Introducing our rising senior Department of Psychology Scholar Award winners! 🏆 Ava Santiago, a Barrett, The Honors College at ASU student majoring in psychology with a minor in business, conducts research with Associate Professor Rebecca Blais in the Military Social Science Laboratory. Last summer, she was selected as an ORISE Summer Scholar and worked in the Chronobiology, Light, and Sleep Lab at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She recently presented at the inaugural Barrett Leadership Conference on “how to protégé,” offering advice on becoming the kind of student professors are eager to mentor. Aliya Hashim, also an honors student, is double majoring in neuroscience and pharmacology and toxicology, with a minor in philosophy. She’s a research assistant in three labs, including Assistant Professor Jessica Verpeut’s SOCIAL (Study of Circuits in Adolescent Life) Neurobiology Lab. Passionate about inclusivity in STEM, she works at ASU’s RISE Center; mentors through Early Start; and volunteers as the Education Co-Lead for REACT, RISE Tutoring and at both St. Luke’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center. She also mentors Afghan girls through the Alekain Foundation, helping support their academic and personal growth. Kudos, Ava and Aliya! (fb)

Cannabis-related hospital visits are on the rise. In Arizona, these visits increased by 20% between 2016 and 2021. In many cases, patients were diagnosed with a mental health condition. Associate Professor Madeline Meier and her co-authors found that cannabis-related visits were nearly eight times more likely than non-cannabis-related visits to list a mental health condition as the primary diagnosis. That link grew stronger each year — especially among adults 65 and older. “I think that health care providers have an opportunity, if they find out a person is using cannabis, to educate them that the THC content has increased a lot in recent years. I think that we have to warn people that this more potent cannabis could potentially be associated with more acute harms as well as potentially longer-term mental health risks,” said Meier. Learn more in this expert Q&A: news.asu.edu/20250507-health-and-medicine-asu-study-cannabis-related-hospital-visits-on-rise-many-linked-mental-health (fb)