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Amended Autopsy: Black Man Died Due To Sedative, Restraint

Despite the finding, the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was still listed as undetermined, not a homicide.

A Black man died after a police encounter in a Denver suburb in 2019 because he was injected with a powerful sedative after being forcibly restrained, according to an amended autopsy report publicly released Friday.

Despite the finding, the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was still listed as undetermined, not a homicide, the report shows. McClain was put in a neck hold and injected with ketamine after being stopped by police in Aurora for “being suspicious.” He was unarmed.

The original autopsy report that was written soon after his death in August 2019 did not reach a conclusion about how he died or what type of death is was, such as if it was natural, accidental or a homicide. That was a major reason why prosecutors initially decided not to pursue charges.

But a state grand jury last year indicted three officers and two paramedics on manslaughter and reckless homicide charges in McClain’s death after the case drew renewed attention following the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It became a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality.

The five accused have not yet entered pleas and their lawyers have not commented publicly on the charges.

In the updated report, completed in July 2021, Dr. Stephen Cina, a pathologist, concluded that the ketamine dosage given to McClain, which was higher than recommended for someone his size, “was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose, even though his blood ketamine level was consistent with a ‘therapeutic’ blood concentration.”

He said he could not rule out that changes in McClain’s blood chemistry, like an increase in lactic acid, due to his exertion while being restrained by police contributed to his death but concluded there was no evidence that injuries inflicted by police caused his death.

“I believe that Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine,” said Cina, who noted that body camera footage shows McClain becoming “extremely sedated” within a few minutes of being given the drug.

Cina acknowledged that other reasonable pathologists with different experience and training may have labeled such a death, while in police custody, as a homicide or accident, but that he believes the appropriate classification is undetermined.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, attorney for McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, declined a request for comment.

Dr. Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist in Washington state, questioned the report’s focus on ketamine, saying all the available evidence — including a highly critical independent review of McClain’s death commissioned by Aurora last year — point to McClain dying as a result of compressional asphyxia, a type of suffocation, from officers putting pressure on his body while restraining him. He was struck by one passage in the city’s review citing the ambulance company’s report that its crew found McClain lying on the ground on his stomach, his arms handcuffed behind his back, his torso and legs held down, with at least three officers on top of him.

That scene was not captured on body camera footage, the report said, but much of what happened between police was not because the officers’ cameras came off soon after McClain was approached. The cameras did continue to record where they fell and captured people talking.

Just because McClain, who said he couldn’t breathe, could be heard making some statements on the footage, does not mean he was able to fully breathe, Wigren said. Ketamine, which slows breathing, could have just exacerbated McClain’s condition, but Wigren does not think it caused his death.

However, another pathologist, Dr. Deborah G. Johnson of Colorado, said McClain’s quick reaction to ketamine suggests that it was a cause of McClain’s death, but she said its use cannot be separated from the impact that the police restraint may have had. McClain may have had trouble breathing because of the restraint and having less oxygen in your system would make the sedative take effect more quickly, she said.

Both thought the death could have been labeled as a homicide — a death caused by the actions of other people — which they pointed out is a separate judgment from deciding whether someone should be prosecuted with a crime for causing it.

McClain got an overdose of ketamine, Johnson said, noting that the paramedics were working at night when it is hard to judge someone’s weight.

“Was that a mistake to send someone to prison for? I don’t think so,” she said.

The updated autopsy was released Friday under a court order in a lawsuit brought by Colorado Public Radio, joined by other media organizations including The Associated Press. Colorado Public Radio sued the coroner to release the report after learning it had been updated, arguing that it should be made available under the state’s public records law.

Coroner Monica Broncucia-Jordan said she could not release it because it contained confidential grand jury information and that releasing it would violate the oath she made not to share it when she obtained it last year.

But Adams County District Judge Kyle Seedorf ordered the coroner to release the updated report by Friday, and a Denver judge who oversees state grand jury proceedings, Christopher Baumann, ruled Thursday that grand jury information did not have be redacted from the updated report.

Cina noted that the report was updated based on extensive body camera footage, witness statements and records that he did not have at the time of the original autopsy report, which were not made available to the coroner’s office at all or in their entirety before. Last year, Cina and Broncucia-Jordan received some material that was made available to the grand jury last year, according to court documents, but they did not say what exactly that material was.

McClain’s death fueled renewed scrutiny about the use of the ketamine and led Colorado’s health department to issue a new rule limiting when emergency workers can use it.

Last year, the city of Aurora agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents. The lawsuit alleged the force officers used against McClain and his struggle to survive it dramatically increased the amount of lactic acid in his system, leading to his death, possibly along with the large dose of ketamine he was given.

The outside investigation commissioned by the city faulted the police probe into McClain’s arrest for not pressing for answers about how officers treated him. It found there was no evidence justifying officers’ decision to stop McClain, who had been reported as suspicious because he was wearing a ski mask as he walked down the street waving his hands. He was not accused of breaking any law.

Police reform activist Candice Bailey had mixed emotions about seeing the amended autopsy.

“I do believe that it does get us a step closer to anything that is a semblance of justice,” said Bailey, an activist in the city of Aurora who has led demonstrations over the death of McClain.

But Bailey added that she is “extremely saddened that there is still a controversy around whether or not the EMTs and officers should be held responsible for what they did, and as to whether or not this was actually murder.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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How Disability Misunderstandings And Stigma Impact Mental Well-Being

Disability experts say it’s common for doctors to misunderstand bodily autonomy, which can impact a person’s mental health.

CDC data shows about 26% of Americans live with a disability, whether it’s physical or mental.

Conditions like anxiety, spinal injury, ADHD, amputation, depression, cerebral palsy — these are just some examples.

Advocates say there’s a lot of misunderstanding about a person who has a disability. And that stigma not only runs deep — it can also have a huge impact on that individual’s mental health.

Twenty-eight-year-old New Yorker Chloé Valentine Toscano knows beauty, from walking in fashion week to her Instagram reels to publishing in magazines like Allure.

“I’m a writer. I’m someone who likes the color pink. I like butterflies. I like learning a lot about anyone and anything,” she said. “I think we all have differences, and I want to understand differences. … For me, beauty is just being open-minded,” she said.

She also has fought face-to-face with ugly mental health struggles caused by doctors who didn’t understand disability.

“It is a journey,” Valentine Toscano said.

She lost motor function from her elbow down in 2014. She adapted and spent years living with — as she calls it — dead weight. She got into paralypmic swimming and started her career.

Then, after years of researching and soul searching, she chose to amputate her arm.

“I know amputation can be very traumatic because some people, a lot of people,will experience it through trauma,” she said. “But that wasn’t where I was in my case. So, it wasn’t traumatic talking about it, but it was traumatic playing a game with the yeses and the nos.”

Valentine Toscano spent three years fighting to get her procedure. She says some surgeons told her any elective amputation was too risky, even though she was healthy. Other rejections came after her surgery had been approved and scheduled.

“The answer I got from one, he said, ‘Well, some people just need to learn to live with what they’ve got.’ That made me feel like someone else who wasn’t in my body was telling me what was better for me,” she said. “It felt very frustrating to have it and very offensive to have someone say that.”

Bodily autonomy — or the right to control what happens to your body — is a common struggle in the disability community. And disability experts say misunderstanding that is common, and can cause undue stress as well as impact a person’s mental well-being.

In Valentine Toscano’s story, it happened a few times.

She recounted that in one appointment: “I cried, I broke down and I felt like the minute I expressed that emotion, he sent me in for a psych evaluation, which felt like I was being punished for expressing emotion.” And then she described the examination, saying: “She was asking me, she said, ‘Do you find that you’re unattractive because of your arm and that you would be more attractive without it?’ And I was like, ‘It’s not about that at all. It’s never been about that.’ … I felt angry and belittled and just, not heard, because I was asking for one thing and being evaluated for something that wasn’t even remotely there.”

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Linda Mona has spent the past two decades working on disability and how it relates to health care.

“If you haven’t been exposed to it personally — you have not been exposed to it through being a family friend, a lover, whoever that might be — And you’re not called to do it professionally and you don’t see it around you, you don’t think about it.”

She says, unfortunately, Valentine Toscano’s experience is all too common. Mental health experts with lived experience or expertise in disability are rare.

“It can be quite challenging to find somebody,” Mona said. “The other thing to think about is the steps that come before that, which is that it’s very hard for people to access education if they have disability, let alone graduate school. And internship and fellowship…”

Sixty-one million U.S. adults, which is about one in 4, have some type of disability, according to the CDC.

A 2021 anonymous survey of graduating medical students showed 7.6% identified as having a disability. But data collected directly from medical schools show that only about 4% of medical students disclosed their disability.

That stigma against disability —physical or mental — runs deep.

From 1867 to 1974 U.S. cities had laws governing who could be in public. Codes included fining or jailing those deemed “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or anyway deformed.”

Mona says it’s federal bias favoring able-bodied people.

“You’re best at home. You’re best tucked away. Or, you’re best institutionalized out of the way of anybody else who is displeased with the way that you look,” she said.

She adds structural stigmas fueled misconceptions about disabled people’s decision-making about their own bodies.

NEWSY’S LINDSEY THEIS: When we talk about bodily autonomy, what type of impact cannot have long term on someone’s mental well-being?

LINDA MONA: Trying to bring that in and make your choices can have a huge effect on your mental health in the long run. … It also happens a lot with pregnancy and people with disabilities. Right? So, you know, somebody has some kind of cognitive mental difference or physical difference. There’s, you know, constant questioning about, you know, ‘you want to be pregnant? You know what that’s going to do to your body?’ … I don’t think anybody thinks those types of decisions are a simple decision. They’re complex. But you have to trust that somebody has made that made that decision with that context in mind and not assume that they’re uninformed.

In summer 2021, Valentine Toscano had her amputation surgery. She calls it a dream come true.

“I just felt happy,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I got this is like a huge step in my life. It just felt like one of those, like, huge dreams. I got there. I got a huge part of my personality back immediately.”

Valentine Toscano uses a prosthetic, as needed. It’s bright pink and purple with a lot of glitter.

“If I could have decided to have been born with an arm with butterflies and sparkles on it, like right out of the womb, I would have picked that,” she said.

Valentine Toscano said her prosthetic cost $13,000.

“It’s something that’s very expensive,” she said. “I was fortunate to have it covered by health insurance. But that’s not something everyone has.”

Valentine Toscano continues to advocate and write, sharing her experience now from two different sides of disability. She’s also writing a book on the side.

She says the ability to share those stories in her voice and having others listen is not only good for her well-being, it’s truly beautiful.

: newsy.com

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Floods In Italy Kill At Least 10 People

By Associated Press
September 16, 2022

In the span of hours, several towns in central Italy were deluged with the amount of rainfall the region usually receives over six months.

Floodwaters triggered by heavy rainfall swept through several towns in a hilly region of central Italy early Friday, leaving 10 people dead and at least four missing, authorities said. Dozens of survivors scrambled onto rooftops or up trees to await rescue.

“It wasn’t a water bomb, it was a tsunami,” Riccardo Pasqualini, the mayor of Barbara, told Italian state radio of the sudden downpour Thursday evening that devastated his town in the Marche region, near the Adriatic Sea.

He said the flooding left the 1,300 residents of Barbara without drinking water and with spotty telephone service. A mother and her young daughter were missing after trying to escape the floodwaters, the mayor told the Italian news agency ANSA.

While firefighters reported at least seven confirmed deaths and three people missing, RAI state TV quoted the local prefect’s office as saying there were 10 confirmed deaths. Two children, including a boy swept out of his mother’s arms in Barbara were among four people still unaccounted for as of late Friday morning.

Some 50 people were treated at hospitals for injuries.

Many of the 300 firefighters on rescue operations waded through waist-high water in flooded streets, while others operated rubber dinghies to scoop up survivors along their path.

The fire department tweeted that dozens of people who were trapped in cars or had clambered up to rooftops or climbed trees to escape rising floodwaters had been brought to safety.

Police officers in the town of Sassoferrato recounted the rescue of a man trapped in a car. Unable to reach him, they extended a long branch, which the man grabbed onto and then officers pulled him to safety.

Helicopters were also deployed to rescue seven people in the more remote towns of the Apennine Mountains, which form the backbone of central Italy.

Floodwater invaded garages and basements and with its weight and force knocked down doors.

In a space of a few hours, the region was deluged with the amount of rainfall it usually receives in six months, state TV said.

Some of the worst flooding struck in and around the town of Senigallia, where a river overflowed its banks. Hamlets in the hills near the Renaissance tourist town of Urbino were also inundated when fast-moving rivers of water, mud and debris rushed through streets.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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400M Tons Of Plastic Waste Created Each Year But Only 2M Tons Recycled

Newsy’s Scott Withers visits the largest residential recycling plant in the country, located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Americans generate a lot of waste — about five pounds per person per day — and a lot of it is plastic. Those flimsy grocery bags, shrink wrap packaging and of course, bottles — lots and lots of bottles.

Every year, we toss out 2.5 million plastic bottles.

“They are highly recyclable and its imperative they end up in your recycling bin,” Republic Services External Communications Manager Jeremy Walters said.

Together, we create 400 million tons of plastic waste a year. Only two million tons of that gets recycled. We used to do better but during the pandemic, our recycling rate dropped because we started making more garbage.

“It’s how much trash is generated versus how much recycling is generated. And when that trash starts to go up, the recycling volumes start to dilute,” Walters continued.

Vegas—What happens here, gets recycled here. It’s not the official slogan for the city, but it could be.

This city is known for excess — huge hotels and big casinos. And it also has the largest residential recycling plant in the country.

Republic Services recycles two million pounds every day, which is the equivalent weight of 500 cars. Workers at the massive plant sort the mixed recyclables, plastics, aluminum, glass and paper and remove the wish-cycle items, which are things we wish we could recycle but can’t.

“Bowling balls, shoes, engine blocks, steel security doors—I promise you, if you use your imagination, we’ve seen it here,” Walters said.

Paper is easily the most recycled item — 50 million tons of it per year, and we also break down and recycle almost all of our cardboard boxes. More than 90% of those boxes get recycled.

There is plenty that doesn’t get recycled, though. One hundred and ten million glass bottles get thrown away every year. Glass can be recycled indefinitely—same with aluminum— but we still don’t recycle about seven million tons a year. And then there’s all those plastic bottles.

All the trash that we create, which does not go through recycling plants like this one, ends up piling up in landfills.

: newsy.com

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Charles III Arrives In Edinburgh For Queen’s Coffin Procession

By Associated Press
September 12, 2022

Charles flew to Scotland after receiving condolences at Parliament and telling lawmakers he would follow his late mother’s example of “selfless duty.”

King Charles III landed in Edinburgh on Monday to accompany his late mother’s coffin on an emotion-charged procession through the historic heart of the Scottish capital to a cathedral where it will lie for 24 hours to allow the public to pay their last respects.

Charles flew to Scotland after earlier receiving condolences at Parliament and telling lawmakers he would follow his late mother’s example of “selfless duty.”

Earlier, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson Prince Harry hailed her as a “guiding compass” and praised her “unwavering grace and dignity.”

The government, meanwhile, announced that the nation will observe a minute of silence on Sunday, the evening before the queen’s funeral. The “moment of reflection” will take place at 8 p.m. People were encouraged to mark the silence at home or at community events.

Hundreds of lawmakers crowded into the 1,000-year-old Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament for the service, rich in pageantry, in which Parliament offered its condolences to the king, and he replied.

A trumpet fanfare greeted the king and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, as they entered the hall, which was packed with hundreds of legislators.

Charles told members of the House of Commons and House of Lords that he would follow his late mother Queen Elizabeth II in upholding “the precious principles of constitutional governance” that underpin the U.K.’s political system.

He paid tribute to his mother, saying: “As Shakespeare said of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was a pattern to all princes living.”

The hall, with its magnificent hammer-beam roof, is the oldest part of the parliamentary complex — a remnant of the medieval Palace of Westminster that once stood on the site.

“As I stand before you today, I cannot help but feel the weight of history which surrounds us and which reminds us of the vital parliamentary traditions to which members of both Houses dedicate yourselves, with such personal commitment for the betterment of us all,” Charles said.

The ceremony was held in Westminster Hall because monarchs are not allowed inside the House of Commons. That rule dates from the 17th century, when King Charles I tried to enter and arrest lawmakers. That confrontation between crown and Parliament led to a civil war which ended with the king being beheaded in 1649.

Earlier Monday, a personal statement posted on Harry and his wife Meghan’s Archwell website said he cherished their times together “from my earliest childhood memories with you, to meeting you for the first time as my Commander-in-Chief, to the first moment you met my darling wife and hugged your beloved greatgrandchildren.”

Amid acrimony in the House of Windsor, Harry quit as a senior royal and moved to the U.S. two years ago. On Saturday, there was a possible sign of a reconciliation as Harry and Meghan joined his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Catherine in meeting mourners outside Windsor Castle.

The national outpouring of grief continued Sunday as thousands of people lined streets and roadsides as the oak coffin was borne from the late queen’s beloved Balmoral Castle summer retreat, where she died on Thursday, to Edinburgh.

In Edinburgh, the king will walk behind his mother’s coffin as it is slowly transported from Holyroodhouse to St. Giles’ Cathedral, where the crown of Scotland will be placed on the coffin ahead of a service of prayer and reflection on the life and 70-year reign of the widely cherished monarch.

The queen’s coffin will lie at the cathedral for 24 hours, giving members of the public a chance to file past and pay their respects. On Tuesday, it will be flown to London where the coffin will lie in state at the Houses of Parliament Palace from Wednesday afternoon until the morning of the funeral on Sept. 19.

Authorities already have issued rules and guidelines for people wanting to pay their respects in London, with a long queue expected.

After visiting Scotland, Charles embarks on a tour of the other nations that make up the United Kingdom — he visits the Northern Ireland capital, Belfast, on Tuesday and Wales on Friday.

Harry’s statement ended on a poignant note alluding to the death last year of his grandfather, Prince Philip, saying that “We, too, smile knowing that you and grandpa are reunited now, and both together in peace.”

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Biden Accepts Invitation For Queen’s Funeral

By Associated Press
September 11, 2022

President Biden was the 13th and final U.S. president to meet the woman whose reign spanned seven decades.

President Joe Biden has formally accepted an invitation to attend the state funeral service for Queen Elizabeth II.

The White House said Sunday that the president will be accompanied by First Lady Jill Biden. The service will be held on Sept. 19.

Earlier in the day, President Biden remembered the words of comfort that the late monarch had provided to the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks more than two decades ago.

“Grief is the price we pay for love,” said President Biden, quoting part of the Queen’s message to America during remarks on the 21st anniversary of the attacks.

Speaking at a commemoration at the Pentagon, President Biden said the queen’s words remain as poignant as they did 21 years ago but the weight of loss also remains heavy.

“On this day, the price feels so great,” President Biden said.

President Biden was the 13th and final U.S. president to meet the woman whose reign spanned seven decades.

The queen had met every American president since Dwight Eisenhower, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson. That’s because Johnson did not visit Britain during his presidency.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden said in a statement the queen’s “legacy will loom large in the pages of British history, and in the story of our world.”

Every living former U.S. president – Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump – joined President Biden in mourning her passing and sending condolences to her family.

: newsy.com

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Guaranteed Income Programs Spring Up City by City

Early in the pandemic, Alondra Barajas had a temporary job for the Census Bureau, doing phone work from the two-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother and four younger siblings. When that job ended in late 2020, she struggled to find employment.

But Ms. Barajas learned from an ad on Instagram that she might qualify for an unusual form of assistance: monthly payments of $1,000 for a year.

Since she started receiving the funds this year — while caring for her newborn, searching for a job and looking for a new place to stay — her outlook has seemed brighter.

Oakland pledged to give 600 low-income families $500 for 18 months, and in San Diego, some families with young children will get $500 a month for two years.

Last year, the state set aside $35 million over five years for cities to carry out pilot programs, which can use different criteria, including income level, people leaving the foster care system and residence in low-income neighborhoods. An application process for municipalities to tap into those funds is underway.

one of the country’s first guaranteed income programs in 2019, notes that these payments are not meant to be a sole means of income but aim to provide a buffer for people to break the cycle of poverty.

Mr. Tubbs sees the programs as crucial tools in achieving racial justice for Black people and Latinos.

“The ways in which racism and capitalism have intersected to steal wealth from some communities,” he said, “creates the disparities we see today.”

Damon Jones, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, who has studied such programs, noted that unrestricted cash — including stimulus payments — was used broadly by the federal government to stem the economic devastation of Covid-19.

“Policymakers were surprisingly open to this idea following the onset of the pandemic,” Mr. Jones said. Now the emergency aid programs have largely lapsed, ending what for some was a lifeline.

Opponents argue that guaranteed income programs are too expensive and are counterproductive.

Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a conservative-leaning think tank, said the case against guaranteed income was not that people “receiving random windfalls can’t benefit from them — in at least some cases, they can and do.”

Los Angeles pilot program, said the goal of her city’s effort was to promote changes to the ways federal public benefit programs were designed.

“Many, if not all, public benefit program regulations contradict each other, are difficult to navigate and are not focused on creating pathways to greater economic opportunity,” Ms. Marquez said. (Some states, including California, have built-in exemptions to ensure that accepting funding from the pilot programs does not put recipients at risk of losing certain state and federal assistance.)

Experts reported an increase in emergency room treatment and helpline support for eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ali Caudle has always known determination and persistence. She’s a star swimmer, co-editor of her high school newspaper and was accepted into Northeastern University to pursue a journalism career.

Like so many other teens, she’s tackling mental health issues exacerbated by the pandemic.

“So many of my friends are also struggling with mental illness right now,” Caudle said. “Honestly, it’s harder to find a friend who isn’t struggling with anything at all. Almost everyone is.”

Caudle’s eating disorder started a few years before the pandemic, in the ninth grade. She was 14 years old.

“My therapist talks a lot about it being kind of like an addiction, like you’re addicted to not eating,” Caudle said. “But unlike other addicts, you can’t just avoid food like you can avoid alcohol or avoid smoking. You have to eat, so you have to face that multiple times a day, every day.”

At 5 feet 2 inches tall, she dropped below 100 pounds. Her period stopped. That’s when her doctor talked to her about putting on healthy weight.

“That’s all the conversation ever was; there was no talk about like the mental side of things,” Caudle said. ” Like, what is the trauma that this is coming from? It’s just, ‘Let’s get you to a healthy weight, and everything will be solved.'”

And, it was — until March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It kept dragging on and on, and I remember I started to be like, ‘I need to make sure I look good when we come out of lockdown,” Caudle said.

She returned to school full-time at the start of her junior year. Between swimming, pursuing an international baccalaureate diploma and other extracurriculars, it became overwhelming.

“I fell into a full-blown relapse,” Caudle said.

A CDC report released earlier this year found the number of teen girls going to the emergency room for eating disorders almost doubled during the pandemic.

The National Eating Disorders Association says its helpline reported a 58% increase in calls, texts and chats between March 2020 and October of 2021, but experts think the real numbers could be even higher.

“[It] was like nothing I’ve seen in my entire career: the explosion of need out of the pandemic,” said Dr. Jillian Lampert.

Dr. Lampert is chief strategy officer for the Emily Program. It has 20 locations across the country, from inpatient to virtual care.

“Overnight, we had twice as many people knocking on the door or calling on the phone, sending in emails,” Dr. Lampert said.

Wait lists across the country became unmanageable.

“I think that the pandemic really yielded the perfect recipe to get an eating disorder,” Dr. Lampert said. “If you were ever going to create an eating disorder, you would take a huge dose of anxiety, a huge dose of isolation, and stir it up in a big container of social media pressure.”

Social media, designed to be addictive, is a constant presence in most teens’ lives. Experts say it was to blame for eating disorders long before the pandemic, but for teens like Caudle, more time online during lockdown piled on the pressure.

“You click on one thing that may be promoting something… you shouldn’t be engaging with, and then all of a sudden, that’s all you see,” Caudle said. “Suddenly it’s everywhere, and you feel like you can’t escape it.”

Dr. Caitlin Martin-Wagar is the sole doctor at the University of Montana researching eating disorder treatments, and also trying to fill the gap in services through her own practice.

“I hadn’t even launched my website, and I was able to fill up to what I wanted with patients right off the bat,” said Dr. Martin-Wagar. “We know that the longer people suffer with an eating disorder, the less likely they are to have quick and full recovery. There’s a lot of hope, though. We need to be keeping an eye on things and really making sure that we get people in treatment as soon as possible.”

Advocates say no matter where you are, reaching out is critical.

“We hear from our program and others where people who are waiting for care, who end up dying,” Dr. Lampert said. “These are treatable illnesses. People shouldn’t have to die from eating disorders. That’s horrifying. Every time we hear that, it’s heart wrenching. We know that somebody dies every 52 minutes from an eating disorder.”

“You convinced yourself that you have it under control, even when you clearly don’t,” Caudle said.

A turnaround came for Caudle when one of her teachers noticed something wrong.

“She stepped in and was like ‘something is not right, and I know it’s not right,'” Caudle said. “You feel so disconnected from everything, and you feel like if you look around, there’s no way out.”

It was the support she needed to crawl out. Caudle started counseling and met with a dietitian. She changed her Instagram habits.

“One of the first steps I took is to cleanse my social media feed,” Caudle said.

Now as Caudle and so many others like her prepare for another big change — college — she’s arming herself with tools to stay on track.

“I think I’m at a point where I can move into the future and not have to worry about it as much,” Caudle said. “I can sit down and enjoy a meal with my family, or I can let go, grab food late at night with my friends, and it doesn’t feel like some big insurmountable challenge.”

But she knows the challenge is still very real for so many others and hopes her story inspires others to take the first step.

: newsy.com

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Guaranteed Income Programs Spring Up City by City

Inflation F.A.Q.

The State of Jobs in the United States

Economists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.