Category: Psychological and Sociological Impact
WSU study: alcohol-related liver illnesses rose during pandemic
NBC News Researchers at Washington State University (WSU) have found that an increase in alcohol-related liver illnesses is directly correlated to the COVID pandemic years. “Severe liver disease seems to be rising over time, but it appears to have increased even more dramatically during the pandemic,” said Dr. Kris Kowdley, professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College […]
Jul 11, 2023
U.S. Students’ Progress Stagnated Last School Year, Study Finds
NYT Despite billions in federal aid, students are not making up ground in reading and math: “We are actually seeing evidence of backsliding.” Despite billions of federal dollars spent to help make up for pandemic-related learning loss, progress in reading and math stalled over the past school year for elementary and middle-school students, according to […]
Jul 11, 2023
Concept Creep: How Our Concepts of Anxiety and Depression Are Changing
Neuroscience News Summary: A study exploring “concept creep” suggests that, with increased mental health awareness following the COVID-19 pandemic, the concepts of “anxiety” and “depression” are broadening. The study revealed that, contrary to expectations of less emotionally intense use, these terms have taken on more severe connotations over the past five decades. This shift is driven […]
Jul 5, 2023
If You Suffer from Urgent Normal Syndrome, Ask for Help
Ko-Fi A woman finds a mask in her coat pocket, leftover from the 2021 mandate. It triggers such a violent emotional reaction in her mind that she throws the mask across the room and starts sobbing, then tweets about the experience. This woman might be suffering from urgent normal syndrome. What’s that, you ask? As […]
Jun 27, 2023
How Did COVID-19 Affect Plans of American High-Schoolers?
VOA In a recent survey of 12th-graders, about 40% said the COVID-19 pandemic made them rethink their choice of career or undergraduate degree, and about 10% said it made them doubt the value of college at all. Nirvi Shah of USA Today unpacks the findings. (June 2023). The lives of students graduating from high school this year were […]
Jun 20, 2023
I Studied Five Countries’ Health Care Systems. We Need to Get More Creative With Ours.
NYT Opinion Although we just experienced a pandemic in which over one million Americans died, health care reform doesn’t seem to be a top political issue in the United States right now. That’s a mistake. The American health care system is broken. We are one of the few developed countries that does not have universal coverage. We […]
Jun 14, 2023
Covid Lockdowns Really Did Mess With Our Memories
Bloomberg The psychological toll of Covid lockdowns could lead some people to misremember the timing of recent events, according to a new study published by University of Aberdeen researchers. The lapses were similar to distorted time perception observed among some prisoners, said the study, conducted in 2022 and published in open-access journal Plus One on […]
May 31, 2023
Soft Pants: The Postpandemic Benefit That’s Here to Stay
NYT Less than three weeks into the March 2020 lockdowns in New York City, my boyfriend turned to me with a revelation he was having while in the snug living room that had become our co-working space, wine bar and prison chamber. A finance lawyer who used to wear suits, he lately had found himself […]
May 30, 2023
You definitely don’t wish you were here: Postcards in the age of covid
Washington Post For someone who never actually tested positive for the coronavirus, Clarissa Ferraris sure has a house full of it. The virus is on hundreds of postcards that the Columbia, Md., collector has amassed over the last three years. There are postcards of health-care workers battling the spiky globular virus, of cityscapes emptied by the pandemic, of […]
May 23, 2023
STAT The incarcerated people at Federal Medical Center Devens should have been some of the first to receive the Covid vaccines, back when they first came out in December 2020. At the time, the country was prioritizing high-risk people in high-risk settings, like older Americans in nursing homes. So Devens seemed a better candidate than […]
May 23, 2023