The police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, the murder of cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge, the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, the Munich mall shooting: by any measure, July has felt overstuffed with bad news.
The psychic toll of all this bad news is real. “Violent media exposure can exacerbate or contribute to the development of stress, anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),” as HuffPost’s Carolyn Gregoire has written.
One common response to the negativity is what’s known as “compassion fatigue” – basically, emotional burnout from processing too much stressful information.
“Compassion fatigue is sort of an ironic condition,” Dr. Charles Figley, a Tulane University psychologist who specializes in trauma, told The Huffington Post. “Bad news weighs on our minds because it introduces uncertainty; we want to shut it out. But then we become stressed because we are not able to help the people who are suffering.”
So at the tail end of a month defined by major ― and majorly depressing ― news, here are some stories that might have escaped your notice.
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Late on the evening of July 4th, the NASA spacecraft Juno successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit, a task that one of the project’s scientists
described as “the hardest thing NASA’s ever done.” (The New York Times even kept a list of things that
could have gone wrong.) NASA released
1300 stunning raw images from the mission.
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USA Today Sports / Reuters
In other encouraging Summer Olympics
news: Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt announced that, despite his
recent injuries, he’ll be competing for a third gold medal in Rio de Janeiro. The ten members of the first-ever
Refugee Olympic Team will compete to bring global attention to the humanitarian crisis. And
celebrity chefs at the Olympic Village in Rio are piloting a program to donate surplus food to local slums.
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Scott Olson via Getty Images
The medical community has taken huge strides in combating the disease that has roiled South America. The
first Zika vaccine is now ready for human trials, thanks to a collaboration between a Pennsylvania vaccine maker and a South Korean lab.
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Britt Erlanson via Getty Images
On the
very last day of an expedition in Argentina, paleontologists discovered
a new dinosaur: Gualicho shinyae, a close relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex that may help us understand how a class of dinosaurs, called Therapods, evolved such tiny arms. Its
namesake is a “demon of local folklore” called Gualichu.
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Digital Vision. via Getty Images
A landmark
Nature study identified
97 new areas of gray matter, including regions that are linked to storytelling, language, and deception.
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Buero Monaco via Getty Images
Both countries reported record low rates of teen pregnancy, thanks to factors ranging from
high-quality sex education to the popularity of TV shows like MTV’s “Teen Mom,” which spotlight the very real challenges of pregnancy and parenting. As Tina Rosenberg
wrote in The New York Times, “These shows don’t persuade girls to abandon birth control. They
are birth control.”
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An Australian company has created
clean hydrogen fuel with nearly nonexistent emissions. The process uses iron ore to convert methane into hydrogen, and the gas’s carbon content is captured as solid graphite -- which can, in turn, be used to manufacture things like batteries.
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Darko Novakovic via Getty Images
The league, which has been widely criticized for its handling of sexual violence, is now
funding sexual assault prevention initiatives, including by partnering with bars to encourage bystander intervention.
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LeoWolfert via Getty Images
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Wolfgang Kaehler via Getty Images
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THOMAS SAMSON via Getty Images
Whatever you think of the game, the brief week of pure, childlike glee that many people experienced in mid-July was like a pressure valve inside crucible of a month. We even got some
accidental exercise along the way. And some have found unexpected uses for the game, from physical therapy for
kids in hospitals to
fundraising for charity.
