A longstanding core belief of mental health maintains that people must confront their fears to ease the anxiety and depression stemming from those negative thoughts. Now a new study argues that, for some people, suppressing negative thoughts and worries might be a more successful strategy. Mental health actually improved for some study participants after they underwent training to help them suppress their fears about negative events that might occur in the future, researchers report. What’s more, people with worse mental health symptoms at the start of the study experienced more improvement by the end if they learned to suppress their negative thoughts. The results run counter to arguments that thought suppression is a poor coping process because it’s inevitably unsuccessful, said senior researcher Michael Anderson. He is a senior scientist and program leader with the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “For the better part of a century, starting with Freud, we’ve been told that when you do something like that — pushing distressing, fearful thoughts out of awareness — it comes back to bite you in the form of unconscious influences on your behavior, in your dreams and your emotions and motivations and moves,” Anderson explained. “This conflicts with a growing body of evidence from neuroscience and psychology that, in fact, people can and often…  read on >  read on >

More people around the world are exposed to wildfire smoke that has the potential to harm human health, and their numbers are growing, new research finds. More than 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of potentially health-impacting wildfire smoke each year, a figure that has grown by almost 7% in the past decade, according to a study led by Australian scientists. Moreover, each person in the world had on average 9.9 days of exposure per year, a 2% increase over 10 years, the researchers found. They also said exposure levels in poor countries were about four times higher than in high-income countries. The recent Canadian wildfires that spread smoke across North America highlighted the increase in severity and frequency of wildfires due to climate change. “The exposure to air pollution caused by landscape fire smoke traveling hundreds and sometimes even thousands of kilometers can affect much larger populations, and cause much larger public health risks,” said Yuming Guo from Monash University’s School of Population Health and Preventive Medicine. “Mapping and tracking the population exposure to landscape fire-sourced air pollution are essential for monitoring and managing its health impacts,” Guo said in a university news release. This will also help prevention efforts and strengthen arguments for mitigation of climate change, he added. Those health impacts can include increased death and disease, with…  read on >  read on >

A lot of people who think they don’t have secondhand smoke exposure actually do, according to a new study that compared survey answers with blood tests. According to the results of sensitive blood tests, more than half of American adults in the study had recently been exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. Most were not aware of it. “There is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure, and long-term exposure can increase the risk of many chronic conditions, such as coronary heart disease, respiratory disease and cancers,” said lead author Ruixuan (Roxanne) Wang, a doctoral candidate in the College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida. “We want people to be aware of their exposure so they can take protective actions,” she said in a university news release. Researchers analyzed data from 13,000 participants in the National Health and Examination Survey between 2013 and 2020. They looked for the presence of cotinine in respondents’ blood. This indicates exposure to nicotine in the last few days and is the gold standard for determining tobacco exposure. The study detected this nicotine byproduct in the blood of 51% of people. But less than half of participants reported being exposed to smoke. People of all demographics significantly underreported their exposure, but Black respondents had the highest rates of exposure and underreporting. “We think this report will…  read on >  read on >

When Canadian wildfire smoke shrouded the New York City skyline and spread to parts of New England this summer, millions of East Coast residents saw firsthand just how pervasive it can be. Now, a new study quantifies exactly what wildfire smoke is doing to hard-fought gains in cleaning up the air, even in Eastern states not typically affected by wildfires. “Since 2000, there’s been enormous progress on improving air quality throughout much of the contiguous U.S., however around 2016 those declines in PM2.5 began to stagnate or even reverse in some states,” said study author Marissa Childs, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Wildfires release fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, into the air, driving pollution. These tiny particles can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream and trigger an asthma attack, heart attack or strokes, among other risks. Specifically, wildfire smoke affected PM2.5 trends in nearly 75% of the 48 contiguous states since 2016, erasing nearly 25% of the air quality gains made since 2000 largely thanks to the Clean Air Act, a landmark environmental law, the study found. This is the equivalent of four years of air quality progress, Childs said. So why are things so out of hand? Climate change has caused warmer, drier conditions that spur longer and more active wildfire seasons, Childs explained. For the study,…  read on >  read on >

Brown rats found and analyzed near Atlanta now carry rat lungworm, researchers report. It’s a parasite that can trigger a dangerous brain encephalitis in both people and pets, and which now threatens a wide area of the U.S. Southeast. Researchers in Georgia say the microscopic rat lungworm, known scientifically as Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically begins its life cycle in native and exotic snails — rats probably contract the parasite after eating snails. A. cantonensis was first identified in Asia and was for many years not endemic to the United States. It first appeared in Hawaii before being spotted in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, “likely introduced by infected rats and gastropods [snails] through trade routes, such as on merchant ships,” explained a team led by Nicole Gottdenker. She’s associate professor of anatomic pathology at the University of Georgia in Athens. Infected rats excrete the parasite in their feces. In rare cases, people who accidentally come into contact with A. cantonensis can also become infected. The worm can trigger a dangerous inflammation of the brain or its surrounding membrane, the meninges — a condition called meningoencephalitis. Concerned that rat lungworm might have continued its spread throughout the Southeast, Gottdenker’s team collected samples of tissues “from 33 wild brown rats found dead during 2019-2022 on the grounds of a zoological facility located in Atlanta,” they reported. About one-fifth…  read on >  read on >

Nearly one in five counties across the United States lack psychiatrists or internet service, making it difficult for around 10.5 million Americans to find mental health care, a new study shows. The counties examined in the study were more likely to be in rural areas, have higher unemployment rates, and have populations that were more likely to be uninsured and lack a bachelor’s degree. What’s worse, individuals who fall into any one of these categories are also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. So, the need for mental health services is especially critical in areas with the greatest barriers to access, the researchers noted. And while the pandemic created a rapid demand for telehealth, the medium has yet to reach the areas that need it most. “Telehealth was originally developed to mitigate the adverse effects of physician shortage. But unfortunately for many people in shortage areas, they don’t have access to broadband coverage,” said study author Dr. Hao Yu, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. “We found those counties have negative health effects, like higher overdose mortality, higher suicide mortality. That’s kind of staggering,” he added. In July, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was passed by federal legislators and included a $65 billion investment to expand affordable and reliable high-speed internet access across the United States. While…  read on >  read on >