Teenage girls led a 60% jump in the number of Americans reporting clinical depression symptoms from 2013 to 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found the share of people ages 12 and older who reported clinical depression symptoms in a two-week period increased from 8.2% of those surveyed in 2013-14 to 13.1% between August 2021 and August 2023. Among the depressed in 2021-23, the federal agency found that 39.3% received counseling or therapy from a mental health professional in...

Some people get the chills or feel moved to tears when listening to certain songs, while others tend to experience a less-intense reaction to music. Now, a new study hints that your level of music enjoyment may be partially written in your genes. According to a study published March 25 in the journal , 54% of the differences in the levels of music enjoyment between individuals can be attributed to their genes. The scientists behind the work attribute the remaining percentage to environmental factors such as growing up in a...

CT scans, or CAT scans, are widely used to get internal images of the body and diagnose dangerous medical conditions — but they could pose a hidden risk.A new study from the University of California - San Francisco found that CT (computed tomography) scans could be responsible for 5% of all cancer diagnoses each year, according to a press release."While some uncertainty exists, it doesn’t significantly affect the core conclusion: A small but meaningful percentage of cancers are linked to CT scans, and this number can be reduced," first author...

Computed tomography scans have become vital, even lifesaving, medical imaging for diagnosing and monitoring health conditions. But they do expose patients to ionizing radiation at levels linked to higher risks of cancer. In a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tried to estimate what those higher risks are exactly—and although the estimates come with uncertainty, they may seem startling. Based on data from 93 million CT scans performed on 62 million people in 2023, the researchers estimated that the CT scans would lead to 103,000 future cancers. To put...

People of color are underrepresented in jobs at oil refineries and chemical plants across the country, according to a new peer-reviewed study, with some of the most extreme disparities in Louisiana. Differences in education do not explain these outcomes, the study found. The researchers at Tulane Law School and the University of Massachusetts Amherst discovered that when people of color are employed in petrochemical jobs, they are mostly working in the “lowest of the low-paying” positions. The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Ecological Economics on...