Mind & body, in brief

A survey of 5,500 US pupils aged 9 to 17 found 90% had used AI chatbots. [1]

The JED Foundation, a US group that campaigns on young people's mental health, ran it. [1]

Nearly two-thirds use chatbots both for schoolwork and when stressed, lonely or overwhelmed. [1]

A second survey, by Common Sense Media, found nearly half of 9-to-12-year-olds have used one. [1]

Common Sense Media is a US group that campaigns for children's safety online. [1]

By age 13, nearly three in four children had used chatbots, it found. [1]

Most popular chatbots set 13 as their minimum age. [1]

Children now ask chatbots for comfort about as often as for homework help. [1]

So software is answering children at the moments they feel stressed, lonely or anxious. [1]

Psychologists call it coping: getting through everyday stress without being knocked over by it. [1]

Maheux thinks a chatbot eases stress in the moment but stops young people practising coping. [1]

Children under 13 use chatbots, though most of the apps set 13 as the minimum. [1]

Nobody yet knows whether chatbot comfort helps lonely pupils or makes them lonelier. [1]

The new limits will start rolling out over the next few weeks, OpenAI says. [5]

Why what people report about themselves can differ from what a device records

Some things can only be learned by asking people

Each answer passes through memory, mood and the wish to look good

So reported sleep, symptoms or habits can drift from what happened

Researchers compare answers with a device or a record, and ask in private

Where the two differ, the gap itself becomes a finding

A survey answer is a person's memory of what happened, so it can carry their worry, their shame or their wish to look good.

Three ways of measuring the same 134 students' sleep. The direct answer and the monitor nearly agree; working it out from remembered bedtimes gives more.

Students prone to worry said they slept less, while the monitors on their wrists recorded no less sleep.

The figure comes from people admitting a lie in a survey, and some who lied may not have said so.

The 77% rise was counted by implanted heart devices, so it did not rest on what patients remembered feeling.

Every link JED found between chatbot use and poor mental health rests on what pupils said about both.

A device has its own errors: a wrist monitor can count lying still and awake as sleep, and only the person can report a feeling like loneliness.

A doctor hears the patient's account, a researcher reads the survey, and a device records only what it can sense.

A big share like 90% feels like proof of harm, though it counts only how many pupils have used a chatbot. [1]

How many teens really use chatbots for comfort.

Pew found 12% of 13-to-17-year-olds in autumn 2025. [3] JED found nearly two-thirds of pupils aged 9 to 17 use them when stressed, lonely or overwhelmed. [1] The two asked different ages at different times.

The FDA said on Friday 3 more menopause patches will lose their black-box warnings. [6]

The FDA, the US Food and Drug Administration, sets the warnings printed on medicines. [6]

The warnings were about heart disease, breast cancer and dementia. [6]

The FDA took the same warnings off six menopause treatments in February. [6]

Again it did not ask its outside expert committee. [6]

Asked for the evidence, officials said it could be provided later. [6]

Since February, patients in many areas have struggled to find their usual estrogen patches. [6]

Production of estrogen patches has doubled in a year, a US health official said. [6]

The FDA says risks look different for many healthy women under 60. [6]

It is now working to change the labels of the remaining hormone treatments. [6]

Women choosing hormone treatment will now see fewer warnings on three more patches. [6]

In pharmacology, the route a drug takes into the body changes its risks. [6]

Patches skip the liver on their way into the blood, so doctors see less risk. [6]

Yale researcher Reshma Ramachandran says removing them without clear evidence underplays real harms. [6]

Women who have had hormone-sensitive cancers face particular risks, she says. [6]

Demand rose sharply after the February label change, and making of the patches has doubled in a year. [6]

What evidence the FDA used to take the warnings off the patches.

It did not consult its outside expert committee, and officials said the evidence could be provided later. [6]

Makers of estrogen patches in the US have doubled production in a year, a health official said, as women struggled to find them.

Meta settled on Friday with a teenager suing over Instagram and Facebook, her lawyers said. [7]

Meta is the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. [8]

She said the apps were built to be addictive, causing her depression and disordered eating. [7]

Her case was picked as a test case from thousands of similar US lawsuits. [7]

Meta had settled with the trial's other teenager days before. [7]

So the trial is expected to go on against Snap, which owns Snapchat, alone. [7]

They blame features like autoplay and endless scrolling. [7]

In March, the first such trial, in Los Angeles, found Meta and YouTube negligent. [7]

In August, Meta agreed settlements worth up to $18 billion with nearly every US state. [7]

A verdict in a test case can shape how thousands of other cases are settled. [7]

In law, a test case goes first to show how juries see similar claims. [7]

Meta settled before a jury could rule on how its apps were designed. [7]

The companies deny building their apps to addict young people. [7]

Settling with both teenagers before a verdict kept a jury from ruling on Instagram's design in this test case. [7]

Whether the Los Angeles trial now reaches a verdict.

Meta has settled with both teenagers, and the trial is expected to go on against Snap alone. [7]

New cases of anorexia and bulimia worldwide rose 71% from 1990 to 2023, a study finds. [10]

Anorexia is defined by a fear of gaining weight; in bulimia, people binge then purge. [10]

Ruhai Bai's team at a children's hospital in Nanjing, China, published it in JAMA Psychiatry. [9]

In 2023, about 18.1 million people had one of the two disorders, it estimates. [10]

Psychologist Cheri Levinson says the two are under half of all eating disorders. [10]

In her small study, 30% of people with eating disorders had used weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. [10]

About 10% appeared to have misused them. [10]

Guidelines out this month tell doctors to check for eating disorders before prescribing these drugs. [10]

The drugs cause fast weight loss, which could push people with anorexia further into danger. [10]

Clinical psychologists say cutting food can itself trigger an eating disorder in people already prone. [10]

Children as young as 11 have bought such drugs through TikTok, Levinson says. [10]

The study did not look at why cases rose; social media and lockdowns are suspects. [10]

Good figures stop in 2023, so nobody can yet measure any rise since. [10]

How far eating disorders have risen since 2023.

Good figures stop in 2023, and one psychologist says the true burden may be three times the estimate. [10]

England's plan to end its obesity epidemic within a decade is 'doomed to fail', MPs say. [11]

The MPs sit on the Commons health committee, chaired by Liberal Democrat Layla Moran. [11]

The aim was set in England's 10-year health plan more than a year ago. [11]

Basic questions, like how progress will be measured, are still unanswered, the MPs said. [11]

About 30% of adults in England live with obesity. [11]

Close to a third of children are overweight or living with obesity. [11]

The MPs want a cabinet committee on obesity, chaired by the prime minister. [11]

They want ministers to bring a full plan to parliament within 3 months. [11]

England's health department says it already limits junk food adverts before 9pm. [11]

Without ways to measure progress, MPs cannot hold ministers to their own promise. [11]

In public health, preventing obesity and treating it are different jobs with different tools. [11]

The MPs say mixing the two up has muddled every government's plan. [11]

Moran says a real plan means standing up to the food industry on adverts and labels. [11]

From 1 November, Northern Ireland's police will stop most mental health welfare checks. [12]

Police will still attend if there is a crime, or a risk of harm or death. [12]

The force, the PSNI, answers about 30,000 mental health calls a year. [12]

Only 3% of calls about people possibly in danger involve a crime, police say. [12]

Callers still dial 999, and handlers may pass calls to health or social care staff. [12]

The policy, Right Care Right Person, has run in parts of England and Wales since 2023. [12]

Ross Irvine, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says 30% of mental health posts are empty. [12]

Calls the police drop will land on health services already short of staff. [12]

Emergency services call this triage: sending each call to the service best able to help. [12]

In one US study, sending mental health workers with police cut forced psychiatric detentions 16.5%. [13]

Social workers say the system lacks the staff to take over the calls safely. [12]

Officers stop most welfare checks from 1 November, and only 3% of those calls involved a crime. [12]

They take on calls the police drop while 30% of their posts are vacant. [12]

Whether Northern Ireland's health services can take the calls police drop.

A psychiatrists' leader says 30% of posts are empty, and social workers say the change is too quick. [12]

Elections can strain the heart, US researchers say, ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections. [14]

Around the 2016 US election, heart patients had 77% more irregular heartbeats than usual. [14]

Their own implanted heart devices counted the beats, in North Carolina. [14]

Lindsey Rosman, a cardiology researcher at Northwestern University, led that study. [14]

Democrats and Republicans had a similar risk. [14]

After the 2020 vote, heart attack admissions in Southern California rose over the next 5 days. [14]

Rosman next plans a larger study of the 2020 and 2024 elections. [14]

Nearly half of US adults have some heart or blood vessel disease, including high blood pressure. [14]

In cardiology, sudden stress is a known trigger of abnormal heart rhythms. [14]

Stress raises adrenaline, a chemical that speeds the heart, and weakens the calming vagus nerve. [14]

Both studies show a link, not proof that elections cause heart problems. [14]

The 77% rise was counted by implanted heart devices, so it did not rest on what patients remembered feeling.

Most of the US sets its clocks back an hour at 2am on Sunday. [15]

That returns the country to standard time until March. [15]

Sleep scientists say the autumn change is easier on the body than the spring one. [15]

Heart attacks rise in the days after March's change, but less after November's. [15]

Some research finds more strokes after both changes. [15]

In July the US House voted 308 to 117 to make daylight saving time permanent. [18]

The bill has stalled in the US Senate, though President Trump has pressed for it. [17]

Doctors' groups, including the American Medical Association, oppose permanent daylight saving time. [15]

Standard time brings earlier morning light, which suits the body clock better, experts say. [15]

The brain's clock is about 40,000 nerve cells at the base of the brain. [16]

Left alone, it runs a day of roughly 24 hours and 12 minutes. [16]

Morning light pulls it back into step with the sun each day. [16]

Sleep gadgets can cost thousands, while bright days and dark nights cost nothing. [16]

In England, the week after the autumn change had fewer recorded cases of anxiety and depression. [19]

About 28% of nearly 960 US adults admitted exaggerating or inventing symptoms to get antibiotics. [20]

The survey was published on Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open. [20]

Most lies were about cold-like symptoms such as fever, cough and sore throat. [20]

Among those who lied, 77% said it had worked at least once. [20]

In a second survey, 27% of 236 parents and carers lied about a child's symptoms. [20]

Antibiotics do not treat infections caused by viruses. [20]

US infections from drug-resistant germs rose from 2.8 million in 2017 to 9.7 million in 2023. [20]

Every needless course gives bacteria more pressure to evolve resistance. [20]

Microbiologists call this selection pressure: each course pushes bacteria to evolve ways to survive. [20]

Doctor Jeffrey Linder notes about 80% of those who lied still got a prescription. [20]

He says many doctors are simply worn down by what they see as patients' demands. [20]

The true share is unknown: some people who lied may not have said so. [20]

The figure comes from people admitting a lie in a survey, and some who lied may not have said so.

Needless prescriptions push bacteria to resist, and US resistant infections rose from 2.8 million to 9.7 million. [20]

How common lying for antibiotics really is.

The surveys were not fully representative of the US, and some people who lied may not have said so. [20]

Removing a stroke clot 24 to 72 hours after it began still helped, a trial finds. [22]

The procedure, thrombectomy, pulls the clot out through a thin tube in a blood vessel. [21]

It had been proven to help only up to 24 hours after a stroke began. [21]

The trial ran at 35 stroke centres in China, with 336 patients. [21]

All had brain scans showing tissue that could still be saved. [22]

After 90 days, treated patients had recovered more function than those on usual care. [22]

But 6% of treated patients died within 90 days, against 1.8% on usual care. [22]

Bleeding in the brain with symptoms hit 4.8% of treated patients and none of the others. [22]

It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. [21]

Many stroke patients reach hospital hours or even days late, when the options shrink. [21]

Neurologists say 'time is brain': about 1.9 million nerve cells die each untreated minute. [21]

Late treatment worked only where scans showed brain tissue still worth saving. [22]

With only 13 deaths in total, chance cannot be ruled out for that gap. [21]

Doctors must weigh better recovery against a higher risk of bleeding and death. [22]

Whether late clot removal saves more people than it harms.

Treated patients recovered better but died more often, and with only 13 deaths in total chance cannot be ruled out. [21][22]

More US parents are giving children their second measles shot early, the Guardian reports. [23]

US measles cases this year are about twice last year's. [23]

The CDC, the US health agency, usually advises the second dose at ages 4 to 6. [23]

But the shot works when given 4 weeks after the first, which the CDC allows. [23]

Germany, the UK and France already advise giving it soon after the first. [23]

Ages 4 to 6 were picked mostly to fit school starts and save doctors' visits. [23]

Germany moved its second dose to 4 weeks after the first in 2020. [23]

Some children do not respond to the first shot, so the second gives another chance. [23]

Immunologists call a mother's protection passed to her baby maternal antibodies; it fades within months. [23]

Those antibodies can blunt a shot at six months, so such babies need a third dose. [23]

German scientist Catherina Becker says the CDC should advise the earlier second dose. [23]

Students prone to worry reported less sleep, but wrist monitors did not record less. [24]

Psychologists call the trait neuroticism: a tendency to feel worry and distress. [24]

Villanova University researchers tracked 134 students with wrist monitors for five nights. [24]

Each step up the five-point scale meant 15 to 20 fewer minutes of reported sleep. [24]

On average students said 6.74 hours, and the monitors recorded 6.70 hours. [24]

Sleep worked out from their usual bedtimes came to 7.40 hours. [24]

The study is in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. [24]

So worried people may feel short of sleep even when the hours are there. [24]

The authors say worry may shape how people recall and report their sleep. [24]

A monitor can also mistake lying still and awake for sleep, the authors note. [24]

The students came from one private university, and most were women. [24]

Students prone to worry said they slept less, while the monitors on their wrists recorded no less sleep.

Phones reveal when people visit doctors, and data brokers sell that, KFF Health News reports. [25]

Data brokers are firms that gather people's data, such as phone locations, and sell it. [25]

Chris McQueen, treated for leukaemia, saw ads for fake cancer cures during clinic visits. [25]

The ads offered juice cleanses and Mexican clinics promising recovery with little chemotherapy. [25]

The US health privacy law, HIPAA, does not cover location data from phones. [25]