Reading Roundup | May 28, 2021

Posted May 28, 2021

With a holiday weekend ahead for many, here are a few articles that you might enjoy during that extra day of rest.

• “Feeling Anxious About Returning to Post-Pandemic Society? You're Not Alone” — Ari Shapiro, Kat Lonsdorf, Courtney Dorning, and Emma Bowman, NPR (5/19/2021) [article]

  This piece looks at work, social activities, and just feeling anxious about coming out of isolation. The trickiest part of upcoming changes is just dealing with the unknown. We all have a lot of questions and concerns about how to behave and what to expect. Some of this comes from that fact that, for many people, the pandemic itself was a first experience in living with immense uncertainty. If you are feeling anxious about how things will change over the coming months, it’s important to remember that you are indeed not alone in that concern. We are all figuring this out together.

• “After months of pandemic anxiety, there are 'massive increases' of eating disorders, says expert” — Jenna Romaine, The Hill (5/24/2021) [article]

  This article looks at a rise in eating disorders due to the anxiety around the pandemic and isolation. Confounding this rise is a lack of access to treatment and support also created by the pandemic.

• “Facebook Calls Links To Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers Disagree” — Miles Parks, NPR (5/18/2021) [article]

  Parks discusses links between Facebook and depression as well as the push by the company to discredit the research done on this link.

• “How Food Affects Mental Health” — Anahad O’Connor, New York Times (5/6/2021) [article]

  We have long associated food with benefits and harms other than just providing basic fuel and nutrients to our bodies. This article is a look at nutritional psychiatry—which studies the link between food and mental health. Unsurprisingly, less sugary/fatty foods have had a noted connection to better mental health. However, connection shows correlation, not causation. This article highlights a 2017 study where researchers actually set out to determine if there is truly improved mental health to be gained from changed one’s diet to include more nutrient-dense foods and fewer sugar/fatty foods. The study showed that individuals who followed a more nutrient-dense diet saw greater improvement in depression than their counterparts who did not change their diets to be healthier for the study.