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Chinese students are facing mounting pressure when they graduate from China's thousands of Ivory Towers due to an influx of students who also expect to join the work force. The number of university students has increased by 750,000, rising to 4.13 million. A total of 1.24 million will fail to find a job in 2006, state media reported. Wang Gang, deputy director of the depression treatment center at the Capital University of Medical Sciences affiliated Beijing Anding Hospital, says his center has seen an increasing number of university students turning to doctors for help. "At least half of these students are in danger of committing suicide. Some have attempted but failed," says Wang. More... Copyright 1995-2006 China Daily All rights reserved.

Long-term studies aim to pinpoint, prolong whatever it takes to make humans feel good. Malcolm Ritter / Associated Press NEW YORK -- For decades, a widely accepted view has been that people are stuck with a basic setting on their happiness thermostat. It says the effects of good or bad life events like marriage, a raise, divorce, or disability will simply fade with time. But recent long-term studies have revealed that the happiness thermostat is more malleable than the popular theory maintained. One new study showing change in happiness levels followed thousands of Germans for 17 years. It found that about a quarter changed significantly over that time in their basic level of satisfaction with life. Other studies show long-lasting shadows associated with specific life events like serious disability, divorce, widowhood and getting laid off. The boost from getting married, on the other hand, seems to dissipate after about two years, says psychologist Richard E. Lucas of Michigan State Un...

Faced with substantial state budget cuts , the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health will stop accepting inpatient admissions to all state hospitals and psych units as of Wednesday. The state currently manages about 850 inpatient psych beds, but those are full. Clinicians will only be able to accept more patients when the patient population begins to recede. The closure comes in response to the elimination of 170 Department of Mental Health positions, taking place as part of Governor Mitt Romney's emergency budget cut. Romney's budget reduction also cuts the roster of staff caring for emotionally disturbed children and adolescents by 37 percent, along with dozens of inpatient nurses, psychiatrists and aides. The Massachusetts Hospital Association is publicizing the cuts in hopes of rallying public support for reversing the decision. To find out more about the situation: read this Boston Globe article read this blog entry by Boston hospital CEO Paul Levy

All Things Considered November 16, 2006 National Public Radio The Los Angeles city attorney's office has filed criminal charges against hospital giant Kaiser Permanente for endangering a former patient. The charges allege Kaiser dumped a homeless patient on the city's downtown Skid Row. The charges stem from video captured by security cameras in March. The footage shows a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital, dressed in a hospital gown and slippers, exiting a taxicab on Skid Row. She is later seen shuffling toward the Union Rescue Mission, the city's largest homeless shelter. Prosecutors describe what happened to Carol Ann Reyes in a 20-page document supporting the false imprisonment and dependent-care abuse charges. Reyes lived mostly in a public park in Gardena before she was hospitalized. When she was discharged, prosecutors say, she wasn't told she was being taken to Skid Row. For many months, L.A. city officials have suspected that...

More than 500 new energy drinks launched worldwide this year, and coffee fans are probably too old to understand why. Energy drinks attract fan mail on their own MySpace pages. They spawn urban legends. They get reviewed by bloggers. They're a US$3.4-billion a year industry that grew by 80 per cent last year. They taste like carbonated cough syrup. Thirty-one per cent of U.S. teenagers say they drink energy drinks, according to Simmons Research. That represents 7.6 million teens, a jump of almost three million in three years. Nutritionists warn that the drinks, laden with caffeine and sugar, can hook kids on an unhealthy jolt-and-crash cycle. The caffeine comes from multiple sources, making it hard to tell how much the drinks contain. Some have B vitamins, which when taken in megadoses can cause rapid heartbeat, and numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. Danger only adds to the appeal, said Bryan Greenberg, a marketing consultant. Greenberg said the fierce competition among ...

Almost 40% of NIH tenure and tenure-track scientists have begun or have considered efforts to seek new employment because of new agency ethics rules "that have curtailed their opportunity to earn outside income," according to an internal survey, AP/USA Today reports. NIH implemented the rules last year after a review found that "dozens of scientists had run afoul of existing restrictions on private consulting deals that had enriched them with money from drug and biotechnology companies," AP/USA Today reports (Beamish, AP/USA Today, 10/28). Under the rules, the top 200 NIH officials must maintain holdings at or less than $15,000 in individual pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. They also must limit their investments in health care sector funds at or less than $50,000. Lower-level NIH employees must inform their supervisors about potential conflicts of interest in their investments but do not have to file disclosures. In addition, NIH employees cannot accept...

Over the past thirty years, the number of people with mental illness and other mental disabilities on death row has steadily increased. Although precise statistics are not available, it is estimated that 5-10 percent of people on death row have a serious mental illness. NMHA believes that mental illness can influence an individual’s mental state at the time he or she commits a crime, can affect how “voluntary” and reliable an individual’s statements might be, can compromise a person’s competence to stand trial and to waive his or her rights, and may have an effect upon a person’s knowledge of the criminal justice system. The process of determining guilt and imposing sentence is necessarily more complex for individuals with mental illness. A high standard of care is essential with regard to legal representation as well as psychological / psychiatric evaluation for individuals with mental illness involved in death penalty cases. NMHA believes mental illness should always be taken into a...