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In 2024, Amelia Cate Prosser remembers feeling as if GLP-1 drugs were suddenly everywhere: stashed in her friends’ parents’ refrigerators, glorified on the red carpet and dominating the cafeteria conversations at her private all-girls high school in Melbourne. But it was on social media where the noise was — and continues to be — the loudest. The teen says she could hardly open an app without being bombarded with posts and advertisements about weight-loss injections. Impeccably sculpted models in sports bras warning that sometimes “effort alone isn’t enough” crowded her feeds; so did before-and-after images glamorizing other young women’s rapidly transformed physiques. (Levine and Muller, 8/10)

Meta Platforms Inc. failed to obtain an emergency order pausing a landmark trial slated to begin this week involving claims from dozens of state attorneys general alleging the social media giant addicts children and has caused a youth mental health crisis. A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a ruling Monday said the court lacked the jurisdiction to review Meta’s early appeal and dismissed it. (Poritz, 8/10)

For all the mental health challenges confronting our society and the myriad ways to treat them, there is one factor that matters above all else: the deeply intimate bond between a therapist and their client. This "therapeutic alliance," as it is known among counselors, is the bedrock of most psychotherapy practices. Countless studies have shown that a strong one is the best predictor of positive outcomes in mental health treatment, regardless of the technical approach. (Averre, 8/10)

Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center will lay off dozens of employees by the end of next month. Executive Director Mariana Izraelson said the nonprofit is expected to have a “reduction in force” of 62 employees effective Sept. 29 after its federal contract for the 988 National Back-Up Text and Chat was not renewed. (Santana, 8/10)

Veterans between the ages of 35 and 49 who are supposed to be past their rowdiest years and settled into careers and families are the one group whose heavy drinking is climbing. (Gramegna, 8/11)

People who work night shifts may face a significantly higher risk of developing long COVID, according to a study published last week in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health. That risk may rise even further among night shift workers who also have chronic insomnia. (Bergeson, 8/10)

Around age 50, the brain's memory center begins swapping out its longtime immune cells for more inflammatory ones, according to a new study—a discovery that may explain how normal aging paves the way for dementia, especially its most talked about form, Alzheimer's disease. "Honestly, this surprised me," Furhan Qureshi, a board-certified internal medicine physician, told Newsweek. "We were taught in med school that brain's main immune cells tracked in the study are lifers—they show up before you're born and stay with you, renewing themselves in the brain. (Fleur Afshar, 8/10)

People with autoimmune cerebellar ataxia were more likely to have been exposed to pet hamsters versus a control group, a hospital-based study in China suggested. (George, 8/10)

Just to be clear, says Tom, 79, “my driving is spectacular. Like most men of his generation, Tom has been driving almost his entire life, and he remains a comfortable, confident driver. But a couple of years ago, Tom bought a Cadillac Lyriq, and though he loved driving the luxury SUV, “it kind of had a strange turning radius,” he said. He banged into a couple of parked cars, and once the edge of his garage at his Marin County home. (Allday, 8/9)

When thinking about end-of-life plans, people often think in terms of being buried or cremated. But former Essex Junction, Vermont resident Alberta Bundy had something else in mind. When she died of cancer last year at 86, her family was well aware she wanted to donate her body to science. (Keck, 8/10)