Despite Dark, Abuse-Ridden History Of Mental Asylums, Some Experts Argue They Should Be Brought Back
President Donald Trump recently renewed a conversation about mental institutions as he talked about ways to fix the psychological health system after the Florida shooting. While experts say asylums wouldn't have served to prevent the massacre, some do see the societal need for them. “When people are going back and forth from prisons to hospitals, that’s a sign they might have benefited from longer-term treatment options,” said Dominic Sisti, a medical ethicist.
The New York Times:
Bring Back The Asylums? Critics Fear A New Wave Of Abuse
In the wake of the horrific school shootings in Parkland, Fla., President Trump has called repeatedly for building or reopening mental institutions. Strangely, perhaps, he has echoed an argument made by some experts who study the mental health care system. It’s not that they believe that having more institutions would somehow prevent spree killings, as Mr. Trump apparently does. The majority of these murderers appear to be angry, antisocial individuals — with access to guns — whom the mental health system probably could not have spotted in advance. (Carey, 3/5)
In other national health care news —
The New York Times:
Can This Judge Solve The Opioid Crisis?
Here are a few choice mutterings from the scrum of lawyers outside Courtroom 18B, about the federal judge who summoned them to a closed-door conference on hundreds of opioid lawsuits: “Grandstander.” “Pollyanna.” “Over his head.” And the chorus: “This is not how we do things!” (Hoffman, 3/5)
The New York Times:
Overshadowed By The Opioid Crisis: A Comeback By Cocaine
The opioid epidemic just keeps getting worse, presenting challenges discussed at length at a White House summit last week. But opioids are not America’s only significant drug problem. Among illicit drugs, cocaine is the No. 2 killer and claims the lives of more African-Americans than heroin does. In a recent study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that drug-related deaths have grown across all racial groups and among both men and women. The analysis found that between 1999 and 2015, overdose deaths of any kind of drug for Americans 20 to 64 years old increased 5.5 percent per year. (Frakt, 3/5)
The Wall Street Journal:
Common ‘Superbug’ Found To Disguise Resistance To Potent Antibiotic
Some common “superbugs” appear to harbor a little-known type of resistance to a last-resort antibiotic, a new study shows, suggesting a worrying new way in which dangerous bacteria can evade one of the few remaining treatment options. Bacterial populations are normally viewed as either totally impervious to an antibiotic, or totally treatable. But researchers from Emory University identified a different pattern in a certain type of drug-resistant bacteria, in which some cells in a bacterial colony are resistant to a last-resort antibiotic called colistin. This “heteroresistance” isn’t easily detectable in standard lab tests because most of the cells are susceptible to the drug. (McKay, 3/6)
The New York Times:
Americans Might No Longer Prefer Sons Over Daughters
Around the world, parents have typically preferred to have sons more than daughters, and American parents have been no different. But there are signs that’s changing. It may be because there’s less bias against girls, and possibly more bias against boys. Gallup surveyed Americans 10 times from 1941 to 2011, and their answers remained virtually unchanged: If they could have one child, 40 percent would prefer a boy and 28 percent a girl (the rest showed no preference). (Miller, 3/5)
The Washington Post:
Babies With Down Syndrome Are Put On Center Stage In The U.S. Abortion Fight
Karianne Lisonbee stepped up to the lectern to talk about what she called “a terrible form of discrimination. ”The Republican state representative in Utah had just introduced a bill that would make it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion if a woman is seeking one “solely” because the fetus has Down syndrome. “In recent years, there has been a shocking increase in abortions performed for no other reason than because a prenatal test identified the potential for a trait a parent didn’t like,” she said at the news conference last month. (Cha, 3/5)