Pandemic driving more young people to seek mental health help
(Matthew Kupfer/ CBC News) — Clinics and other resources that help young people in Ottawa deal with mental health issues say they’ve noticed a significant spike in demand for their services since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
Kids Help Phone says calls and texts from young people in Ottawa have more than doubled …
Discovery of early plasma biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease
(Medical XPress) — A Quebec research team has discovered two early plasma markers to detect Alzheimer’s disease five years before its onset. The results of this recent study led by the doctoral student Mohamed Raâfet Ben Khedher and postdoctoral student Mohamed Haddad, directed by Professor Charles Ramassamy …
Cancer vaccine helped keep melanoma under control for years in small study
(Nicoletta Lanese/ Live Science) — A personalized “cancer vaccine” may help keep a deadly form of skin cancer from growing for years, a small new study in humans suggests.
Unlike vaccines that prevent infections, such as measles and influenza, cancer vaccines are a form of immunotherapy that …
Quebec nurses are battling stress, staff shortages and people’s selfishness
(Toula Drimonis/ Cult MTL) — “We have been pushed to the breaking point,” says Natalie Stake-Doucet, president of the Quebec Nurses Association. “More than 2,000 nurses in Quebec have quit since the pandemic hit. Hospital administrations and the Ministry of Health need to look at the structural problems forcing them …
COVID-19 has more people seeking help for addiction and mental health.
(Bethany Ao, Aubrey Whelan/ The Philadelphia Inquirer) — In July, Erica Rodriguez, 20, checked herself into the Renfrew Center, a residential center for eating-disorder treatment in the Philadelphia area. Rodriguez, who has been struggling with disordered eating since she was 12, had relapsed in quarantine.
“It had
What we’re not telling the public when they get the vaccine
(Jeremy Faust/ New York Magazine) — Once the size of the COVID-19 crisis was clear, and the obvious measures we could take to stop it politicized, I became convinced that vaccines alone were our best path out of this hellscape. The obligatory selfies posted by my fellow frontline health-care providers getting their shots …
Want to lose weight? Get a fitness tracker. UQAM study shows they work
(Chloe Ranaldi/ CBC Health News) — Though the pandemic has cancelled his daily commute to work, Verdun resident Patrick Lavery still tries to get in 15,000 steps a day.
“With the pandemic and working from home I was very sedentary,” he said. “There were days I didn’t leave the house at all and I put …
Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental health
(Eleanor Morgan/ The Guardian) — There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed …
Quebec vaccine plan may be rethought after troubling Israeli data
(Selena Ross/ CTV News) — Quebec could change its vaccine strategy based on new data out of Israel about the efficacy of the first dose, on its own, of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, says a top adviser in the province.
Israel just provided the world with its first large-scale, real-world hint of how effective the first dose of the Pfizer …