The Washington Post (10/25, Ebersole) reported, “Many first responders are struggling with PTSD wrought by both the everyday deaths and tragedies encountered on the job and a national epidemic of mass shootings.” Because surveys show “emergency workers are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide on average,” a “growing number of states, including Colorado, Texas, Vermont, Louisiana, Minnesota and Connecticut, have recently passed legislation to provide workers’ compensation for first responders suffering from PTSD.”

Related Links:

— “First responders struggle with PTSD caused by the emergencies, deaths, tragedies they face every day, ” Rene Ebersole, The Washington Post, October 25, 2019

The AP (10/27) reported that Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) “is helping lead an effort to create a three-digit suicide prevention hotline.” The senator “worked with three of his colleagues, Sens. Cory Gardner [R-CO], Tammy Baldwin [D-WI] and Jerry Moran [R-KS], to introduce a bill to designate 9-8-8 as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.”

Related Links:

— “US Sen. Reed wants to shorten the suicide prevention hotline, AP, October 27, 2019

Psychiatric News (10/25) reported, “Restricting the sale of flavored tobacco products may cut tobacco use among adolescents,” researchers concluded after comparing two Massachusetts municipalities, one that “restricted the sale of flavored tobacco products – those meant to taste like fruit, candy, honey, etc. – to tobacco retail stores such as smoking bars, vape shops, and tobacconists that only sell to adults aged 21 years and older,” and one that had no such policy in place at the time of the study. The findings were published online Oct. 24 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Limiting Flavored Tobacco Sales May Cut Use in Youth, Psychiatric News, October 25, 2019

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (10/24) contends that “for the first time, an autism rights movement appears to have found a collective voice of its own – poets, professors, comedians, computer geeks and YouTubers, some using text-to-voice synthesizers.” Now, “a marginalized minority unexpectedly has launched a civil rights movement that has found allies well beyond the autism community.” The collective has given “themselves a name: the neurodiversity movement,” whose “first order of business was to abolish” the labels of “normal” and “abnormal” and replace them with “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent.”

Related Links:

— “Abolishing ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’: How the long-marginalized autism community is becoming a bellwether of social change, “John Schmid, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 24, 2019

The AP (10/25, Stobbe) reports fentanyl “is driving drug overdose deaths in the U.S. overall, but in nearly half of the country,” methamphetamine “is the bigger killer,” according to a new CDC report. The report “is the agency’s first geographic breakdown of deaths by drug,” which is “based on 2017 figures when there were more than 70,000 overdose deaths in the U.S., two-thirds of them involving opioids.” Methamphetamine “was No. 4 nationwide, cited in 13% of overdose deaths,” but “in the four western regions, it was No. 1, at 21% to 38%.”

Related Links:

— “Meth is most common drug in overdose deaths in chunk of US, “Mike Stobbe, AP, October 25, 2019