News
How To Take Care Of Your Mental Health And Well-Being After A Car Accident
Serious injuries can have a profound impact on the quality of life of a person involved in a car accident and their relatives, not to mention that they pose a burden to society at large, causing considerable economic losses, such as medical expenses and lost productivity. The consequences differ from one case to the other, depending on the type and severity of the injury, the mode of transport, and personal and environmental factors (age, gender, and comorbidity). People involved in car accidents are at risk for psychological problems, too. Anyone who has ever been involved in a collision knows it can be a frightening and stressful experience.
What Are The Emotional Responses To A Car Accident?
Experiencing a sudden and unexpected event, such as a car accident, can result in a wide array of emotional responses, such as:
- Sadness: Feelings of unhappiness and low mood can be intense. Being sad is a normal reaction to an upsetting, painful, or discouraging situation.
- Helplessness: The shock and anxiety following an accident can feel overwhelming, leaving you quite powerless. You may worry about your health, safety, and future. If you believe you have no control over the situation, you give up trying to make changes.
- Numbness: Feeling numb can happen as a result of physical or emotional exhaustion. You must assess the situation from a calmer and steadier perspective, so don’t withdraw from the company of others because having access to a strong support network offers many benefits.
- Nervousness: Anything that causes apprehension can lead to nervousness. Resting, falling asleep, or having peace of mind may be difficult. Equally, you might be a bit forgetful or find concentrating difficult.
Guilt: If the other person was badly injured, you feel guilt rather than relief. Journaling about it can help lighten the burden and make the guilt easier to cope with, so explore your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
A lot of people experience trauma in their life and, right after, have a pretty hard time. It’s essential to focus on the things within your control to move forward.
Women Who Experience Trauma Are Twice As Likely As Men To Experience PTSD
A car accident can be mentally damaging, and the body’s reactions can continue long after the trauma is over, especially if recovery has been difficult. During the healing process, you may notice signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reliving the accident through nightmares and flashbacks; the symptoms are often severe and cause problems in social or work situations and how well you get along with others. Anyone can develop PTSD, but countless research studies have proven that women are twice as likely to experience PTSD than men due to the lifetime prevalence of exposure to trauma such as rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse.
Car accidents are the number one cause of trauma for men and the second leading cause of trauma for women. PTSD represents a valid psychological trauma as a personal injury, but since the harm isn’t visible, it can be hard to convince insurers or juries without strong evidence supporting your condition. For more in-depth information, please visit https://www.how-to-sue.co.uk. Women experience PTSD symptoms for longer before seeking treatment, and while they’re less likely to have problems with alcohol or drugs, they may develop physical health problems. The more you avoid the triggers and reminders of the car accident, the worse the symptoms become.
Femtech And Mental Health Are Becoming Increasingly Intertwined
Femtech provides a wide range of solutions to improve mental health, such as web-based structural software packages that supply online therapy, self-help tools, and mindfulness exercises. It creates a sense of community, allowing women to connect with others with similar experiences and challenges. Feeling accepted for who you are and supported can help you thrive, especially if you’re experiencing symptoms of isolation and loneliness. There’s an urgent need for accessible and convenient solutions for women’s needs. Femtech companies can help mitigate the multifaceted burdens that can impact the lives of women.
There Are Many Different Things You Can Do To Improve Your Mental Health
Mental health is the foundation for well-being and effective functioning, and self-care plays an important part in treatment and recovery if you’ve experienced trauma. Just like the weather, you may have periods when your energy flows more strongly, after which you experience a sort of lag time, so your energy diminishes. More exactly, you feel tired and lack motivation to get out of bed. Regardless of what emotions you’re feeling, it’s completely normal. Here are some simple self-care habits to feel your best every day:
- Reach out to someone you trust: Family and friends can offer valuable advice, but a therapist can help you dive into your problems to find solutions. It’s a safe place to express yourself without the pressure to reciprocate support. Therapy can happen in real-time, such as in text messaging or phone conversations, but services can also be offered thought video conferencing and online chat.
- Get exercise: Physical activity can boost your mood, concentration, and alertness. Try running, walking, yoga, dancing, and so on. What’s important is that you’re active for at least 30 minutes a day.
- Do the things you enjoy: You like what you like because you are who you are. Hobbies can range from quiet time alone to playing sports, and participating in these activities can lead to an improved sense of well-being. Having a regular routine will help you maintain good mental health.
- Take a minute to focus on the world around you: You’ll be surprised at just how much you can change by choosing to focus on the world around you. You can free yourself of swirling thoughts by reconnecting with the world and seeing its beauty. The most important step is to turn off your phone.
Conclusions
A car accident can transform your life overnight, affecting your ability to work, enjoy hobbies, and even carry out everyday tasks. With time, poor mental health can increase your risk of chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The good news is that femtech companies are developing solutions for various areas, including mental health.
An early PET scan after one cycle of chemotherapy may help predict how aggressive breast cancer responds to treatment, a study suggests.
Research led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London and King’s College London suggests that an early scan taken after one cycle of chemotherapy could help predict how well a patient’s cancer will respond to treatment.
The study focused on patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of the disease in which cancer cells lack receptors for the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, as well as the HER2 protein.
Patients with TNBC are usually treated with chemotherapy prior to surgery. While many respond well, residual disease at surgery, typically around six months later, is associated with a significantly poorer prognosis. Identifying people sooner who are unlikely to respond remains a major clinical challenge.
The research explored whether using PET imaging shortly after treatment begins, rather than relying only on MRI scans later in the treatment process, could provide earlier insight into how a patient’s cancer is responding. Twenty-two patients were recruited, with fourteen undergoing FDG-PET scans before treatment and after the first cycle of chemotherapy.
The findings, published in Clinical Cancer Research, showed that changes seen on PET scans after just one cycle of chemotherapy were strongly associated with subsequent response, including whether there was no detectable cancer, known as a complete response, by the end of treatment. Importantly, early PET response showed stronger associations with treatment outcomes than standard mid-treatment MRI scans in this study.
Being able to identify patients who are not responding well at an early stage could allow clinicians to adjust treatment sooner or consider alternative approaches. These findings may also support future strategies to better tailor treatment intensity to individual patients.
The study also compared two types of PET tracers, FDG and FLT, to determine which was most suitable. While both met the study’s technical criteria, FDG-PET was selected for further evaluation due to its better image quality, greater consistency and wider use in clinical practice.
The research also explored how imaging changes after just one cycle of chemotherapy relate to the body’s immune response to treatment. Biopsies taken before and after the first cycle of chemotherapy showed that an increase in immune cells within the tumour was strongly associated with both early PET changes and improved treatment outcomes.
The researchers emphasise that these findings now need to be validated in larger studies. Future work will aim to confirm these results in broader patient groups and explore more accessible imaging approaches, such as ultrasound, alongside PET and MRI.
Sheeba Irshad, professor of cancer immunology at King’s College London and lead of the Breast Cancer Now KCL Research Unit, said:
“In patients who had PET scans both before treatment and after the first cycle, we found that this early scan could predict whether they were likely to achieve a complete response by the end of treatment. These findings highlight the potential of early imaging to guide treatment decisions, and now need to be validated in larger, modern clinical trials.”
Andrew Tutt, professor of breast oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“Research that helps us determine early who is already benefitting from standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy and who might benefit from clinical trials to find better treatments is vital. This study shows that FDG-PET may have great value in this regard. We hope to be able to design studies that further investigate and validate these findings.”
The study was supported by funding from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Breast Cancer Now, Cancer Research UK, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity.
We are excited unveil the three finalists competing for one of the Femtech World Awards’ most coveted honours: the Startup of the Year Award, sponsored by Future Fertility.
This award celebrates an early-stage company making a bold impact in women’s health through innovation, vision and execution.
The winner will be announced at our virtual ceremony on 19 June, with the decision made by a representative from category sponsor Future Fertility.
Congratulations to the shortlist and thank you to everyone who entered or nominated.
Startup of the Year Shortlist
Hello Inside is the first women’s health AI company to turn daily metabolic signals into outcomes women feel and healthcare systems reimburse.
Women’s health has long been under-researched, and current AI benchmarks fail on women’s health questions roughly sixty percent of the time.
Hello Inside built the architecture to close that gap.
Across four years and 12,000+ validated metabolic profiles, three in four women improve at least one symptom within ninety days.
They lose four kilograms in three months, moving from overweight into the healthy range. In a clinical study with Alisa Vitti’s Flo Living, 91.9 per cent reduced PMS burden within sixty days.
U-Ploid is an early-stage biotechnology company tackling one of the most fundamental challenges in fertility care: the sharp, age-related decline in egg quality that limits outcomes across IVF and egg freezing.
While much of the field focuses on improving assessment and selection, U-Ploid is developing a first-in-class therapeutic approach designed to improve egg quality itself by addressing the biological causes of age-related chromosomal errors.
Supported by strong preclinical evidence and now advancing into human studies, U-Ploid combines scientific rigour, regulatory discipline and long-term vision to help redefine what is possible in fertility care.
Gestational diabetes is a strong risk factor for future type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal pre-pregnancy weight, according to a study at the University of Gothenburg.
The researchers call for earlier testing and better follow-up.
“Our results show that gestational diabetes functions as a kind of stress test for the body’s ability to manage blood sugar, and identifies women with a greatly increased risk of future type 2 diabetes”, said Jon Edqvist, PhD and affiliated to research at the University of Gothenburg, and operating room nurse at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Gestational diabetes is a special type of diabetes that can affect pregnant women.
The condition is defined as elevated blood sugar levels, without previously known diabetes. Treatment involves self-monitoring of blood sugar, advice on lifestyle habits and, if necessary, medication.
Identifying gestational diabetes is important because the disease increases the risk of complications such as preeclampsia, the need for a cesarean section and high birth weight for the baby.
Those who have had gestational diabetes are also at higher risk of later developing type 2 diabetes.
In the current study, published in eClinicalMedicine, researchers now show that gestational diabetes is a strong indicator of future risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even in women with normal weight before pregnancy.
Elevated risk even with normal weight
The study is based on data from the Medical Birth Registry on just over 1.15 million first-time mothers in Sweden, who gave birth between 1987 and 2019. 16,870 women with confirmed gestational diabetes were compared with age-matched women without the diagnosis. The median follow-up period was nine years.
The results show that women with a BMI of 35 and above, i.e. severe obesity, had an almost tenfold increased risk of developing gestational diabetes compared to women with normal weight.
The risk of subsequent type 2 diabetes also increased with higher BMI, but it was significantly increased even with normal weight, which the researchers describe as particularly worrying.
More follow-up and more studies
The researchers behind the study welcome the recently updated recommendations on gestational diabetes in Sweden, where a higher proportion of pregnant women at increased risk are expected to be offered testing earlier in pregnancy, and if necessary, interventions.
“Diagnostics and care of gestational diabetes have looked very different in different parts of the country,” said Annika Rosengren, professor at the University of Gothenburg.
“There is a need for both improved follow-up after gestational diabetes, and more studies that investigate how such follow-up affects future health and prognosis”
News4 weeks agoWomen’s digital health market set to reach US$5.28 billion in 2026 – report
Insight4 weeks agoWhy the UK’s fertility rate keeps falling – and what it means if you’re trying now
Wellness4 weeks agoWomen’s HealthX unveils Northwell Health, Corewell Health, Biogen & more to headline Chronic Disease stage
Opinion3 weeks agoWhat Maternal Mental Health Month reveals about where postpartum support actually breaks down
Fertility4 weeks agoToxins and climate harms having ‘alarming’ effect on fertility, research warns
News3 weeks agoNIH Grant terminations disproportionately impact minority scientists, research finds
Wellness2 weeks agoWUKA brings Period-Positive Pool Party to London Aquatics Centre to keep girls swimming through puberty
Fertility4 weeks agoResearcher explores weight loss jab impact on PCOS