But first, brand new father Dorian Ojemen is thrilled about the Skincubator. “Just the fact that you can have them on your chest, you can look in their eyes, you can hold them, feel them breathe. That immediately makes you feel like, ‘Wow, I’m a parent,’” he told CNN. 

His twins, Silas and Simone, were born at just 26 weeks’ gestation and need an incubator’s support, which rules out critical skin-to-skin contact. But the experimental device enables Ojemen and his wife to hold their babies against their skin, helping them relax, regulate their heartbeats and bond with their parents while staying connected to the medical support they need.

Fewer than half of Americans are thriving – and young adults’ well-being has fallen the most

Fewer than half of American adults feel they are thriving according to Thriving Together in America, a new report from Gallup and The Rippel Foundation based on more than 3.1 million interviews of U.S. adults starting in 2008. The thriving rate stood at 48.1% in the third quarter of this year, down from a peak of 59.2% in June 2021. Only the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns produced lower readings. 

In addition, the share of Americans reporting they’re “suffering” has grown. The rate of respondents rating both their present well-being and future outlook at a 4 (out of 10) or below climbed from 3.4% in 2021 to 4.6% today. 

Young adults were the hardest hit by these changes. According to Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index, in 2010, 64% of 18-to-29-year-olds were thriving — more than any other age group. Now, it’s just 44% of young adults – the lowest number across age cohorts and marking the largest drop in wellbeing that Gallup has recorded for any age group since tracking the measure. The findings align with rising rates of depression and loneliness.

“Young adults went from the most optimistic generation we measured to the least in the span of 10 years, and while the pandemic was a major factor, the broader trend is not tied to one bad year,” said Dan Witters, research director of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. “It tells us the conditions shaping how young people see their present and their future have fundamentally shifted.”

Adults 65 and older are the exception to the trend, rising from 38% thriving in 2008 to 53% thriving today. The report points to research linking later-in-life well-being to greater financial security, lower stress and a wider sense of perspective, even though older adults tend to grow less optimistic about the future as they age.

On the other hand, long-standing gaps between ethnic, racial and gender groups have shrunk for worse reasons. Black, Hispanic, white and Asian American adults now report thriving rates near 50%, a convergence driven by a shared decline. Among Hispanic adults, 45% say they are thriving, down 10% since 2024. Women, who previously reported higher rates of thriving than men, have shifted downwards too, and now match men at 49%.

How Americans envision the future may be the starkest sign of what is happening. In 2025, the share of Americans expecting a highly satisfying life in five years hit a record low. Downturns could be connected to two major changes that have taken place since 2024: Fewer Americans report having a leader who makes them excited about the future and more people express consistent worry over finances.

“The steep declines are a clarion call, but in no way a verdict on our future,” said Becky Payne, president and CEO of The Ripel Foundation. “We can reverse these trends.” The best way to do so, she says, is to choose to invest in the conditions that enable thriving.

A daughter laments Canada’s indefinite suspension of Medical Aid in Dying for mental illness

“Sometimes, mental illness is terminal,” STAT News First Opinion editor Torie Bosch asserts in a deeply personal essay. Reflecting on the many times her mother attempted to end her life — so many that she lost count — Bosch makes the case for a hotly debated policy that Canada just shelved: Medical Aid in Dying for people whose terminal condition is mental illness.

On October 7, Canada indefinitely suspended the long-delayed expansion of its MAiD program to cover mental illness, which had been set to take effect in March 2027. The country’s Justice Minister Simon Fraser cited gaps in mental health access and a recent report questioning whether mental illness can be deemed incurable. Only Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg currently allow MAiD on mental illness grounds.

Bosch makes clear her understanding of the objections to MAiD for mental illness, including pressure from families, wide gaps in access to quality mental health care, the risk that depression or other ailments can distort a person’s judgment and even reports questioning whether mental illness can be deemed incurable. 

But she argues that those concerns don’t account for patients like her mother — a Wharton MBA graduate who spent nearly two decades cycling through bipolar disorder, a traumatic brain injury, hallucinations, chronic pain and punishing medications. Repeated assurances that things would be OK became a lie that she and her mother both recognized. Decades of trying to keep her mother alive only denied her a gentler death while leaving the family to navigate a more complicated grief, she says. 

“She was never going to be OK,” Bosch bravely writes. “It must have been maddening — so much in her life was literally maddening — to keep being told, “It’s OK, you’re fine.” She was always going to die this way. If she was going to die by suicide — a phrase I hate for how it removes her agency from the most important decision she ever made — then it should have been better…And her physicians could have said: ‘Yes, you’re right. We’ve done all that medicine can offer you at this point, and it hasn’t worked. You’re an intelligent woman with the insight to make this decision. If you want to die, we support you.’”

In other news…

Kids are bonding with chatbots. Researchers are racing to catch up. Psychologists and online safety experts from seven countries and the World Health Organization gathered at UNC Chapel Hill this week for the first meeting of the new AI Psychological Research Coalition, reports NPR health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee. The debate is focused on young people forming deep emotional attachments to AI chatbots faster than research can measure the fallout that those bonds are having on their developing minds. 

In a forthcoming study of more than 2,000 middle schoolers in one state, UNC researcher Mitch Prinstein, one of the people who convened the coalition, found that over half already use chatbots, while two to four students in every classroom say they prefer interacting with a bot over a human peer. Chatbots have also been linked to several youth suicides, prompting lawsuits against AI companies. “AI is changing the ways that kids are developing right before our eyes,” Prinstein said. With researchers from 60 institutions on board, the coalition hopes to move faster than the field did on social media.