News Mentions for the week of February 26, 2024

Logan Schneider, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provides tips related to risk for sleep breathing problems and other considerations when choosing the right mattress.

Providing care for a loved one with depression and/or anxiety is a difficult job. These strategies can help. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provide comment.

Senate President Pro-Tem Mike McGuire (D-North Coast), alongside a bipartisan coalition of Senate members, unveiled a comprehensive legislative package this week here at the Capitol addressing the fentanyl crisis and retail and community-based crime in California. Keith Humphreys, the Esther Ting Memorial professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provides comment.

Half a dozen public health experts said Mayor London Breed’s recent comments denigrating harm reduction went against best practice. Keith Humphreys, the Esther Ting Memorial professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provides comment.

Even before the pandemic, the use of mental health drugs was on the rise due to more affordable medication options and broadening acceptance of mental health treatment. That increase accelerated as the pandemic deepened the country’s mental health crisis following widespread loss and adversity. Smita Das, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s addiction council, provides comment.

Communication challenges can complicate the diagnosis of RLS. Sleep experts navigate these complexities for patients of different ages. Mark Buchfuhrer, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is quoted.

This week, Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” provides the clinical definition of addiction and says it’s becoming easier than ever adopt addictive behaviors but harder to spot the addiction in ourselves.

Read this Q&A with Molly Bowdring, clinical scholar in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, on whether non-alcoholic beverages are helpful or harmful for those with alcohol use disorders.

San Francisco is following the lead of more conservative counties, launching an investigative unit to target fentanyl deaths as homicide cases. That means drug dealers could be charged with murder. Keith Humphreys, the Esther Ting Memorial professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provides comment.

Talk to people addicted to street drugs in Lisbon, Portugal's capital, and you hear confusion and dismay over the carnage of overdose deaths taking place an ocean away in the U.S. In the U.S., drug deaths are shatteringly common, killing roughly 112,000 people a year. In Portugal, weeks sometimes go by in the entire country without a single fatal overdose. Keith Humphreys, the Esther Ting Memorial professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, provides comment.