In the Georgia shooting, the alleged shooter, 14-year-old Colt Gray, “had been begging” his family for help with his mental health, according to the account his aunt shared with The Washington Post. While that help never came, law enforcement officials said Colin Gray bought his son an AR-15, a semiautomatic assault rifle, for Christmas. It is that rifle that Colt Gray is accused of using when he allegedly killed two students and two teachers, while wounding nine others, at his high school. Suicidal and homicidal behaviors rarely develop overnight. But parents aren’t given an instruction manual for how to treat their child’s mental health issues, and many of them are left in the dark, said Jessica L. Schleider, PhD, an associate professor in the departments of Medical Social Sciences, Pediatrics, and Psychology at Northwestern University. Unfortunately, denial of a child’s mental health challenges is a natural response that in some ways parents have to fight against, Schleider said. Parents are prone to blame themselves for anything that’s going wrong with their child. It’s a painful experience even when it’s not accurate because mental health troubles can happen regardless of what a parent is doing or how supportive they are of their child. Still, parents need to understand that acknowledging mental health challenges doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It simply means you’re opening up a line of communication. “The desire to think that everything is OK in part comes from the desire to think that parents haven’t done anything wrong,” said Schleider.

Taking a high dose of ADHD drugs is linked to more than five times greater risk of developing psychosis or mania, according to a new study published Thursday in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The research is among the first to find a relationship between escalating doses of the drugs — amphetamines, in particular — and a greater likelihood of psychotic symptoms. The link between amphetamines and psychosis isn’t new. Amphetamines increase levels of dopamine in the brain. The neurotransmitter plays a number of roles in the body, including in memory, motivation and mood, but it’s also implicated in psychosis. What hadn’t been established was that the risk of psychosis rose with higher doses, a phenomenon known as a “dose-response relationship.” “That’s what this study provides,” said Will Cronenwett, vice chair for clinical affairs in psychiatry at Northwestern Medicine. “The United States is having sort of an amphetamine moment right now,” Cronenwett said. “The popularity and use of amphetamines is high and getting higher.” Cronenwett said the risk of developing psychosis from an amphetamine remains rare, around 1 in 1,000. Still, people taking high doses should be aware of the risks. “I would counsel patients who have a personal or family psychiatric history of serious mental illness, including things like bipolar disorder with mania or schizophrenia,” he said. “If these sorts of illnesses are in the family tree, then that’s somebody who might want to be very careful about how much of these medicines they use and in what doses.”

An experimental blood test could one day help identify people most likely to develop severe lung problems like COPD. The test reviews a panel of 32 proteins in blood that best predict people most likely to suffer a rapid decline in lung function, according to a study published recently in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Adults with higher test scores have: an 84% increased risk of COPD, 81% increased chance of dying from a respiratory disease like COPD or pneumonia, 17% increased risk of requiring hospital care for respiratory problems, 10% increased risk of respiratory symptoms that need treatment, like a cough, mucus or shortness of breath. “Loss of lung function on a year-over-year basis is associated with poor respiratory health outcomes, but we do not have a good way to easily figure out if a patient is on a steep trajectory of lung function decline,” said researcher Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, a professor of pulmonary medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “If we had an easy-to-implement clinical tool, like a blood test, that captured someone’s lung function trajectory at a single time point, it would enable earlier interventions which might, in the long run, improve lung health,” Kalhan added.

Health officials are warning Americans about a rare insect-borne virus that has infected several travelers. As of Aug. 16, there have been 21 cases of Oropouche virus disease, sometimes called “sloth fever,” detected among U.S. travelers returning from Cuba, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC said it wants clinicians and public health offices to be aware of the virus and to test for suspected cases, and for travelers to protect themselves from insect bites. Common symptoms include fever, headache, chills, muscle aches and joint pain, typically lasting about two to seven days and then disappearing. Patients may experience other symptoms including nausea, vomiting, rash, sensitivity to light, dizziness and pain behind the eyes. “This virus is an interesting one in that about a week later, 50% or more of people will have a recurrence of the symptoms,” Michael Angarone, DO, an infectious diseases specialist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, told ABC News. “So, the symptoms will recur and, again, be present for around five days to seven days and then go away. So, I think that’s a very interesting aspect of this virus.”