programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws and continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment.”
A spokesperson for UC San Francisco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tense disagreements have erupted at the UCLA medical school between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students, faculty and staff since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. Each has accused the other of discrimination, doxxing and harassment. Incidents at the school have been cited by two UCLA task forces, one that looked at antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias and the other that researched anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism.
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Fed Chair Jerome Powell is worried about the job market. Here are 3 red flags for workers.

When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday opened the door to cutting interest rates for the first time in nearly a year, he noted the tremors beginning to shake a main pillar of the U.S. economy: the labor market.
Concerns about the pace of job growth were heightened earlier this month after government data showed a sharp slowdown in hiring in July, along with much weaker payroll gains in May and June than previously thought. The disappointing numbers were alarming enough for President Trump to question their accuracy and to fire the head of the agency tasked with compiling the data.
Yet labor experts tell CBS News they weren’t surprised by the downturn, and caution that more pain could be in store for job seekers. Data released since the August 1 job numbers shows companies are delaying hiring as they adjust course to account for headwinds including fresh U.S. tariffs and the advent of artificial intelligence, they say.
“There’s a real cooling in the labor market,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president of executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told CBS MoneyWatch. “We’re also having lots of individual conversations with companies that are letting us know to expect future layoffs.”
He added, “So for me, there is more reason to be pessimistic about the labor market than optimistic we’ll see some major bounce back.”
Here are three charts that could point to a serious downturn in the U.S. job market.
Fewer workers are getting hired
Overall, U.S. employers in 2025 have added fewer jobs on a monthly basis compared with the pace of gains in recent years, when companies sought to expand as the economy roared back from the pandemic. In 2024, employers hired an average of 168,000 workers each month, but that has slowed to an average of 35,000 over the past three months, Powell said on Friday.
The risk is that the labor market could weaken from here, which could lead to “sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment,” Powell said.
The slowdown could spur the Fed to cut its benchmark interest rate, policymakers’ main tool for energizing the economy and job growth, at its meeting next month for the first time since December 2024. Lowering rates could bolster the labor market because it would make it cheaper for consumers to borrow, driving spending, for businesses to invest, including by adding workers.
More long-term job seekers
Another troubling sign is a recent surge in long-term job seekers, or people who have been searching for a job for more than 27 weeks. In July, about 1.8 million Americans had been looking for work for more than 27 weeks, a jump of about 64% from three years earlier and 20% from a year ago.
It may not get easier to find work anytime soon, given signs from employers that they intend to continue to cut jobs, Challenger said.
“Don’t take the summer off” from looking for new work, he advised job-hunters. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the labor market will be better in three to six months.”
A jump in unemployed young workers
At the same time, young workers are also having more trouble finding their first jobs, which has been blamed on everything from slowing economic activity this year to employers adopting artificial intelligence in place of entry-level workers.
To be sure, the nation’s unemployment rate remains low, at 4.2%. Yet that statistic is backward-looking, reflecting the labor market’s strength in previous months — it says little about economic conditions moving forward.
Meanwhile, for new college graduates the current job market amounts to “a perfect storm,” said career coach Tracey Newell.
“Companies are limiting new entry-level roles, and AI is replacing many traditional ‘starter’ jobs,” she added, noting that it isn’t unusual for employers these days to receive hundreds of job applications for a single position.
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