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I sit on the Advisory Board for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and am co-president of NAMI Shoreline but I’m speaking here today as a mother whose son was arrested four years ago while still in his senior of high school. My son Ellis is known as being bright, funny and well-liked. His natural disposition is extremely easygoing. To give a little context, for senior superlative, he was voted Most Likely to Sleep Through an Earthquake. He was a strong student, thrived in high school, and received a Presidential Scholarship to attend the college of his choice. And then one day he went missing. He was experiencing a psychotic break. Initially, we had no idea. (Denise Paley, 12/6)

Preventable blood loss kills about 85 injured Americans every day, according to Caruba’s reporting. About 31,000 Americans bleed to death from survivable injuries each year. Traumatic injuries, like those sustained in car wrecks, construction accidents, or gunshots, for instance, are the leading cause of death for children and adults under age 45 in the nation. In 2021, Texas led the country in deaths from motor vehicle crashes and guns. First responders have all too many stories of patients bleeding out before they make it to a hospital to receive life-saving transfusions. (12/6)

The news about anti-obesity drugs keeps getting better. In November, data presented at the American Heart Association meeting added cardiovascular benefit to value in combating obesity and diabetes. This comes on the heels of news that Novo Nordisk halted a clinical trial to test Wegovy’s impact on renal function early because the results they were seeing were so strong. Yet beneath the hype lies a real fear. Unless we reverse the rising tide of metabolic syndrome, Medicare will be crushed, with tens of millions of Americans having shorter, harder lives. The new drugs offer the first real chance to deploy at scale treatments to halt a seemingly unstoppable trend. (Jeremy L. Shane, 12/6)

Former President Donald Trump is increasingly focusing on an unachieved objective from his days in the White House: repealing Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Trump raised the issue of getting rid of Obamacare in a social media post over the Thanksgiving weekend. He followed it up last week with another post about Obamacare, this time vowing to “replace it” with something “much better.” (Dean Obeidallah, 12/4)

When asked about her lifelong commitment to improving mental health services and support for caregivers, former first lady Rosalynn Carter would share her experience on the campaign trail: Exhausted caregivers urgently reaching to grab her hand. Families pleading for resources. Americans bravely sharing their stories of hurdles and heartache. (Mitual Desai, 12/6)