HBO Adds Mental Health Advisories To 14 Shows, Including ‘Euphoria,’ ‘Girls’

Zendaya plays a recovering drug addict and high schooler in HBO’s “Euphoria.”

photo: Eddy Chen/HBO

Topline: Amid increased concern over entertainment’s psychological influence, HBO announced Thursday—on World Mental Health Day—it would add mental health advisories to run before many of its shows, old and new, and will release short videos analyzing characters’ issues like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

• The alerts are scheduled to start running Thursday. At least 14 of HBO’s shows will carry them, including hits Euphoria, The Sopranos, Barry and Girls.

• Euphoria, which stars Zendaya as a high-schooler and recovering drug addict, already had a dedicated mental health resource section on HBO’s website.

• Each advisory will tell viewers which mental health issues are depicted in the show they’re about to watch and will provide contact info for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
• The network emphasized that the advisories are intended to get viewers talking about mental illness, not to discourage them from watching.
• HBO is also creating short videos in which a psychologist discusses mental illnesses portrayed in its shows. The first features Girls and Hannah Horvath’s obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Key background: HBO isn’t the first network to include mental health warnings with its shows. The first season of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why sparked controversy over its graphic depiction of suicide, prompting the streamer to add warnings before episodes. In July, Netflix cut the suicide scene under the advice of medical experts. Mental health professionals, along with teachers and parents, had previously raised concerns that watching the show could trigger young people into committing self-harm, known as a “contagion effect.” A study supported by the National Institutes of Health found that 13 Reasons Why was associated with a nearly 30% rise in suicide rates among young people ages 10 to 17 in the month following the show’s release.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2019/10/10/hbo-adds-mental-health-advisories-before-14-shows-including-euphoria-girls/#6f87127c6b04

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WuXi AppTec, BioSolveIT Introduce New Chemical Space of Tangible Molecules

WuXi AppTec Research Service Division and BioSolveIT today launched a new virtual chemical space called GalaXi.
Largely built from WuXi AppTec’s library of novel drug-like scaffolds, GalaXi offers access to billions of compounds to drug discoverers around the world. Due to a carefully selected building block supply and proven chemistry, the GalaXi space consists of molecules that can be quickly synthesized on demand.
Novel molecular entities are in high demand to combat diseases such as cancer, bacterial and viral infections, as well as illnesses of the central nervous system. Over decades, traditional compound libraries containing millions of compounds have been collected and curated. However, many more compounds, though synthetically feasible, have traditionally been inaccessible due to physical and informatic limitations. The GalaXi space is a combination of WuXi AppTec’s chemistry expertise and BioSolveIT’s cutting edge software technologies, resulting in a chemical space housing billions of virtual molecules that can be mined within minutes and synthesized within a few weeks.
The game-changing element of this system lies in the design of a virtual chemical space that is both vast and practical in its synthetic feasibility. Navigation of GalaXi relies on clever algorithms that account for the chemicals and chemistry expertise to turn ideas into matter. Not only is the GalaXi orders of magnitude larger than traditional libraries, but also turn-around times and costs of custom synthesis are drastically reduced.
‘We used to be able to screen millions of compounds in seconds, but access to billions of compounds in minutes is just amazing,’ said Dr. Steve Yang, Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer of WuXi AppTec. ‘This is exactly what our clients need. The pressure on research to come up with novel ideas is indeed enormous, both in terms of time and cost. With GalaXi we take a large step forward in improving the productivity of new drug discovery and bring new medicines to patients faster.’

https://www.marketscreener.com/WUXI-APPTEC-CO-LTD-44403583/news/WuXi-AppTec-Research-Service-Division-and-BioSolveIT-Introduce-GalaXi-a-Vast-New-Chemical-Space-o-29367643/