Publisher Health

Marie GoldmanA pharmacist says he is having to use his own savings to keep his business afloat due to the rising cost of medications.

Getty ImagesFlu cases are skyrocketing, causing huge problems for hospitals, NHS England bosses are warning.

The sensation of being detached from your surroundings may point to a hard-to-diagnose condition.Barrie Miskin was newly pregnant when she noticed her appearance was changing. Dark patches bloomed on her skin like watercolor ink. A “thicket” of hairs sprouted on her upper lip and chin.The outside world was changing, too: In her neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, bright lights enveloped objects in a halo, blurring her vision. Co-workers and even her doctors started to seem like “alien proxies” of themselves, Ms. Miskin, 46, said.“I felt like I was viewing the world through a pane of dirty glass,” she added. Yet Ms. Miskin knew it was all an illusion, so she sought help.It took more than a year of consulting with mental health specialists before Ms. Miskin finally found an explanation for her symptoms: She was diagnosed with a dissociative condition called depersonalization/derealization disorder, or D.D.D. Before her pregnancy, Ms. Miskin had stopped taking antidepressants. Her new psychiatrist said the symptoms could have been triggered by months of untreated depression that followed.While Ms. Miskin felt alone in her mystery illness, she wasn’t. Tens of thousands of posts on social media reference depersonalization or derealization, with some likening the condition to “living in a movie or a dream” or “observing the world through a fog.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

When cats bite or scratch, they’re trying to tell you something. Wilbourn, a cat therapist, was a pioneer in the art of listening to them.Carole Wilbourn, a self-described cat therapist, who was known for her skill in decoding the emotional life of cats, as confounding as that would seem to be, died on Dec. 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84.Her death was confirmed by her sister Gail Mutrux. Ms. Wilbourn’s patients shredded sofas, toilet paper and romantic partners. They soiled rugs and beds. They galloped over their sleeping humans in the wee hours. They hissed at babies, dogs and other cats. They chewed electrical wires. They sulked in closets, and went on hunger strikes.They suffered from childhood trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, jealousy and just plain rage. And Ms. Wilbourn, who was self-taught — in college she had studied (human) psychology and majored in education — seemed particularly attuned to the inner workings of their furry minds. A minor Manhattan celebrity, she was often called the kitty Freud, or the mother of cat psychiatry.Cats hate change, she often noted. Even a new slipcover on the sofa can undo them. Cats are selfish. Unlike dogs, who strive to please their master, a cat strives to please itself. To mangle a cliché, happy cat, happy (human) life.“A cat behaves badly when it’s trying to communicate,” she told The Los Angeles Daily News in 1990. “It’s sending an SOS. It’s saying, ‘Please help me.’”Ms. Wilbourn developed her specialty over a half-century after founding The Cat Practice, billed as Manhattan’s first cats-only hospital, in 1973 with Paul Rowan, a veterinarian. She said she was the first feline therapist in the country, a claim that is not known to have been disputed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The results of a new federal analysis were drawn from studies conducted in other countries, where drinking water contains more fluoride than in the United States.Water fluoridation is widely seen as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, credited with widely reducing tooth decay. But there has been growing controversy among scientists about whether fluoride may be linked to lower I.Q. scores in children.A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, has added to those concerns. It found a significant inverse relationship between exposure levels and cognitive function in children.Higher fluoride exposures were linked to lower I.Q. scores, concluded researchers working for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.None of the studies included in the analysis were conducted in the United States, where recommended fluoridation levels in drinking water are very low. At those amounts, evidence was too limited to draw definitive conclusions.Observational studies cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Yet in countries with much higher levels of fluoridation, the analysis also found evidence of what scientists call a dose-response relationship, with I.Q. scores falling in lock step with increasing fluoride exposure.Children are exposed to fluoride through many sources other than drinking water: toothpaste, dental treatments and some mouthwashes, as well as black tea, coffee and certain foods, such as shrimp and raisins. Some drugs and industrial emissions also contain fluoride.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The NHS is experiencing intense winter pressure, with critical incidents declared at a dozen hospitals across the UK by Wednesday.

Roisin WilshawThe mother of a Belfast man who collapsed outside a hospital after being rushed there by his parents said she was shocked when a 999 call handler told her he should take painkillers as they would have to wait hours for an ambulance.

Getty ImagesA large UK study has found further evidence that people with more calcium in their diet – equivalent to a glass of milk a day – can help reduce their risk of bowel cancer.

Getty ImagesThe health secretary has said some patients’ experience of the NHS this winter makes him feel “ashamed”.

Washington State’s program is the first, but other states are expected to try allowing pharmacists to prescribe the pills to counter growing efforts to curtail abortion access.Pharmacists have begun prescribing abortion pills, not simply dispensing them — a development intended to broaden abortion access.The new effort is small so far — a pilot program in Washington State — but the idea is expected to be tried in other states where abortion remains legal.“I think it is going to expand, and it is expanding,” said Michael Hogue, chief executive of the American Pharmacists Association, a national professional organization, which is not involved in the new program and does not take a position on abortion.Many states now allow pharmacists to prescribe a variety of medications, he said, adding that in his organization’s view, it makes sense to have “someone so accessible in a local community be able to provide safe access to therapies that might sometimes be difficult to get.”Supporters of abortion rights consider pharmacist prescribing part of an effort to open as many avenues as possible at a time when abortion pills are facing growing attacks from abortion opponents.Pills are now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. But a lawsuit intended to force the Food and Drug Administration to sharply restrict mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen, was recently revived after the Supreme Court turned away the case, saying the original plaintiffs lacked the standing to sue. The Texas attorney general recently sued an abortion provider in New York for sending abortion pills to a patient in Texas. And abortion rights supporters are concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be invoked by the incoming Trump administration to try to prevent the mailing of abortion medication.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.