In healthcare, physician recognition is good for everyone. Those who are commended for their diligence and skill enjoy a happier, more joyful and fulfilling work environment, which also benefits care teams, organizations, patients and communities.

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By recognizing the value of their physicians, healthcare organizations can foster motivation, personal enrichment, commitment and loyalty, resulting in lower turnover, improved productivity and higher patient satisfaction. It’s also personally rewarding for physicians to be recognized among their peers, says Richard Lang, MD, MPH, Former Chair, Department of Executive Health and Current President, Cleveland Clinic Alumni Association.

The benefits of formal recognition

Formal recognition strategies, including awards programs, can be especially advantageous, he adds. According to Quantum Workplace, organizations that have formal recognition programs have 31% less voluntary turnover than those that don’t. They’re also 12 times more likely to have strong business outcomes.

In addition to its system-wide employee appreciation program, Caregiver Celebrations, Cleveland Clinic holds formal physician recognition in high regard. Each year, the health system’s Alumni Association honors current and future physicians through its Alumni Association Awards.

“Our 27,000-member, worldwide alumni community celebrates monumental successes with congratulatory programs like our annual Alumni Association Awards,” Dr. Lang explains.

Dr. Lang works closely with Cleveland Clinic’s Alumni Association Awards Committee, including Committee Chair Leo Pozuelo, MD, President-Elect of the Alumni Association. This group leads the strategic direction and execution of the institution’s awards program, which includes recognition ceremonies in the spring and fall.

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Drs. Pozuelo and Lang say physician awards programs can benefit healthcare organizations in five important ways:

Awards recognize excellence.

Presenting awards celebrates and honors individuals who have made significant contributions to their field, organization and greater healthcare community.

The spring awards ceremony recognizes four future Cleveland Clinic alumni who are on the cusp of making significant medical contributions. Honors given include the graduate level-one award for outstanding first-year performance, the Dr. Satoru and Grace Nakamoto award for medical humanities and leadership development, and two virtue-based leadership awards, one for medical students and the other for physicians pursuing graduate medical education.

The fall ceremony bestows five alumni with the organization’s highest honors, including distinguished alumnus, distinguished emeritus, special achievement, service and early career awards. The 2024 recipients shared a passion for elevating healthcare — from steering pioneering diagnostic radiology to overseeing a globally renowned cancer registry and introducing life-changing endoscopic technology.

Awards uphold an organization’s reputation.

Formally honoring physicians allows an organization to reinforce its reputation.

“The achievements of our alumni explain why Cleveland Clinic is a global healthcare role model,” says Dr. Lang.

Healthcare awards are often a reflection of an institution’s esteemed medical talent, capabilities, commitment to innovation, leadership, service and more, he explains.

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Cleveland Clinic’s virtue-based leadership awards were established by Education Institute Chair James K. Stoller, MD, MS. According to Dr. Stoller, the classic virtues of leadership are intrinsic to an organization’s high performance.

“Ask people for a show of hands of how many of them would want to work for an organization that doesn’t value trust or compassion, where leaders lack wisdom, and where there is no hope,” Dr. Stoller says in a recent edition of Cleveland Clinic’s Alumni Connection magazine. “Nobody raises their hand. Everyone understands viscerally that the hard part is executing leadership [in a way that] people can see those principles in play and have leaders who model them.”

Promoting achievements strengthens physician engagement.

Sharing successes provides an opportunity to reconnect and engage physician peers, fostering a sense of pride and continued affiliation with an organization and its community.

“Acknowledging the impact physicians have made among their peers builds engagement,” says Dr. Pozuelo.

Ericka M. Schmidt, MD, received the 2024 Graduate Level-One Award for outstanding first-year performance. Upon receiving the honor, she indicated that she would not be the physician she is today without the colleagues who supported her.

“Cleveland Clinic has provided an overwhelmingly supportive and welcoming environment that has allowed me to grow as a physician,” Dr. Schmidt notes in Alumni Connection. “I believe being selected for this award reflects the incredible guidance and mentorship I have received from the residents, fellows, attending physicians, staff and caregivers that I have been privileged to work with.

Recipients inspire future generations.

Award recipients serve as role models by motivating others to follow in their footsteps. Sharing their success stories encourages current students, early-career professionals and others to also strive for excellence.

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“My professional goal is supporting my patients and their families, my colleagues and trainees,” Carol A. Burke, MD, said when accepting the 2024 Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Dr. Burke is a dedicated mentor and nationally recognized thought leader in gastroenterology. Among her passions are training the next generation of physicians, providing support to early career researchers and teaching medical professionals.

Awards celebrate an organization’s legacy.

Awards preserve the rich history of contributions made by an organization’s physicians to healthcare, health education, medical innovation and more. This enhances the legacy of an institution, keeping it relevant for future generations.

Recipient of the 2024 Distinguished Emeritus Award, Gregory P. Borkowski, MD, FACR, who is now retired but spent his 50-year career at Cleveland Clinic, attributes his success to a collaborative team and the institution’s academics, innovative technology and growth potential.

“Not only was there the clinical practice, but there was the academic aspect and the interesting technology,” Dr. Borkowski explains. “I’ve had an amazing career that was on the forefront of the tremendous evolution of imaging and the pleasure of working alongside a team that was instrumental to our success.”

Capitalize with the best candidates

For optimal program success, it’s crucial to select the best award recipients. Ensuring clarity and fairness requires a thorough, comprehensive selection process. According to Dr. Pozuelo, there are many factors to consider — from confirming a nominee meets award-specific criteria to ensuring they reflect the organization’s mission, vision and values.

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“Selecting award recipients requires careful thought and consideration, extensive candidate eligibility review, voting, ranking sessions and more to ensure the most ideal person is chosen,” Dr. Pozuelo says.

At Cleveland Clinic, the Alumni Association Board of Directors plays an important role in candidate nomination and selection.

“Our board members help ensure that we honor those whose impact truly represents the breadth of our alumni’s achievements,” says Melinda Stroh, Senior Director of Alumni Relations and Development. “Organizations looking to create a physician awards program will benefit from having a similarly influential body.”

The physicians who sit on the institution’s alumni board ensure a broad pool of candidates by encouraging nominations and promoting the awards program within their professional networks.

“It’s important to cast a wide net to identify the most deserving individuals across specialties and generations,” Dr. Pozuelo says. “More nominations lead to a richer, more diverse selection of awardees.”

The insights and perspectives of board members also help identify exceptional candidates who otherwise may be overlooked. “Some of the most remarkable contributions often go unnoticed,” he says. “Our board brings attention to physicians who may not seek recognition but whose work significantly impacts patients, research, education and our organization’s mission.”

Finally, having prominent leaders involved reinforces an organization’s culture of recognition.

“Cleveland Clinic’s board member involvement shows that we value celebrating and acknowledging the influence of our alumni, which goes back to increasing overall engagement and creating an atmosphere that encourages commitment,” Stroh adds.

Editor’s note: Floridians are paying a lot of money for health insurance, but we’ve been listening to our viewers. Many of you are very unhappy with your coverage. At ABC Action News, we want to take action for you. Has your doctor prescribed treatment that your insurance company denied? We are digging into the problem of outrageous denials. Our special coverage is called “Patient No More!” We are investigating why claims are denied and provide useful information that gives you the best chance of getting your medical claim approved.

I-Team investigator Adam Walser is hearing from a physician who says a broken system often denies patients the care they need.

That doctor tells Adam some health insurance companies are playing games to avoid paying claims.

“It’s horrible. It’s stressful. It’s wrong on so many levels,” said Dr. Bill Hennessey, who describes himself as “the insider’s insider.”

WFTS Dr. Bill Hennessey describes himself as an “insider’s insider”. He practiced as a physician, owned a physician’s billing company and co-founded CareGuide Advocates.

He has fought to get insurance companies to pay legitimate claims for decades.

Hennessey opened a medical practice after graduating from medical school.

He then formed a physician billing company.

In recent years, Hennessey co-founded CareGuide Advocates , a company that helps clients negotiate costs and appeal denied claims.

“There are two types of people who have been financially harmed or screwed by the system…. doctors and patients. And I’ve been both. And I just said we’re not gonna take it anymore,” Hennessey said.

20 percent of claims denied

Hennessey says insurance companies often play games.

Think of a medical claim like a dice game. The outcome is uncertain, and no matter how careful or informed the player is, the result is ultimately left to chance.

The probability of rolling a specific number on a die is one out of six… about 17 percent. Hennessey says you have a higher chance of getting a medical insurance claim denied.

WFTS graphic The probability of rolling a specific number on a die is 1 in 6, or about 17 percent. The probability of having a medical claim denied is higher, at 20 percent.

“The national average, as well as my physician billing company average, is 20 percent of claims are denied,” Hennessey said. “It’s based primarily on one thing… price tag. The more expensive the care, the more likely the denial.”

He says if a claim costs the insurance company a lot of money, it will be scrutinized.

WFTS

“All of the sudden, everything’s being questioned. Of course, when there’s expensive drugs, they’re always questioned,” he said.

The claims process can also be compared to a poker game.

Insurers may bluff when it comes to paying legitimate claims, with ambiguous language or fine print.

This leaves patients unsure of the actual “hand” they’re holding regarding their coverage.

When a claim is denied, many patients will “fold” under pressure and often agree to pay for their treatment out of their own pockets.

“If we’re frustrated and confused, we give up. The goal is to open up our wallets,” Hennessey said. “And we fight that like hell all day every day.”

Hennessey says if insured patients don’t appeal and agree to pay the doctor or hospital directly instead of waiting for their insurance company to pay for their care could be off the hook, even if it was a legitimate claim.

The billing coding game

Hennessey says many things can result in a claim being denied.

“Sometimes it’s a billing, coding game,” Hennessey said.

Diagnostic codes in records show what services patients receive and are used to file insurance claims.

“There used to be 12,000 diagnostic codes 10 years ago and now there are 72,000,” he said.

WFTS

Hennessey believes the purpose of expanding the number of codes may be, in part, to increase the likelihood of claims being denied.

“More mumbo-jumbo to have more reasons for denials. More statistical mismatches of codes so that things are denied,” he said.

Hennessey says often multiple codes could be applied to the same procedure, but the insurance company will only accept a specific one.

“It’s a match game between those two codes to get the yes. So we resubmit and we resubmit until we get the care we need covered,” Hennessey said.

Pre-authorized procedures later denied

Hennessey says other times claims are denied after patients were told they were approved.

“Sometimes it’s a pre-authorization game,” Hennessey said.

He says documenting everything makes it easier for patients to appeal.

“You need to know the first name and last name of who you spoke with at the hospital and who says that it’s a covered procedure. And you guard that piece of information. You get it in writing,” Hennessey said.

Monopoly money

When claims are denied, Hennessey says hospitals start out quoting them the full retail price for procedures called the “Chargemaster” rate.

“They do play a discount game and a chargemaster game. If your claim is denied, they try to make you feel good that they’re giving you a discount off that fake high chargemaster price list,” Hennessey said. “It is Monopoly money.”

Using the Monopoly analogy, think of insurance companies as the “bank” which pay providers for patients’ treatment. But unlike in Monopoly, where each player pays the same price for each property, each insurance company pays a different amount for the same thing.

Under the Affordable Care Act, negotiated rates between hospitals and insurance companies can be found on a hospital’s website.

They’re often posted in a machine-language format called JSON , most often used for web development.

WFTS

Hennessey showed us a list of negotiated rates from a Tampa-area hospital’s website.

That list shows that one insurance company reimbursed the hospital $1,226 for a colonoscopy. Another insurance company pays $3,093 for the same procedure and a third insurance company has a negotiated rate of $14,187.

Courtesy Dr. Bill Hennessey

According to the list, one insurance company pays that hospital $4,100 for cardiac catheterization, while another company pays $24,000 for the same procedure.

The posted pay rate for a brain MRI at that hospital varies from $1,800 to $19,000.

WFTS

The pay rates for some procedures aren’t even listed at all.

“They’re intentionally deep-sixing the expensive care because they don’t want their competitors to see it,” Hennessey said.

Hennessey says whether your insurance pays for the care you need could depend on your insurance company, your hospital and the pay rates they negotiated.

That can be as random as a roll of the dice.

But to Hennessey, there’s nothing about the broken healthcare system that’s fun and games.

“It all comes down to profit over patients,” Hennessey said.

Here are some tips from Hennessey about how to appeal a denied claim:

The Telepathy Tapes is a seven-hour podcast series that takes listeners on an incredible journey. Here is a summary of the show. A journalist taps into a community of parents of nonverbal autistic children and discovers that we all live in a simulation and the real world is Heaven, and these neurodivergent kids are actually gifted and they can visit Heaven at night, download infinite knowledge, and use telepathy to communicate. No one is ever dead, and everything you have ever seen on The X-Files is real: energy healing, psychokinesis, and clairvoyance. These nonverbal geniuses, if we allow ourselves to believe in them, will usher in a revolution in both medicine and spirituality.

Does this sound believable?

You probably answered “no.” That’s because that bolus—a word used to describe a full dose of medication given to a patient at once—is too much to process. But if I drip-feed this magical thinking over the course of seven hours and build it up anecdote by anecdote, you might just start believing in it.

The Telepathy Tapes follows a reporter’s voyage from paper-thin skepticism to absolute credulity, and it becomes a cautionary tale for journalists who choose to investigate extraordinary claims. They may see themselves as skeptics but the urge to believe is hard to resist.

Mum’s the word on who does the pointing

The journalist behind the series, Ky Dickens, is not a disinterested party. By her own account, her brother is a “high-functioning autist” and two friends of hers died in tragic and unfair circumstances a few years ago. Dickens felt broken and confused. She asked the universe why all of this had happened and started listening to the Cosmos in You podcast, an esoteric programme on topics like astrology, intuition, and mediumship. That’s where Dickens heard Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell for the first time.

Dr. Powell becomes Dickens’ guide down the paranormal rabbit hole on The Telepathy Tapes—the White Rabbit to Dickens’ Alice—putting her in touch with parents who believe their nonspeaking children are supernaturally gifted. Powell is described on the show as a neuropsychiatrist, researcher and author, and she tells Dickens that she went to medical school, worked with “some of the greatest minds in neuroscience,” and joined the faculty at Harvard. She is no longer at the vaunted university. Additionally, in episode 6, she claims her medical board revoked her license after she published her book, The ESP Enigma, which makes the case for psychic phenomena. Powell asserts that members of the board hadn’t read the book; after they reviewed her research, they reinstated her license.

This story of censure in the face of paranormal beliefs is not supported by the information I found. According to publicly available documents from the Oregon Medical Board, Powell’s license was indeed suspended around the time her book was released, but the reason was a pattern of practice including “poor management of therapeutic boundaries, incomplete chart notes […], a disorganized approach to treatment, a failure to respond to significant patient symptoms, and concerns over her management of patient medications.” She was accused of relying extensively on phone consultations to manage complex psychiatric patients without seeing them face-to-face, thus posing “a significant risk of harm to these patients.” When asked to stop practicing medicine during the investigation, Powell declined. Her licensing board also asked her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, which she did. She was subsequently allowed to resume practicing medicine under a strict list of conditions, which were waived in April 2012. The medical board’s website now lists her license as “lapsed.”

When Powell introduces Dickens to allegedly gifted nonverbal autistic children, Dickens, to her credit, takes charge of testing their abilities “so it’s bulletproof.” She brings in multiple cameras and a cameraman who she says is “a huge skeptic, a materialist.” Her goal is to rule out any shenanigans, to the best of her ability, to see if these kids can indeed read minds. So far, I’m on board.

Thus begins a series of tests spanning multiple episodes, where Dickens generates words and numbers at random, shows them to the mother, and the child is able to spell them out by pointing at a board held by the mother.

Anyone who is familiar with facilitated communication (about which I’ve written here) will be shaking their head in recognition. Facilitators hold a nonverbal person’s arms or hands, thus pointing and typing for them, essentially ventriloquizing these individuals. What Dickens witnesses in The Telepathy Tapes are offshoots of facilitated communication, namely Spelling to Communicate (S2C) and the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). Often, the facilitator holds the board up in the air and can, either consciously or subconsciously, move it to make sure the speller points at the right letter or cue the speller in ways they may not be aware of. Defenders of these methods will argue they’re not touching the child’s arms or hands, but subconsciously moving the board results in the same problem: it’s not the child doing the selection.

Much like how intelligent design was really Creationism in a different guise, S2C and RPM are variations of the discredited facilitated communication. In 2019, a systematic review on the evidence for RPM being used with autistic people was unable to find a single English-language study published in a peer-reviewed journal with participants whose autism diagnosis was official. Not one.

Dickens tells us on the show that the raw video footage is available on the podcast website for us to scrutinize. This transparency, however, comes at a cost of USD 9.99. I paid the fee and viewed many of the videos, which are actually very short clips. Episode 1 of the podcast, for example, showcases Mia, who comes from a Hispanic family and whose telepathic gift is said to have 100% accuracy. One of the tests done has her mom opening a Spanish-language book that Dickens brought from home (to prevent cheating). The mom selects a page, says “Ooooh!” in excitement, and asks her daughter to name the character who is drawn on the page. The video clip posted to the website clearly shows the mom not only holding the letter board in front of Mia but holding Mia’s jaw as Mia points to the board. Mia does spell out “pirata,” Spanish for “pirate,” which is the correct answer, but the mother’s influence cannot be ruled out: move the head and the finger will follow. In a different test, Mia’s mother is touching Mia’s forehead during the spelling, where it would be easy to subtly press down whenever Mia’s finger hovers over the right number.

Crucially, although we are told that Mia can “see everywhere” and not just through her mother’s eyes, she absolutely cannot do it when her mom is replaced by her dad, which we learn 40 minutes into episode 1.

Throughout the podcast, a laundry list of explanations is given as to why telepathy sometimes fails when tested: anxiety, negativity, hatefulness, skepticism, crowds. Mia is said to have written in her diary that she can read everybody’s mind but, much like with Tinker Bell, you have to believe in her for her to do it. At this point, we might as well pretend there is a trickster god who teases us with proof of telepathy but turns it on and off during testing in order to mess with us, a theory that, believe it or not, has been discussed in the academic literature.

Another nonverbal autistic participant is Houston. His mom is shown Uno cards and she clearly lines up the board in front of her son’s pencil to make sure he chooses the correct number, as with Mia. Akhil from episode 2 is a stronger case. He uses an iPad to type and the tablet is on the floor. But here again, the word he needs to type is shown to his mother who very noticeably in the video points with her index finger at the iPad keyboard and leans her body in different ways from letter to letter, thus feeding her son clues. (This kind of clueing is well known in facilitated communication and can take many forms.) We are only shown short clips on the site, so it’s impossible to confirm how many hits and misses there were in total.

Upon seeing the tests with Akhil, Dickens’ “skeptical” cameraman, in utter amazement, says, “Do I have to believe in God now?” Dickens, meanwhile, is shocked when Powell tells her that these tests wouldn’t be believed by scientists.

Indeed, they shouldn’t.

A psi of relief for scientific rigour

Research into parapsychology has been plagued by false positive results. Parapsychology is a grab bag of powers and experiences, like telepathy, telekinesis, and precognition, that involve some weird transfer of energy or information and that currently exist outside of our scientific understanding, if they exist at all. Looking back almost 200 years, we can see that parapsychological claims have time and again been disproven by skeptics asking for better measures to prevent deception. The history of research into “psi” phenomena, as they are often called today, is the history of how scientific research became more rigorous. You say your client can see through envelopes? Let’s see if they can do so in front of a group of scientists, and let’s make sure those envelopes are opaque. You say they can read the mind of the person next door? Let’s make sure the room they are in is properly insulated so they can’t hear what their partner is saying. You say they can pick a card that was chosen by someone else? Let’s ensure the card-picker’s fingerprints aren’t visible on the card they chose.

As psi research became more stringent, the errors became harder to spot by the average person. They got buried in the statistics used to analyze the data and the minutia of the methodology used, and it made psi research look bulletproof. In 2011, Professor Daryl Bem from Cornell University published a paper that received much media coverage. “Humans have some psychic powers,” clamoured the Cornell Chronicle. “Could it be?” rhetorically asked NPR, “Spooky experiments that ‘see’ the future.” Scientific American had fun with their headline: “Extrasensory pornception.” Indeed, in the biggest experiment reported in the paper—so big, the size of the effect was the largest in a meta-analysis of multiple experiments testing psi abilities—regular people were shown two curtains on a computer screen and had to pick the one behind which an image, sometimes erotic in nature, would appear. The twist? The computer only randomized which image to show and where to show it after the participant had picked a curtain, so the participant had no way to know in advance… unless they could predict the future. An average result of 50% accuracy is what you would expect by chance; Bem’s 863 participants had an average score of 53%.

That is the kind of sound scientific research listeners of The Telepathy Tapes would point to as proof of these abilities.

But when 30 scientists—half believers in Bem’s findings and half skeptical of them—replicated Bem’s experiment using 20 times more participants and, very importantly, tightening the rigour to a degree I have never seen before in scientific research, their result was 49.89%. Might as well flip a coin.

The tweaks were made with Bem’s blessing, by the way, who was one of several experts consulted on how the experimental setup would be strengthened. Data was directly entered into a third-party, open-access repository during testing. The research reports were automated as soon as new data came in. Experimenters were trained on how to test participants, and their videotaped training sessions had to be approved by the experts. There was extensive piloting of the study and external auditors, and the entire experiment was publicly preregistered: this is how we will collect data, the researchers described, and this is how we will analyze it. You may think they went overboard, but in the face of extraordinary claims, we need extraordinary research protocols.

You will not hear about this replication of Bem’s findings on The Telepathy Tapes. You will, however, hear the story of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (a popular paranormal researcher), who proved that half of all dogs and nearly a third of cats know when their owners are coming home, possibly through human-to-pet telepathy. These findings were even reproduced by skeptics, says Dickens. I don’t know which skeptics she’s referring to because world-famous skeptic Dr. Richard Wiseman and colleagues famously did replicate Sheldrake’s experiments but failed to show any telepathic ability in pets.

Improving the journalistic integrity of The Telepathy Tapes would not be difficult. It would mean reaching out to magicians who excel at spotting fakery and to people who famously have been skeptical of psi claims and who have conducted replications of positive studies. (For example, Jim Underdown tests people who make these kinds of claims for CFI Investigations Group in the U.S., and Christopher French, Richard Wiseman, and Michael Marshall do the same in the UK.) It would involve not showing a child’s mother the random number or word to prevent any conscious or unconscious cueing of their child, who should be able to read the journalist’s mind. And it would mean not simply stringing together a number of wild anecdotes about parrots who can read their owner’s dreams and elephants who commemorate the day their rescuer died. If we approach any surprising event with the belief that some things simply cannot be explained by science, we will never make progress in understanding our world. By that token, earthquakes, electricity, even the moon would have remained mystical mysteries had we never interrogated them with science.

Instead, we are taken along on a reporter’s fantastical journey where every new belief begets a more extraordinary one. First, she accepts that one-on-one telepathy is real; then, autistic children can see ghosts and communicate with ancestors; then, she learns that telepaths tap into a collective consciousness that forms the very fabric of our universe; then, these kids actually meet on “the Hill,” a spiritual plane of existence where they reveal themselves to be geniuses akin to aliens; then, materialism is simply wrong; and finally, these nonverbal children can actually predict the future, heal others, and usher in a paradigm shift, and their power is growing as more people listen to the podcast. All of this, of course, is being hidden from the mainstream because of some version of cancel culture. But fear not: a few brave mavericks are risking their careers to bring about this much-needed awakening. (Journalists, learn to recognize the outline of this story, please.)

And it sounds legit because the show is so polished, it could be the next Serial. Dickens is a journalist and the people she interviews are calm and are treated the same way that any talking head on a documentary would be. But this slow-drip journey into esoterica is how we get to this whopper of a quote in episode 7 from Ky Dickens herself: “If I had a million dollars, I’d want to open a healing and education centre where nonspeakers could work with the best minds in science and math and, you know, healthcare, so they could heal the planet and people and relationships and animals.”

The worst part of this story is what is happening to the parents and to their children. It’s easy—and necessary—to highlight what Ky Dickens got wrong in her reporting. It’s harder—and it borders on the cruel—to place any blame at the foot of the parents of these children. They were told that their child might never speak or have a normal life. Then came along a narrative that flipped the script: their child was actually profoundly special and could communicate in a way they had never thought possible. From being considered disabled, their child was suddenly humanity’s saviour. Wouldn’t you want to believe that as well?

This narrative isn’t new, however. In the 1970s, we learned of “Indigo children,” kids who were beautifully strange, deeply spiritual, and gifted with an array of supernatural abilities. Back then, the concern wasn’t primarily autism, but rather attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. A diagnosis that made parents uncomfortable was replaced, through the magic of New Age spirituality, by an empowering label.

The Telepathy Tapes’ Indigo children will only pick up steam in the coming years. Already, a second season of the podcast has been announced which will focus on non-autistic telepaths, and Dickens is raising money to turn the whole thing into a documentary.

It’s important to maintain compassion for the parents who find themselves in the middle of this, but real answers on the topic of psi phenomena will not be arrived at through wishful thinking. Rigour should be de rigueur. Everyone thinks they are appropriately skeptical. No one thinks they’re gullible.

We all want to believe.

Take-home message:

– A new podcast called The Telepathy Tapes claims that some nonverbal autistic children are actually telepaths who can read minds, speak to each other, and acquire knowledge ahead of what the rest of humanity knows

– Video evidence shows that, in the tests conducted of their mind-reading abilities, the results can easily be explained by the mother knowing what the answer is and either consciously or subconsciously cueing her child

– The podcast takes a credulous stance on research into psi phenomena, failing to mention important studies with clearly negative results and failing to give voice to skeptics familiar with psi testing

@CrackedScience

It’s no secret that stress among caregivers can have significant personal and professional consequences, including burnout, decreased performance, depersonalization and even poor patient outcomes. Yet, although the physical and emotional demands of caregiving are well-known, some caregivers may be reluctant to seek help in times of grief or hardship.

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To address these challenges and the evolving emotional needs of its staff, Cleveland Clinic has developed an on-demand, online learning program designed to equip employees with the tools needed to better care for themselves and their peers.

“By their very nature, caregivers are focused on meeting the needs of other people, and nowhere was this more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic – the effects of which we’re still grappling with today,” says Amy Freadling, PhD, LPCC-S, CEAP, BCC, Executive Director of Caring for Caregivers at Cleveland Clinic. “This experience helped us recognize the need to prioritize the well-being of our caregivers in a way that we hadn’t before.”

Provided by Cleveland Clinic’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Global Leadership and Learning Institute, iCare is designed to help caregivers understand the widespread effect of trauma and stress in the workplace and provide them with the skills necessary to render an appropriate, healthy response.

Healing through education

The program, which is voluntary and self-paced, covers a broad range of topics, including differentiating between trauma and stress, identifying common signs of burnout and practicing self-compassion. It also teaches caregivers how to support their peers by identifying emotional distress, building better habits and using effective communication techniques like active listening.

“One doesn’t necessarily need a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder to feel the significant effects of stress,” Dr. Freadling says. “Understanding this can be normalizing and validating for people who may not have the words to describe what they’re experiencing. We’ve tried to create a program that makes our caregivers feel seen and heard – a fundamental component of professional and personal happiness.”

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Dr. Freadling explains Cleveland Clinic also developed a separate iCare track for leaders, which is designed to help them recognize their obligation to support and direct their teams.

“A recent Deloitte survey shows that 70% of employees say their manager has tremendous influence on their mental health and well-being – more influence than their doctor or therapist,” she says. “Educational programs like these can serve as important reminders for clinical leaders, in particular, who carry specific role-related responsibilities that aren’t always easily recognized.”

Dr. Freadling notes that both leaders and caregivers alike are deriving benefits from iCare. In a recent internal survey, 95% of participants said the program enhanced their well-being.

“iCare was created specifically to provide our employees with timeless, relevant tools,” she adds. “I’m very proud that we were able to create an educational course that is so meaningful to the people for whom it was intended.”

Constantly tuning into the news can feel stressful, and sometimes… inescapable. Even when you turn off your TV, you’ll still find out what’s going on – online, through friends, or through social media. So how can we find ways to be calm when it feels like we’re constantly being bombarded?

On this episode of Health Matters, clinical psychologist Adam S. Anderson talks about how our bodies are wired to seek information, why negative, sensationalist news can feel addictive, and how we can adjust our relationship to the news by implementing healthy habits.

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Listen to How the news rewires your brain

Find us online at Mayo Clinic Press for more health and wellness articles, podcasts and books.

Do you have feedback, questions or topic suggestions? Email us at mcppodcasts@mayo.edu.

Read the transcripts:

Kristen Meinzer: This is “Health Matters,” a Mayo Clinic podcast where we discuss the latest medical advice, news, and research to help you live a happier and healthier life.

My name is Kristen Meinzer — I’m a writer and journalist, and in this episode we’re talking about how exposure to the news affects our brains – and our health. Not that long ago, to get the news, we used to have to turn on the radio, pick up the newspaper, or tune in to the nightly program at 6 pm. But nowadays news is accessible 24/7, through the internet, on our phones, via social media. Even when we’re not actively seeking it out, it feels like the news comes to us!

In this episode, we’re speaking with Dr. Adam S. Anderson. Dr. Anderson is a clinical psychologist with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he studies and treats a variety of mental health conditions, including depression and PTSD. Welcome, Dr. Anderson.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Thank you.

Kristen Meinzer: We are so glad to have you here today to help us with an issue that I think a lot of us face here — the fact is, we now live in a world where we’re just inundated with news all of the time, and digital news in particular feels as though it’s explicitly designed to capture and hold our attention by feeding a trigger reward system within our brains. Can you explain that process? How does it work and why does it feel so good to be informed and engaged? Why do we keep eating it up?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I think we can think about for ourselves, why would we seek information and what captures our attention and what’s really interesting to us? And why would we go back? And I think there are a variety of different reasons. One, People can just have a habit of regularly going to and looking at certain kinds of information, Two, people can feel unnerved by the world that we live in and feel uncomfortable.

We’re kind of wired to seek information, and we often struggle with anxiety when we feel uncertainty about things. There’s also just some natural human curiosity about the world. But there’s a reason that most of us don’t go to see movies or don’t seek out shows that would just maybe be a camera showing people walking by. We go when there are big explosions. We go when There’s excitement and intensity, and so our curious minds are looking for certain things. Certain kinds of things can release a dopamine-like response in our brain that generates some excitement that keeps us coming back.

Kristen Meinzer: But the fact is that in American media, it’s not just exciting — it’s oftentimes pretty negative, the news that we’re getting. Because that’s what the news outlets have learned people will click on. People will go back again and again to those dangerous headlines, those scary disasters, this alarming crime statistic, this economic crash that’s about to happen.

On top of that, most negative news is specifically engineered to rile up our emotions. They’re using alarming language, there’s a story of escalation built into the news article. What is the effect of all this negativity and sensationalism on us?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: News outlets, and particularly social media, are geared toward showing things wherein the more attention they catch, the more advertising it brings. They’re doing things that will catch people’s attention. You want more people to view.

It does seem to be a feature of our brains where we’re wired to look out for things that may be a threat to us. These things will catch our attention. They’ll be things that concern us. A part of what we know is that when we are exposed to negative things in the news it creates an emotional response for us. The more that we engage in that, looking at news-related things, the more likely it may be that we get caught in potentially a negative cycle.

Just an example of that, one of my favorite researchers who does work in this area, Dr. Allison Holman, one of her earlier studies looked at the response that people had after they were exposed to news about the bombing that occurred at the end of the Boston Marathon. A part she found alarming was that people who had not been there in person and had not lost family members, but had been exposed to six or more hours of looking at news after it, really demonstrated higher amounts of acute stress, even than many of the people who had been in the vicinity.

This news exposure was dramatic and the impact that it had on people. When we’re talking about acute stress, we’re talking about anxious reactions. We’re talking about really activating worry, sometimes people having nightmares. One of the other things that’s really interesting about our media is it puts in front of us very vivid images of horrific things that are happening. This can really lead to really strong reactions. Heightened anxiety can lead to people feeling more depressed or hopeless. It can lead to feelings of anger about what’s happening outside of us and, around us in the world.

Kristen Meinzer: Social media definitely capitalizes on that. Even though the content we’re looking at might be horrific, might be making us feel depressed or hopeless, it still somehow… has us wanting more. What’s happening in our brains when we’re drawn to or consuming this kind of news media?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: When we encounter something that’s novel or exciting or interesting a part of what happens inside our brain is the release of dopamine.

Dopamine is a hormone that’s linked to pleasure and reward. It reinforces things and often it can lead to cycles for us, of doing things. Often we think of dopamine as potentially linked with things like addiction. It feels good to us. It’s something that naturally activates pleasure and reward for us. There is something about certain kinds of novel images, seeing certain kinds of things that activate these kinds of responses, and news media that create images that are exciting or interesting to us, can activate these responses.

These responses often might explain why we’re drawn back to look again and again, potentially, even at times where we know, “Hey, I’ve already looked enough.” There are things that kind of invite us back to look at images and to see new things and to discover new things.

Kristen Meinzer: I think I’m not alone in saying I have doom scrolled late at night before knowing, “this is not good for me. I don’t need to consume one more story about this terrible, terrible thing.” But it makes sense that I’m doing it if what’s happening in my brain is that dopamine telling me, “This is good, this is good, keep getting more, get more.”

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: It may not be wonderful, but it’s giving us something, and something that will keep us going, something that will draw us back. It’s the kind of reaction that we think of as associated with some addictions. You’ll hear people talk about how some kind of addictive, even social media types of things, can be, and we think at least a part of that is connected with this dopamine response.

Kristen Meinzer: Is doom scrolling stress disorder a real thing or is that just something that we say in slang and social vernacular?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: This isn’t a disorder that would be diagnosed according to our diagnostic manuals or guidelines. It’s been developed by people who have recognized that this is something that’s affecting people. As they use this language, it makes intuitive sense to us and it can also capture something that’s meaningful.

These are terms that may lead to more formally diagnosed things in the future, but right now, they’re really more of a heuristic, a helpful vernacular, to help us understand some of what’s happening for people.

Kristen Meinzer: Is it safer then to consume news materials through, let’s say, a newspaper or through the radio? Is there a safer way to consume all of this?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: In at least one study, this was done by weight and his colleagues. What they found is that when people had higher TV viewing, it seemed to have a different impact than when people were reading or something like that. If I’m seeing a lot of these images on TV, that may be really different than if I’m reading it in a newspaper.

Kristen Meinzer: The visuals can really stick with us in a way that maybe words just aren’t going to, or numbers aren’t going to necessarily hit our emotional core in the same way.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely.

Kristen Meinzer: Now, when it comes to news media, does our mindset or preparedness matter at all? Let’s say you’re just on TikTok trying to watch some cooking content or some dance videos, and then all of a sudden, you get fed a reel about some upsetting news. Is that sudden appearance of that news — because it’s surprising — going to change the effect, as opposed to let’s say I’m deliberately tuning into that kind of news?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: It can. Anything that’s surprising to us, that’s shocking to us, that comes out of the blue, that’s unexpected, can create a different kind of emotion. Let’s say that somebody has come to me and said, something’s happened in the news and you really ought to come and see, even in those split seconds or moments when I’m preparing myself, something’s happening inside of my mind that isn’t happening when you get that surprise, and that surprise can trigger a potentially stronger emotional reaction at those times.

Kristen Meinzer: Now, let’s throw COVID into the mix. We’ve got social isolation, misinformation, institutional distrust, in addition to all the other stuff we’ve talked about so far. How does all of this add up along with the 24 hour news cycle? What did you notice about your patients and what they were experiencing during that time with regard to news consumption?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: One of the things that occurred during COVID, the APA partnered with the Harris poll to conduct a survey. This was February 2022. When they conducted that poll a part of what they said was, more than seven in ten people were overwhelmed by the number of crises facing the world.

During the time we were looking at inflation, we were coming out of COVID, there were supply chain issues, global uncertainty. There were very strong differences of opinion where it did feel difficult to trust. Really polarized differences in how we should respond to things.

What 87 percent of people said during that period is that it seemed like we were facing a kind of stream of crises. Then others said that they were overwhelmed by the number of crises that were coming during that time. There can be a pattern of helplessness, hopelessness that develops in the context of that. There can be patterns of greater frustration or more kinds of conflict that we feel. But often there was a pattern of greater issues with emotional distress.

A part of what we saw during that time, ordinarily, somewhere around 18 percent of the public would meet criteria for some form of anxiety disorder or significant anxiety, but during that COVID period, we saw those numbers. We were concerned about that occurring for adolescents and young adults. We saw those numbers going way up.

Kristen Meinzer: Why is it that, even though the news stresses so many of us out, we find ourselves tuning in to it again and again? Well, aside from wanting to stay informed, we’re biologically wired to seek information and to feel anxiety and uncertainty when we don’t know what’s going on. We’re also naturally curious creatures and the excitement and intensity of the news we consume can release a dopamine-like response in our brain, triggering a feedback loop that keeps us coming back.

American media in particular skews negativity and often sensationalism which can create strong emotional responses and the more we’re exposed to it — especially after a particularly stressful event — the more that can lead to high amounts of acute stress, like anxiety, worry … even nightmares.

The medium that we use to get our news also influences our reactions, too — graphic images from TV and social media can be more upsetting to us than simply reading a newspaper.

And finally, if you feel like you’ve been more anxious in the past few years, know that you’re not alone. During COVID, there was a large spike in anxiety in the general population — and many of us are still struggling even now. Next, we’ll talk with Dr. Anderson about how to assess if our relationship with the news is working for us or not.

When it comes to the type of news or the way we’re consuming it, how can we tell if it’s affecting us negatively? Are there certain kinds of symptoms we should be looking out for?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I’ve tried to highlight at least three types of emotional patterns that seem to have been highlighted by different areas of research: does this lead to increases in worry? Does it lead to me feeling a greater kind of emotional arousal or fear? Does this seem to lead to me feeling more distressed or hopeless, about things or about the future, or about where things are going?

Watching for that emotional reaction. Then, I guess a part of what I would recommend is, noticing how we are feeling as we’re coming out of looking at news, really trying to name and identify those emotions. Potentially, talking with other people about them can really be helpful, protective thing to do.

Kristen Meinzer: Now, you talked before about the reward system in our brain, the dopamine that might make us want to keep clicking on stories that are bad for us, but what else is happening there? Are there certain parts of our brain that are doing other things that lead to that fearfulness, that sense of hopelessness that you mentioned?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. If we refer back to this study that was done, following the Boston Marathon bombing — let’s say I’m one of these people that looks at this for six hours.

If a person’s beginning to feel acute distress, this is linked with a hormone that we refer to as cortisol. When cortisol comes, anytime you have that kind of really tense, anxious reaction, cortisol may be part of that picture. Also, when we’re experiencing anxiety and when we’re experiencing anger, if those are the emotional experiences that we’re having, often this is just the release of adrenaline into our bloodstream. This response activity in our sympathetic nervous system is the underlying kind of reaction that leads to heightened anxiety and panic.

There’s been a lot written about how these emotional responses can be positive for us. If I’m experiencing a situation where something’s happening and I have a fear response and it allows me to create action, that can be a really positive thing. There’s a great book called “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” that discusses why having this response repeatedly over time and not having periods of calming, can really be difficult for our bodies, our stress system.

Instead of having the strong reaction that we might have, we watch the news and then we watch more and we watch more and it’s the constant feeling of the elevation of those stress hormones that can have a really negative impact on us over time.

On one hand it can just lead to anxiety reactions that become more extreme, harder to manage for us, or more depressive feelings for some people where it becomes harder to escape and that we become more caught in, or tied to. But our body is wired specifically so that it does well if we experience those reactions, and being able to calm down after versus maintaining the intensity.

As you pointed out earlier, we’re constantly bombarded. Even before the pandemic the research that I read said that the average American adult looked at a screen about 11 hours a day in varying forms and in varying places, and we’re so constantly bombarded by these images and by information from different screens that it can be more difficult, depending on the choices we make to have those settle down periods to experience the kind of calm that we need to experience as well.

Kristen Meinzer: It can be very hard. We have screens everywhere at work as a pleasure. We even have them in our cars now. It’s really hard to escape screens. Now, let’s talk about people who are already facing challenges like anxiety and depression and other disorders. How does the 24 hour news cycle maybe exacerbate their symptoms or not serve them well?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Within the news we notice there’s a negativity bias. There does seem to be evidence that our minds pick up the negative more easily than they pick up the positive. if we’re already experiencing depression, anxiety, certainly, these can trigger emotions. You used the word exacerbate, which is a perfect word. They can make things worse. This can be a part of a downward spiral that we’re already in.

There can be other kinds of biases that we experience as well. One of the things that we think about when we think about anxiety, is something we refer to as catastrophic thinking: “Oh, no, the worst is going to happen.” Certainly the way that the news often comes with the extremes, really drawing our attention, this can just play along with and activate some of the things that we think people are already experiencing, or that are keeping them there.

If a person’s feeling depression often there can be a kind of hopelessness that they feel and often seeing repeated messages of more negative things can amplify that.

There are so many ways that it can play into, be a part of, and help maintain patterns that end up being really challenging for people experiencing those things.

Kristen Meinzer: How do you advise a parent in limiting this impact on their kids? Is there a difference between how a child and an adult take in the news?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. As you might expect developmentally children will have potentially less of a context for things, potentially stronger reactions to things, potentially not as well developed coping or ways of framing, maybe an understanding of what’s happening. Particularly with children and adolescents, ensuring that there’s conversation about things that are important, that there’s discussion about things outside of looking at and scrolling.

This can be difficult because we all carry our own news machines and we don’t always know what everybody else is looking at, or what they’re encountering. But it really does highlight the importance of conversation, the importance of adult, teacher, parental involvement, family involvement and helping to organize and make sense of what’s happening and have ways of talking about it that can maybe moderate what otherwise might be just really strong, challenging, maybe more difficult reactions for people who might be developmentally younger and have a more difficult time with this material.

Kristen Meinzer: This also really helps make the case for limiting screen time for your kids and their exposure to distressing news.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely.

Kristen Meinzer: Now, for the folks out there who are real news junkies, we all know folks like that who just can’t get enough of what’s happening on Capitol Hill, for example. Is there a point where their constant engagement to the news might actually be more of an addiction rather than just a hobby?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Sure. When we think about addictions, we think about things that people have a hard time stopping, we think about things that are kind of consuming that maybe bleed into or create problems in other areas of people’s lives, and so for a person to be very involved, for a person to read and understand a lot about Supreme Court findings and, for people to read statutes and know more and more about what’s happening on Capitol Hill, there’s some things that are reasonable, that are great about that, that are laudable.

Some of the things to look for are some of the things that we might look for with other forms of addiction. Is this something that I can set limits on or that I can stop and go do other things? Am I able to maintain balance in my life? Is it something that’s negatively impacting my relationships? Is this something that’s creating difficulty? Is it something that’s keeping me caught in patterns of emotion where I’m really struggling with the emotion? Those are at least some of the things that people can watch for.

Kristen Meinzer: Now, when it comes to assessing the health of your relationship with the news, there are some questions you can ask yourself: After I engage with the news do I feel worried? Fearful? Distressed or hopeless about the future?

If you’re feeling acute distress, this might be linked with a hormone called cortisol, which regulates your body’s stress response. Or, if you’re feeling anxiety and anger this can be the effect of adrenaline, which can activate our “fight or flight” response.

Now, when we have these kinds of responses to the news, we typically want a period of calm, afterwards, for our bodies and our stress systems to get back in balance. But if we continue to engage with the news and continue to elevate our stress — without allowing for that period of calm — that can become damaging. It can make our anxiety more extreme and our depressive feelings harder to escape.

And if you’re concerned your obsession with the news might even be an addiction? Some things to ask yourself: Am I able to set limits on my news intake? Can I stop consuming the news and do other things? And, is it something that’s keeping me caught in patterns of emotion where I find myself struggling?

What can we do to maintain a healthy relationship with the news moving forward? Doctor, aside from not engaging in the news, which isn’t really practical for a lot of us, what are healthier ways for us to consume it?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Consider how much time the news fits with our values and then think about what’s the way that we want to experience and encounter the news. You’ve talked about people who have hobbies associated with certain topics with the news. Setting limits and thinking about how much involvement we want to have with the news can be helpful.

Going right along with that, where do we receive our news? There’s been a lot of discussion in the news over the last 5 years about issues associated with bias in the news. There have been a lot of discussions like we did earlier of some of the positives, but also some of the potential liabilities of social media. Often news, if we watch it on TV, gives us blurbs, or if we’re encountering it in social media, it gives us small amounts, small bites of information.

A part of what we can think about is where the places are that I can go to receive news that feels reliable? Where are the places that I can go where I can encounter information about what’s happening in the world? But then if I want to look deeper, where can I learn more about and really come to understand the complexities of many of these issues?

Thinking about how we get a chance to really look at our news carefully can be helpful. Then being thoughtful about where this news comes from. Is this a source where this would have been fact checked? Does this feel like news? It can also be important to remember, there’s credible journalism in the world and people working really hard to present us with good information. News is part of a media system that’s designed for entertainment and that’s designed to make money.

These systems aren’t designed to just shovel us the objective truth. Knowing and being able to recognize something about the sources of where the information is coming from. I’d also recommend this as a personal recommendation. And again, it’s only based on certain areas of the research, but, thinking about the amount of our news that comes from television or computer or visual images versus also thinking about potentially reading news.

Sometimes I even want to get news from friends, from family, from talking together about things and sharing information. This might take practice because sometimes, even among families or people close to us, we have differences of opinion, but really find ways of discussing what we see in the news. This can be important because at times we might receive our news from different places and different sources. And often, as we visit with each other, it can help us sort through, maybe even find blind spots.

One of the other things that I guess I would recommend is recognizing how you feel when you look at news, and I would recommend finding sources of positive news and finding places where you can see good things that are happening in the world around us. There are heartwarming, touching and meaningful things that are happening that often, in the negativity bias, get the short shrift.

Not trying to advertise for anyone, but John Krasinski of “The Office,” during COVID put some videos up that were called “Some Good News.”

Kristen Meinzer: I was an avid follower of that. He just celebrated the good things people were doing in the world at a time when it felt like maybe there wasn’t a lot of good out there.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Just given the way that the system works, that our brains work, I think often we have to be proactive about this part, searching for the good news, recognizing around us the good things that are happening and ensuring that we recognize those that highlight those and that we share those and discuss those kinds of things with each other.

Kristen Meinzer: Yeah.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Just one other thing that came to mind for me is, there are different ways of being involved and reading the news, watching the news. Being aware of things that are going on in the world is one way of being involved. Going out into the world and participating in the things that we feel strongly about is another way of being involved in the world and of being informed.

One of the things is replacing at least some time that we would otherwise spend with media with engagement in things, in activities that might relate to helping, volunteering, doing things. It might be being a part of a political party, or it might be being a part of a social movement in the community, but finding places where you can contribute and be apart of what’s happening in the community can be really powerful and important.

Kristen Meinzer: That makes so much sense. Because when you were speaking earlier about the adrenaline and cortisol response to danger, if we’re out there in the real world, we can do things about that danger. We can volunteer, we can do other things so that that cortisol and that adrenaline is not just sitting inside us as we doom scroll to the next story, and the next story, and the next story. We can actually be active participants so that adrenaline and cortisol have somewhere to go, right?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Absolutely. So that we’re involved. So that we’re doing things. One other note as well. We brought up how dramatic this can be, how heavy involvement, especially in tough visual images, we’ve talked about people having acute stress responses. We’ve talked about people having depressive or greater anxious reactions. If we’re finding that we’re having these kinds of responses or that we’re feeling stuck, maybe in feeling anxiety or depression, or some of those things, seeking mental health services. If it becomes something that’s just really become hard for us, or something that we feel caught in or stuck in, there is help out and around us and ways that we can come to feel better.

Kristen Meinzer: Doctor, in the interest of being part of the solution and sharing happy news, do you have a personal anecdote or a story of a patient you can share who was negatively affected by their news consumption and found a way to deal with it and improve their health?

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: I’ve talked to a number of people in my practice, but also in my life who have recognized the impact of the news cycle, who have seen, increases in anxiety, who have seen, increases in depression and who have determined ways of taking action.

Some of the strongest strategies that I’ve seen people use that have made the biggest difference, one in particular person I’m thinking of, they were constantly looking at and scrolling and decided to completely stop for a period of time. You can imagine the response of peers and people around them. “How are you going to be informed? How are you going to know what to do?”

The person decided, “Well, I’m going to stay in conversation with people , create deliberate conversations that ask people about how they feel about things going on in the world.” But it’s different to receive and to talk about news through friends and loved ones than it is to encounter visual images or things on a page.

Within a short period of time, that made a significant difference for this person, the real narrowing and limiting. I don’t believe the solution for everyone is to completely cut media or news out. But in this circumstance it made a dramatic difference in a short period of time. Then I led to a person who was feeling better and who was able to then start to say, “Now I feel like I’m in a more balanced position to make decisions about how I am going to move forward with the news.”

It reminds me of a book by Johan Hari, that’s called “Stolen Focus,” where he talked about going to a place where he really limited media other than trying to write. He talked about the difference that just being away from media influences had on his ability to think and focus and read and engage with the world around him.

Regardless of how we decide to do that, and regardless of the degree or the amount that we decide to cut ourselves off, involvement in news and involvement in media and their potential impact on us is something worth looking at and considering what we want to do with that in our lives.

Kristen Meinzer: I love that hopeful note to end on. There are resources out there. There are ways that we can do better by ourselves and there are books to read. We don’t have to live in a hopeless, miserable news cycle. We don’t have to do it. Dr. Adam Anderson, thank you so much for sharing your hope and expertise. This has been great.

Dr. Adam S. Anderson: Thank you. When it comes to solidifying healthy habits when we engage with the news, one place to start is to really assess your sources: where are you getting your information? Are your sources credible, and reliable? Do you have a source for more complex and nuanced coverage?

Also, if you’re finding that your current source isn’t working for you anymore — maybe seeing the news through TV, or social media is just too triggering — is there a different way for you to get informed? Maybe getting your news through conversations with friends and family is more your style.

Another way to stay informed is by getting involved. Find the things that you really care about and volunteer, or join a group that works on that same issue. It’s a way of contributing, and feeling hopeful by doing.

For some of us, we may need more specialized help, especially if we’re having acute stress responses to the news, or exacerbated anxiety or depression. Remember — mental health services are here to help. Ultimately, don’t forget to really assess how you feel after engaging with the news. Especially if you feel bogged down by the negativity bias in the coverage. And you can always proactively start looking for sources of positive news, too. With a little more awareness, you can start to shape your relationship with the news in a way that works for you.