Medicine & Health

While suicide attempts decreased overall among U.S. adolescents between 1991 and 2017, they increased by 73% among black adolescents, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researchers at Washington University in St. Louis a grant to train young scientists to recognize, investigate and work toward correcting disparities in access to mental health care in the U.S. and abroad.

Early exposure to emotional violence “significantly” increases the chances that youths will contemplate suicide, according to new research from three countries conducted by the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

With the goal of preventing youth suicide by helping schools set up a student support system, the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis hosted the Hope Policy Academy June 6.

Philanthropists Andrew and Barbara Taylor and the Crawford Taylor Foundation have committed $10 million to the School of Medicine to continue research to investigate the scientific underpinnings of psychiatric illnesses, with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment.

Personal experience told Lisa Gorham, captain of the Washington University in St. Louis cross-country, track and indoor track teams, that team sports and adolescent mental health are linked. But what would the data say? Gorham has just published her findings in a leading journal — a rare accomplishment for an undergraduate researcher.

With a growing demand for mental health services at colleges, a research team led by the School of Medicine has received a $3.8 million grant to test a mental health phone app to treat depression, anxiety and eating disorders in a study involving some 8,000 students at 20 colleges, universities and community colleges.

When very young children talk about wanting to commit suicide, conventional wisdom is that they don’t understand what they’re saying. But School of Medicine research has found that depressed children ages 4 to 6 who think and talk about committing suicide understand what it means to die better than other kids of the same age. They also are more likely to think of death as something caused by violence.

Leopoldo J. Cabassa, associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is part of a team that has received a five-year $2.9 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study interventions for people suffering from mental health issues in Chile.

The signs of stress, anxiety or depression in a student may be easy to spot. The hard part is knowing what to do next. Kognito At-Risk for Faculty & Staff, an online simulation tool, will help Washington University in St. Louis faculty and staff lead effective discussions with struggling students.