It’s a good day when Frank Lee, a retired chef, can slip out to the hardware store, fairly confident that his wife, Robin, is in the hands of reliable help. He spends nearly every hour of every day anxiously overseeing her care at their home on the Isle of Palms, a barrier island near Charleston, South Carolina. Robin Lee, 67, has had dementia for about a decade, but the couple was able to take...
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Health insurers reject millions of claims for treatment every year in America. Corporate insiders, recordings and internal emails expose the system and its harm. In North Carolina, lawmakers outraged that breast cancer patients were being denied...
Thirty-five years ago, Jerry Gurwitz was among the first physicians in the United States to be credentialed as a geriatrician — a doctor who specializes in the care of older adults. “I understood the demographic imperative and the issues facing older patients,” Gurwitz, 67 and chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, told me. “I felt this field...
This story was produced by Mother Jones. Get their investigations emailed to you directly here. The first time Katrina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day. It was a spring night in 2012 when Edwards, then 12 years old, was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage, Alaska. In a photo taken upon her...
In the summer of 2021 , Americans saw something unusual: Dr. Anthony Fauci on tilt. "Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially," said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. “I totally resent the lie you are now propagating.” Fauci’s comments were made during one of his testier exchanges with Rand Paul ,...
Deep brain stimulation can alleviate treatment-resistant depression for some patients. PM Images/Digital Vision via Getty Images ~~~~~ It can be challenging to create a treatment plan for depression. This is especially true for patients who aren’t responding to conventional treatments and are undergoing experimental therapies such as deep brain stimulation. For most medical conditions, doctors...
