More Americans across age, gender and race are seeking mental health treatment than just two decades ago.

• Why it matters: The boom in demand reflects a growing crisis and a national uptick in anxiety and depression — but also reflects more honest conversations about mental health, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.

By the numbers: 23% of U.S. adults visited a mental health professional in 2022, up from 13% in 2004, according to Gallup polling.

• Pandemic-era isolation drove up depression and anxiety among Americans from all walks of life, including teen girls, parents of young kids and retirees.
• Numerous studies have linked social media use to deteriorating mental health among young people. In one study, published in the American Economic Review, researchers found that when Facebook hit college campuses, it led to a 7% rise in severe depression and a 20% rise in anxiety disorder.
• America's substance abuse crisis has spiraled, with fentanyl overdose deaths quadrupling from 2016 to 2021.

Therapists are inundated with inquiries from new patients, The New York Times reports.

• “It’s really heartbreaking having to turn people away,” Amy Wagner, a therapist in Carrollton, Ga., who says she had to decline five new patients just this week, tells Axios. “It’s just not slowing down.”

⛅ The silver lining: "We're seeing a different type of conversation around mental health nowadays," says Daniel Fridberg, a psychologist at the University of Chicago.

• 91% of users of the dating app Hinge say they'd prefer to date someone in therapy, The Times notes, citing a Hinge study.

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The U.S. has just endured the deadliest six months of mass killings since at least 2006, AP reports.

• From Jan. 1 to June 30, the nation endured 28 mass killings (four or more killed, not counting the assailant).
• 27 of the 28 involved guns. The other was a fire that killed four in a home in Monroe, La. A 37-year-old man was charged with arson and murder.

A database maintained by AP and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University, tracks this violence back to 2006.

• James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern who has been tracking crime data for 45+ years, said: "We used to say there were two to three dozen a year. The fact that there's 28 in half a year is a staggering statistic."

What's happening: Experts attribute the rising bloodshed to a growing population with an increased number of guns in the U.S.

• Yet for all the headlines, mass killings are statistically rare — and represent a fraction of the country's overall gun violence.

Labor strife across the country is continuing to intensify as multiple industries head into a season of high-stakes union negotiations, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

⚡ What's happening: UPS and the Teamsters union are on the precipice of what could be an economically devastating strike as soon as August.

• SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents Hollywood actors, is on strike for the first time since 1980, joining Hollywood writers who were already on the picket line. The 160,000 members of the actors' union are now barred from acting in new projects and promoting completed ones, The New York Times notes.
• The United Auto Workers union is about to start negotiations with the Big Three automakers, as its current contract expires in September.

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All regions of the U.S. saw sharp drops in inflation in June, Bloomberg notes from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

• New England now has the lowest annual inflation rate for any region in the past two years — just under 2%.
• The South and Mountain states are holding onto some of the highest inflation rates — 3.8% and 3.7%, respectively.

The airfare component of the consumer price index fell by 8% month-on-month in June, and a stunning 19% year-on-year.

Why it matters: The massive spike in airfares that we saw in the spring of 2022 really does seem to have been transitory, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.

• As a percentage of income, airfares were only ever cheaper than this after the pandemic forced everyone to stay at home.
• In terms of the number of hours the average American needs to work in order to be able to afford a plane ticket, prices are roughly half where they were 10 years ago.

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DES MOINES, Iowa — A half-dozen GOP presidential contenders not named Donald Trump showed up at a convention center here Friday for their first big job interviews, and two things quickly became clear, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.

1. After ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson questioned the contenders before about 2,000 evangelical Christians, the crowd's favorites were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
2. Former Vice President Mike Pence was booed as he defended his support for U.S. military aid to help Ukraine fight off Russia's invasion.

Ramaswamy's platform is straight from Trump's playbook: The 37-year-old has vowed to gut the FBI and the IRS and opposes U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

• As he left Carlson's interview at the Family Leadership Summit on Friday, Ramaswamy got a standing ovation from the evangelical crowd, which gave a similarly warm exit to DeSantis.

Carlson peppered Pence with questions about his stance on U.S. involvement in Ukraine.

• The tense exchange was symbolic of how Trump has changed the GOP: An evangelical former vice president who emphasizes national defense and his opposition to abortion — the top priority for many conservative Christians — was dismissed by a crowd of evangelicals.

🥊 Reality check: A healthy chunk of the crowd appeared to back Trump — and seemed to be shopping for a No. 2 choice, just in case.

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This week, I finally got to experience my favorite childhood sport in person. I'll never forget that night, because I got to share it with my dad, Axios Dallas' Naheed Rajwani-Dharsi writes.

🖼️ Zoom out: The British introduced cricket to their colonies, including in America, centuries ago. It remains one of the world's most popular sports, but it's lost ground in the U.S. to sports like football, basketball, baseball and soccer.

• Major League Cricket hopes to make cricket popular in America again.

At the match, the concessions had South Asian food, dhol players hyped up the crowd, and fans got to sample basmati rice.

• Big plays earned fireworks, just like at Texas Rangers games.

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Expect to see more pops of pink in homes as Barbie drives the summer of nostalgia, Axios' Brianna Crane writes.

• U.S. search interest in "Barbie pink" in the home and garden category more than quadrupled in June and is now at a 10-year high, Google Trends data shows.
• "Pink" and "Barbie pink" were among the top 10 trending paint colors in June.

🧮 By the numbers: Searches for "Barbiecore aesthetic room" on Pinterest jumped 1,135% from May 2022 to May 2023.

• Searches for a Barbie bathroom and living room each increased 135%.

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