Love our health

Feeling loved by one's parents is critical for children's health and well-being. How can such feelings be fostered? A vital feature of loving interactions is reciprocal self-disclosure, where individuals disclose intimate information about themselves. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we examined whether encouraging reciprocal self-disclosure in parent-child dyads would make children feel more loved during the conversation. Participants were 218 children (ages 8-13, 50% girls, 94% Dutch) and one of their parents (ages 28-56, 62% women, 90% Dutch)...

Families can experience grief when they lose a loved one to incarceration. Although there has not been a death, the removal of a family member from day-to-day life and the uncertainty and stigma surrounding incarceration pose major challenges. We applied consensual qualitative research methods to understand the unique grief experience that adult children have when a parent is incarcerated. Our findings elaborate on the impacts of the loss, the complicating factors of stigma and disenfranchisement, as well as how individuals have made meaning and pursued healing from this experience over time...

Romantic partners have the potential to influence attitudes and behaviors related to body image and disordered eating. However, the role that romantic relationships can play in eating disorder (ED) recovery has not been comprehensively investigated. The present study aimed to explore the ways that people living with and recovering from EDs experience their romantic relationships, with the specific objective of developing a novel theoretical framework, grounded in the experiences of people in diverse romantic relationships, to guide future research on the topic...

BACKGROUND: The magnitude of the Oct 7, 2023 attack in southern Israel was without precedent. More than 1300 civilians were murdered, and 240 civilians were kidnapped and taken hostage. In this national cohort study, for which baseline outcome data were established before the attacks, a prospective assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) was conducted one month after the attack. METHODS: A representative sample of 710 Israeli adults (362 female, 51...

Self-compassion is when we are aware of our feelings and thoughts, are friendly toward ourselves, and realize everyone feels pain and makes mistakes. Self-compassion is associated with having better mental health and well-being in autistic and non-autistic people. But we do not know if autistic people's self-compassion can be improved through psychoeducation and self-compassion practices. We co-produced an online self-guided self-compassion program based on evidence-based self-compassion practices for autistic adults called the Self-compassion Program for Autistic Adults...

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic appeared as an unpredictable disruption of daily activities. This situation produced a unique mental health impact for the general population, youth, and vulnerable groups. A documented consequence has been alcohol abuse and impaired mental health. To our knowledge, no published study has yet evaluated the rates of depressive symptoms, academic frustration, and substance abuse in the Italian student population in the COVID era linking them to sociodemographic variables...

As the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) continued to provide uninterrupted health care service delivery; therefore, this disproportionately affected their wellbeing. Our study explored the wellbeing of HCWs during the COVID-19 era in public health facilities in the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng province, South Africa. A qualitative study was conducted among twenty (20) HCWs through face-to-face in-depth interviews (IDIs) in the form of semi-structured interviews, audiotapes, and transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed with NVivo version 10...

Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) has been widely used in promoting mental health, with positive emotions as an important mechanism. The current study explored the impact of background music on the effects and difficulties of LKM practice. Two hundred participants were randomly divided into six groups, wherein LKM plus music with harmony only, LKM plus music with harmony and melody, and LKM without music were presented in a different order during the intermediate three days of a five-day LKM intervention. Participants reported three types of positive emotions (pro-social, low-arousal, and medium-arousal positive emotions) and the difficulties during meditation (lack of concentration and lack of pro-social attitudes) after each of three sessions...

BACKGROUND: Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease can be stressful, resulting in poorer emotional and physical health among family caregivers. Although supportive resources for caregivers are available, distance, caregiver health, and the daily demands of caregiving are barriers to access. Based on research demonstrating the importance of positive emotions in coping with stress, our previous trial showed that dementia caregivers who participated in facilitated, web-based delivery of a positive emotion regulation intervention called LEAF (Life Enhancing Activities for Family caregivers) experienced increased positive emotion and decreased depression and anxiety...

BACKGROUND: Better use of healthcare systems data, collected as part of interactions between patients and the healthcare system, could transform planning and conduct of randomised controlled trials. Multiple challenges to widespread use include whether healthcare systems data captures sufficiently well the data traditionally captured on case report forms. "Data Utility Comparison Studies" (DUCkS) assess the utility of healthcare systems data for RCTs by comparison to data collected by the trial...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to gain insight into the perspectives of children with paediatric obesity themselves, during the pandemic and afterwards, regarding their wellbeing and health, and to solicit their advice on tailoring obesity care to match their daily realities. DESIGN AND METHODS: We used a 'draw, write and tell' interview technique, conducted walk-alongs, participant observations and a group session with children with paediatric obesity from seldom-heard communities in Amsterdam, the Netherlands...

This article focuses on the roles, actions, and resources developed by a group of leaders from the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (OMHSP) within the Department of Veterans Affairs during the unprecedented times of spring of 2020, when society was shaken by the fears and challenges of COVID-19 as well as social unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd. We share a summary of our efforts to move beyond platitudes and statements and bring meaningful and sustainable change in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion within OMHSP and across mental health services in Department of Veterans Affairs...

AIMS: Increasing nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD⁺) availability has been proposed as a therapeutic approach to prevent neurodegeneration in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Accordingly, NAD⁺ precursor supplementation appears to exert neuroprotective effects in ALS patients and mouse models. The mechanisms mediating neuroprotection remain uncertain but could involve changes in multiple cell types. We investigated a potential direct effect of the NAD⁺ precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) on the health of cultured iPSC-derived human motor neurons and in motor neurons isolated from two ALS mouse models - i...

BACKGROUND: Systemic allergic reactions (sARs) following coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccines were initially reported at a higher rate than traditional vaccines. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate the safety of revaccination in these individuals and to interrogate mechanisms underlying these reactions. METHODS: In this randomized, double-blinded, phase 2 trial, individuals 16-69 years who previously reported a convincing sAR to their first dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine were randomly assigned to receive second dose of BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech; Comirnaty®) vaccine and placebo on consecutive days in a blinded, 1:1 cross-over fashion at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...

One in five fatal police shooting victims may have been experiencing a mental health crisis (MHC) at the time of their death [1]. We use data on fatal police shootings from the National Violent Death Reporting System (2014-2015) to (a) identify incidents where the victim is reported to have experienced an MHC at the time of their death, (b) describe the characteristics of these incidents, and (c) compare the characteristics of MHC to fatal police shootings where the victim was not experiencing an MHC at the time of their death...

Each week, I record audio summaries for every paper in JACC, as well as an issue summary. This process has become a true labor of love due to the time they require, but I am motivated by the sheer number of listeners (16M+), and it has allowed me to familiarize myself with every paper that we publish. Thus, I have selected the top 100 papers (Original Investigations, Review Articles, Society Documents, and the Global Burden of Diseases) from distinct specialties each year. In addition to my personal choices, I have included papers that have been the most accessed or downloaded on our websites, as well as those selected by the JACC Editorial Board members...

Although stress is an everyday fact of life, it can lead to poor health outcomes, particularly when intense or prolonged. However, humans have unique cognitive abilities and thus may be able to combat stress by engaging critical psychological defence mechanisms. In this review, we discuss the field of mind-body medicine, which focuses on improving our understanding of the mechanisms underlying this response and developing interventions that might be used to limit the effects of chronic stress. We review the findings of past and current research in this field that has focused on the impact of psychological, emotional, and behavioural factors, including love, social connectedness, and happiness on human health and the amelioration of pain as well as other signs and symptoms of disease...

Rising greenhouse gas levels heat the earth's surface and alter climate patterns, posing unprecedented threats to planetary ecology and human health. At the same time, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease have reached epidemic proportions across the globe, caused in part by decreases in physical activity and by over-consumption of carbon-intensive foods. Thus, interventions that support active transportation (walking or cycling rather than driving) and healthier food choices (eating plant-based rather than meat-based diets) would yield health and sustainability "co-benefits...

INTRODUCTION: Utilizing medications to treat opioid use disorder (MOUD) is both highly effective and unfortunately underutilized in the US health care system. Stigma surrounding substance use disorders, insufficient provider knowledge about substance use disorders and MOUD, and historical lack of physicians with X-waivers to prescribe buprenorphine contribute to this underutilization. Our study aimed to elucidate barriers to accessing MOUD in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews with patients receiving MOUD at a family medicine residency program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...

BACKGROUND: Upon reintegration into society, formerly incarcerated individuals (FIIs) experience chronic financial stress due to prolonged unemployment, strained social relationships, and financial obligations. This study examined whether marriage and perceived social status can mitigate financial stress, which is deleterious to the well-being of FIIs. We also assessed whether sociodemographic factors influenced financial stress across marital status. We used cross-sectional data from 588 FIIs, collected in the 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health...