State Hospital wants accused arsonist in jail -Rutland (VT) Herald

By Susan Smallheer

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Authorities from the Vermont State Hospital want Cheryle Potwin back in prison and out of one of their psychiatric beds.

Potwin, 49, of Sharon, has been in the State Hospital since July after a district judge ordered a fourth evaluation. Potwin claims she has at least nine different personalities and suffers from multiple personality disorder.

Potwin was arrested in September 2006 on charges that she set several fires in the Woodstock-Hartland area and she's a prime suspect in several arsons in New Hampshire as well. Potwin has been either in jail or in the state hospital since her arrest.

Since her arrest, Potwin has been evaluated by at least four psychiatrists or psychologists, each with a slightly different conclusion, but with most finding her competent to stand trial, but split sharply on whether she suffers from multiple personality disorder and whether she is faking her illness. She was not in court Monday for the hearing.

But an expert in multiple personality disorder, or as it is now known as dissociative identity disorder, most recently concluded that while she suffered from the rare mental illness, she was competent to stand trial.

Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand told District Judge Kathleen Manley that Dr. Richard Loewenstein of Sheppard Pratt Health Systems of Baltimore, who is a nationally recognized expert on dissociative identity disorder, had found she was able to assist her attorney in her defense and understood the charges against her.

Her attorney, Kevin Griffin of White River Junction, told Manley he wanted Potwin to stay at the State Hospital, rather than the state's women's prison, because of the better psychiatric care at the hospital.

Griffin said that Loewenstein, while finding her competent to stand trial, was "the most severely mentally ill person" he'd evaluated.

To send her back to prison might trigger her multiple personalities, or "alters," as the psychiatrists call them, her attorney said.

But Kristin Chandler, the assistant attorney general handling the case, said Potwin belongs back in prison and not taking up one of the "very valuable beds" at the State Hospital.

And Chandler disputed Griffin's characterization of Potwin's state of mind or behavior.

"She has no problems, she's a model patient," Chandler said.

Judge Manley gave the attorneys until Friday to file legal motions on the matter, and said she would make a decision early next week.

"I'm not ready to send her here or send her there," the judge said.

Manley noted that an involuntary hospitalization hearing was probably the next court hearing in Potwin's case. Such a hearing will be "long and arduous," the judge said.

After the Monday afternoon hearing, Sand said the Potwin case was "a fascinating and difficult case."

He said Loewenstein, who has a practice in Baltimore, had testified for Vermont prosecutors in the Hazard Campbell rape case several years ago.

He said Loewenstein's evaluation was not part of the public record at this point.

In the Woodstock case, Potwin was discovered inside the Kilcullen home by Rory Kilcullen, 23, who confronted Potwin and called police. Kilcullen was able to remember a portion of Potwin's car registration number.

Potwin is charged with attempted first-degree arson and burglary, since she allegedly broke into the Kilcullen home.

If convicted, she faces a 10-year sentence on the arson charge and a 25-year sentence on the burglary charge. Potwin is being held for lack of $50,000 bail.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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Mentally ill overlooked for health care -Palm Beach (FL) Post

By Carolyn Susman

This is a horror story that just happens to fall on Halloween.

Some may think "horror" is a little strong, but anyone concerned about the state of the nation's severely mentally ill will agree that description is apt for the findings of a paper co-authored by a Florida Atlantic University professor, Dr. Charles Hennekens.

Hennekens, and Dr. John W. Newcomer, have put together in writing what separate studies have shown: That patients with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression lose an average of 25 years or more of life expectancy due - not to suicide - but to cardiovascular disease (heart attack) that isn't diagnosed or treated or even given the degree of preventive care that the average patient receives.

This isn't a question of prejudicial treatment, Hennekens says, but of doctors who are missing signs of disease, patients who are noncompliant when placed on medications, poor access to medical care for these patients, and even the antipsychotic drugs used to treat their illnesses.

"I'm not in favor of assessing blame, but in pointing out the problem," Hennekens says, when asked why there is such an under-diagnosis of heart disease among these patients.

"I think they're an under-served population and I'd like to call attention to this pressing clinical problem and get public attention for it."

Coupled with the fact that these mentally ill, he said, are fatter, smoke more, and are less physically active than the general population, the outlook isn't good unless care for them is changed.

"I don't think it's fair to blame it on drugs, doctors, or patients," says Hennekens, who formerly was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"It has to be a shared responsibility. It's a big mistake to place blame. This is a multifaceted problem."

He says he has gotten a positive reaction from both cardiologists and psychiatrists since the paper was published Oct. 17 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But when asked how realistic is his call for improved education among doctors and patients and a reallocation of resources to deal with this issue, he backs away.

"I'm an academic. My research brings problems to those involved with problem solving. I'm not qualified to say how realistic it is, because it depends on how seriously it's taken by those people."

Among the findings published:

* Patients with severe mental illness have nearly twice the incidence of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and obesity as the general population.

* Patients with diabetes and severe mental illness are less likely than patients with diabetes and no mental illness to receive the acceptable standard of care.

* There is a crucial need for new approaches for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in patients with severe mental illnesses.

* Research should be directed at finding antipsychotic medications with less adverse cardiovascular impact.

* If nothing changes, "avoidable premature mortality" from heart disease among the severely mentally ill "is likely to continue and increase in severity." Read more!

State to seek death penalty in retrial -Uniontown (PA) Herald-Standard

By Jennifer Harr

State prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a Georges Township man accused of killing two people in 1984.

As early as next week, Joseph Nara's could face a retrial in the deaths of his wife, DeLorean Churby, and mother-in-law, Virginia Ruth Churby, though with the recent filing, it is unlikely that the trial will occur so soon.

Nara, 56, of Waynesburg had his dual life sentences overturned earlier this year by a federal appellate court. The court essentially found that there was evidence that Nara was mentally ill when he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the women's deaths.

Although prosecutors have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, that will not stop the state Attorney General's office from trying the case as early as next week, according to Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman at the office.

He said Tuesday that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling does not bar them from seeking the death penalty against Nara despite his earlier sentence of life imprisonment.

The case law, said Hagen-Frederiksen, indicates that once an appeal sets the conviction aside, "double jeopardy has not terminated, so that the life sentence imposed in connection with the initial conviction raises no double jeopardy bar to a death sentence on retrial."

Double jeopardy is the premise that a person cannot be tried for the same crime twice.

State prosecutors took over the case at the request of Fayette County District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon. Her father, also an attorney, had contact with Nara while she was working in his office, and Vernon wanted to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

The alleged killings happened after Nara's wife left him, and he found letters written between her and another man. The Attorney General's office also prosecuted the case in 1984 because the alleged other man was a state trooper.

That trooper has since retired, and so the case would have been tried by Vernon's office.

Nara fled to North Carolina after the shootings, but turned himself in to police after a short time, and entered the guilty pleas in June 1984.

After he was sentenced, Nara appealed through various channels. By 1999, Nara took his case to federal court in Pittsburgh. The case took several years to wind its way through the court system, but in 2005, a federal judge granted Nara's request to vacate the pleas.

State prosecutors appealed that decision to the federal 3rd Circuit Court, and in May, it upheld the lower court's determination that Nara's conviction should be vacated.

The appellate court based its decision in part on a 1990 hearing in Fayette County Court.

During that hearing, then-Judge William Franks found that Nara could withdraw his guilty pleas because his attorney presented evidence that Nara was probably "psychotic" when he pleaded guilty, and incapable of understanding what he was doing.

The doctor who testified before Franks indicated that Nara's condition "steadily worsened" after his wife left him, and left him "psychotic" and "out of touch with reality" when he pleaded guilty.

However, prosecutors appealed that finding, and the Superior Court reversed Franks' ruling because the judges believed the issue of competency had been legally waived.

Before the killings, the federal appeals court judges found that Nara was treated for a suicide attempt, and briefly committed for mental health issues. After he turned himself in, Nara was transferred from the county prison to Mayview State Hospital in Bridgeville to again deal with mental health issues.

He was transferred from Mayview back to prison four days later when he spoke of escaping.

After Nara was sentenced, he was put into the medical unit for mental health treatment, and in February 1985, he tried to kill himself in the prison hospital. Read more!

Rights - South Florida Daily Business Review

Lawsuit seeks to ban gassing of mentally ill inmates at maximum-security Florida prison

By: John Pacenti

Advocates for schizophrenic Jeremiah Thomas say he can’t control his behavior. He believes his 9-year-old daughter lives with him in his cell. He has eaten his feces. He has tried to cut off his genitals. When he bangs on his cell door, they say it’s just another manifestation of his mental illness.

Guards at Florida State Prison were told not to try to subdue Thomas with pepper spray, tear gas or Mace. His file noted he was impervious to such procedures. Nevertheless, Thomas was gassed — the terminology used at the prison — eight times during a 21-day period in the summer of 2000.

Thomas is one of 10 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Corrections officials and employees that aims to stop the gassing of mentally ill inmates at the state’s maximum-security prison near Starke.

The lawsuit claims a violation of Eighth Amendment rights barring cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan in Jacksonville scheduled a hearing for Thursday on motions in the case.

Enclosed in his 9-by-7-foot cell, Thomas sometimes was gassed twice a day and was severely burned on his hands and torso, his attorneys say. The gas is released through a food flap using a fire extinguisher-like device.

“Mentally, a lot of them don’t know what is going on,” said Leon Fresco, a Miami attorney with Holland & Knight who is representing the inmates pro bono for the Florida Justice Institute in Miami and Florida Institutionalized Legal Services in Gainesville. “The inmates describe it as a harrowing experience. They all feel they are going to die. The intent of the gas is to create psychological trauma. It makes you feel like you are suffocating.”

Thomas said in a statement for the lawsuit that the gassings “would eat me up on the inside. It burn (sic) me real bad.”

The defendants — Corrections Secretary James McDonough, prison warden Randall Bryant and seven current or former corrections employees — have filed a motion for summary judgment to end the case.

They argue there was no long-term physical harm to the inmates, and the state has instituted policies and training to address the problem. Videotaping has been reinstated in some instances, and gassing is used only as a last resort, according to court documents filed by an attorney representing McDonough and Bryant in their official capacity.

The state’s motion for summary judgment claims a successful lawsuit would force the guards into an ill-suited diagnostic role, and they challenge the claim that the inmates were not acting out of their own volition.

“To my knowledge there is not a shred of evidence — except for maybe one case in 2000 — that the inmate was unable to understand the simple order to stop screaming and yelling and kicking their cell doors,” said attorney Peter Martin of Dennis Jackson Martin & Fontela in Tallahassee, who is representing McDonough and Bryant in their official capacity.

Martin noted the incidents of gassings at the prison that houses Florida’s death row dropped precipitously from a high of 610 in 2003 to 193 in 2006. There were 47 gassings in the first seven months of this year.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said.

Curt Massie The 2004 lawsuit claims the prisoners knew mentally ill inmates were not to be gassed but did it anyway. It also claims the inmates were not properly decontaminated in the shower afterward.

Photographs filed as exhibits in the case show burns on inmates. Plaintiff Curt Massie is shown with severe burns across much of his body. The skin on his back is ruby red and peeling.

The lawsuit captures a turbulent time at the prison when corrupt warden James V. Crosby Jr. was in charge. During Crosby’s service, death row inmate Frank Valdes was fatally beaten in a cell extraction after complaining about repeated prisoner abuse in 1999. Guards charged in Valdes’ death were acquitted, and the state settled a civil suit brought by the Valdes family for $737,500 in January.

In a cruel irony, Crosby ordered the increased use of gas to subdue unruly prisoners in lieu of cell extractions. He also discontinued a practice of videotaping the gassings.

George Shultz Jr. of Holland & Knight’s Jacksonville office is the lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs. He said documents show there were about three dozen gassings at the prison before Crosby’s edict. After Valdes’ death, the number went from 38 in 1999 to 240 in 2000.

“Inmates are the most vulnerable people. They are at the bottom of the hierarchy,” Fresco said. “Crosby was running a prison system that didn’t have any accountability.”

Crosby, who went on to become corrections secretary, is serving an eight-year federal prison term for taking kickbacks from a prison snack and soda vendor. His attorney, Ron Wasilenko of Gobelman Love Gavin Blazs Wasilenko in Jacksonville, had no comment.

Sara Norman, an attorney with the Prison Law Office, a prisoner advocacy firm in San Rafael, Calif., said the attorneys taking on Florida’s penal system are highly skilled, but succeeding in a lawsuit on behalf of prisoners is difficult.

Congress and the courts have set a high legal standard for prisoners to successfully sue by requiring proof of willful cruelty rather than negligence only, Norman said.

“There is what is called a subjective prong. It’s incredibly hard to show,” she said. “With use of force you can’t just say, ‘An officer beat me and shouldn’t have.’ You have to show the officer intended to harm.”

The prisoners are seeking damages, but the main goal of the lawsuit is to obtain an injunction to ban the gassing of mentally ill inmates.

Fresco said the policy is applied inconsistently, and corrections officials refuse to establish simple solutions, such as setting aside cells for mentally ill inmates with rubber padding to reduce the noise made by kicking the door.

Besides Thomas and Massie, plaintiffs include Michael McKinney, Sylvester Butler, Kelvin Frazier, Paul Echols, Charles Morgan, Antonio Ward, Reginald Williams and Eugene Ulrath.

They are in prison for a variety of crimes. McKinney is serving life for murder and other crimes. Thomas is in for second-degree murder and robbery and is set to be released in 2018. Butler is living in a halfway house after serving an eight-year sentence for trafficking in stolen goods.

The defendants include McDonough, Bryant and Crosby and current or former prison employees Bradley Carter, George Sapp, Allen Clark, Stacey Green and Oscar Shipley. Green resigned after he was investigated for allegedly selling anabolic steroids to other guards.

“Every defendant in this case has either personally gassed inmates maliciously or sadistically, or has created, implemented, or maintained policies permitting gassing of mentally inmates for disciplinary purposes rather than as a last resort,” the suit alleges.

In one instance involving Massie, Green retaliated against the inmate for complaining to a nurse about not receiving his medication, the lawsuit said. The complaint said Massie made a funny face at the nurse.

“Massie was sitting on his bunk dressed only in his boxer shorts when Green used chemical agents on him even though he was neither yelling or banging on his cell,” the suit states. Green emptied the canister against regulations and then returned a few minutes later and pumped Mace into Massie’s cell.

Green later admitted to falsifying reports about the incident. Massie suffered second-degree burns. Green’s attorney in the civil case, Dixon Bridgers at Vernis and Bowling in Jacksonville, could not be reached for comment before deadline.

The lawsuit also alleges a vicious cycle in which unstable mentally ill inmates at Florida State Prison are shipped to an in-patient center down the road at Union Correctional Institute in Raiford, stabilized and sent back.

“Thomas was sent back at 11 o’clock at night, and they gassed him at 1 in the morning. He hadn’t been there but a couple of hours,” Shultz said. Documents show guards had noted Thomas was impervious to disciplinary methods.

Dr. Ogla Infante, a Union psychologist who treated Thomas in 2003, said Florida State Prison is not the right place to house Thomas, who could easily revert to a fractured state of mind.

“This inmate took me six — close to six months to stabilize,” she said. “I would hate to see him decompensate because it would take forever to bring him back.” Read more!

Educating minorities on mental-health issues -Indianapolis Star

By RoNeisha Mullen

If undiagnosed and untreated, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or bipolar disorder can be devastating, particularly for black adolescents.

If ADHD isn't treated before age 15, those children are three times more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, said Dr. William Bailey Jones, a local psychiatrist. And even though most people with bipolar disorder aren't diagnosed until their late 20s, symptoms often are noticeable by the teens, Jones said.

"Fifty percent of all incarcerated males meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD and 80 percent of all high-school dropouts are ADHD," he said.

As many as one of five American children have ADHD, a genetic disorder prevalent in school-aged children that creates problems with attentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination of all three behavioral problems.

Jones addressed that issue and the inefficient diagnosis methods and treatments for bipolar disorder in black children at an April forum conducted by the Indiana Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists. More than 100 people attended.

After years of the organization's fluctuating membership, Randal Horton, a psychologist and president of the local chapter, said it is on the rebound and needed more than ever.

Horton said the chapter, with about 25 members, meets about every six weeks in members' homes and offices.

"Our organization helps educate the minority community about mental health issues," Horton said. "The increase of illnesses such as ADHD and bipolar disorder among black youths is a problem that needs to be addressed."

The forum, held in conjunction with Black Mental Health Month, is one of two annual events sponsored by the chapter. The other is a reception in the fall to introduce minority psychology students to working psychologists.
The reception is a good networking opportunity for black college students studying psychology, Horton said.

For some, the result is a mentoring program that "pairs a psychologist with these students based on the student's professional interest," Horton said. Such mentors can help students with their theses and dissertations and provide referrals and research opportunities.

Indianapolis resident Martha Davis, who is being mentored through the program, said her experience has been positive. She is studying at the University of Indianapolis to be a clinical psychologist.

"It's through the mentorship that I was able to secure my practicum with Dr. June," Davis said of Pamela June, a behavioral specialist for Pike Township schools and treasurer of the black psychologist association's Indiana chapter. "If it wasn't for networking through the association, I'm not sure I would have had this opportunity."

A former teacher of 30 years, Davis said a degree in clinical psychology will allow her to meet more specific clinical needs of children -- especially those who need specialized remediation.

"As a child psychologist, I feel like I could make more of an impact one-on-one with my students," she said.

One of the problems with bipolar disorder, Horton said, is that few guidelines exist to treat the condition in children. Instead, psychologists and doctors try to apply adult standards and adult drugs to youths "with inconsistent and potentially devastating results," he said.

June noted that treatment of such mental illnesses as ADHD and bipolar disorder should include more than medication.

"We don't just look at giving kids' medication and that being the end all," June said. "We design a behavior plan that includes changes of environment. We teach them how to behave, how to manage their behavior, and let them know what we expect from them."

Jones urges parents to have their children evaluated and to seek treatment early.
"ADHD does not affect intellect. It just interferes with the ability to apply that intellect in a God-given way," Jones said. "With an entire team (parents, teachers and doctors) working together, our children with ADHD can do very well."
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Georgia's mental hospitals bear dauntingchallenges - Atlanta Journal Constitution

By ALAN JUDD, ANDY MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Milledgeville — Georgia's state mental hospitals have operated at an average annual budget deficit of $11 million for eight years, contributing to the understaffing that has plagued the facilities, a state official said Tuesday.

"If you have to offset a deficit, you slow down your hiring or don't fill positions,'' Gwen Skinner, director of the state's mental health division, told Gov. Sonny Perdue's mental health commission.

At the seven state-run hospitals, Skinner said, 39 percent of registered nurses' positions were vacant in September, with an annual turnover figure of almost one in three.

"This is a critical, critical issue for us," she said.

In her presentation to the commission, meeting at Central State Hospital, Skinner went into greater detail than ever before in acknowledging problems with underfunding, understaffing and overcrowding in the facilities.

Those problems were the subject of a series of articles this year in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailing questionable deaths and abuse in the state hospitals. The newspaper reported that, from 2002 through 2006, at least 115 state hospital patients died under suspicious circumstances. In another 194 cases, hospital workers physically or sexually abused patients, the newspaper found in its series, "A Hidden Shame.''

Perdue created the study commission after vetoing a General Assembly resolution forming a similar panel, saying lawmakers had excluded executive branch officials as members. The Perdue panel includes representatives from the departments of Corrections, Community Health, and Human Resources, which runs the hospitals.

At Tuesday's meeting, the commission's second, Skinner used newly compiled statistics to show the challenges ahead.

The hospitals typically have operated with occupancy rates in adult psychiatric units of more than 100 percent since March 2005, Skinner said. The optimal figure is 85 percent, she said.

Georgia is churning patients out of its hospitals at a rapid rate.

The typical length of a stay is six days for adult mental health patients, with more than one-third discharged in less than 72 hours.

Patients at Georgia's hospitals are twice as likely to return within 30 days of discharge as the national average.

The state's figures drew pointed questions from commission members.

"How good is the care we're providing?'' asked Dr. Charles Nemeroff, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine.

"This commission came together because of a crisis. It could be a heckuva lot better than what it is now.''

Nemeroff said after the hearing, "You can't really provide adequate care for people with a major psychiatric illness in three or four days in a hospital.''

Nemeroff and other commission members also targeted the lack of mental health services available in the community for discharged patients.

Angela Hicks-Hill, executive director of a community service board in the Milledgeville region, told the panel that funding problems have forced her agency to reduce mental health services, including those for children.

"Three years ago, we had programs in four of six counties,'' she said. "Now we are in just two [counties].''

Mental health advocates reiterated their call for an independent review of hospital deaths and allegations of abuse, and for an ombudsman's office.

Sen. Greg Goggans (R-Douglas), a commission member, said after the hearing that he was encouraged by the panel's discussion. "We've got a long way to go,'' he said. "But we understand our system is broken.''

"I think [the commission] will make a huge difference in the lives of these people.'' Read more!

The person with mental illness: bearing God’s image - Archdiocese of Denver

By Rev. Richard Gill, L.C.

Pope John Paul II wrote: “Whoever suffers from mental illness ‘always’ bears God’s image and likeness in themselves, as does every human being. In addition, they ‘always’ have the inalienable right not only to be considered as an image of God and therefore a person, but also to be treated as such.”

In recent decades, the world has grown much more effective in mobilizing against major health threats such as AIDS, heart disease, cancer and the diseases whose statistics frighten us with their devastating impact on humanity. It is relatively easy to raise awareness of such threats and marshal human and financial resources to combat them. In the area of mental health, however, the situation is quite different.

Incidence of mental illness
It has been estimated that worldwide, as many as 500 million people are affected by some sort of mental illness. It is also said that the United States has the highest rate of mental illness of all the advanced nations: one in four adult Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Yet there is relatively little public awareness of the scope of the problem. And tragically, the stereotypes and stigma which are so often attached to mental illness help to create a culture where those who are affected are falsely seen as helpless victims or objects of charity.

Mental illness and our culture
Without addressing in any great detail the range of medical causes and treatments of mental illness or milder forms of mental or emotional problems, it would be helpful to reflect on the impact of a culture of violence and a culture of materialism. Causes of mental illness vary widely, from inherited chemical imbalances responsible for the development of such illnesses as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, to brain disease, to causes that are more immediately under our control. These man-made causes include, in many areas of the world, the spread of terrorism, the very purpose of which is to inflict widespread mental and emotional suffering. War, with its related atrocities and crimes, can bring out the worst aspects of our nature.

Additional challenges to mental health arise from the general state of culture, the weakening of moral standards, and trends within the culture that work against the true goods of the human person. For many, especially the vulnerable, phenomena such as hedonism and materialism, all too common in advanced societies, can foster exaggerated hopes of pleasure and reward and distorted notions of what constitutes success. Unrealizable hopes leave in their wake people who are severely discouraged and exasperated. Our increasingly technocratic and production-oriented culture tends to neglect the goods of the spirit, the things that make life more properly “human.” Human values are defined more in terms of a “culture of having” rather than a “culture of being.”

Our response to people with mental illness
In a society that judges a person on the value of what he produces, the mentally ill person is easily seen merely as a burden on society. As Christians, then, we are called unceasingly to affirm their dignity as human beings made in the image and likeness of God and to recognize their value to the community.

In what ways do mentally ill persons faithfully reflect the image of God? In an address to health care workers in February 2006, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, observed that “the mentally ill person resembles our Lord on the cross; and since the cross is the only way to resurrection, the mentally ill person … is worthier and reaches such a level of excellence because of the magnitude of his love and the suffering he endures.”

The dedication of so many individuals at work in the field of mental health points us to the dignity of people with mental illness. Often they work amid many difficulties, and it can be challenging to recognize the human dignity of the persons they serve. Caregivers for people with mental illness need a formation of the heart, because they are dealing with human beings who need to be treated at every moment in accord with their God-given dignity. Mental health care workers with a deeply Christian understanding of the redemptive value of suffering will go beyond mere human sympathy to authentic solidarity in suffering, a bond between persons rooted in love.

In short, mental health care workers must have a formation that gives them an authentically Christian understanding of the person, made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ. A formation that gives them a proper understanding of the person’s nature and destiny will lead them to care for the person as a brother or sister, and to seek as much as possible to restore the person’s interior freedom and the capacity to orient his life toward the truth of his existence.

Society in general also has an obligation to foster a serene, balanced way of life in stable families, a workplace promoting true human goods and authentic growth of individuals, a solid consensus on clear moral standards by which we will live together, and real objectivity about behaviors which are detrimental to the health of the culture.

And finally, the Church community itself has a great opportunity and responsibility to recognize and witness to the uniqueness of each member. The parish community must create that counter-cultural environment, in which all people can claim an equal place and contribute through presence and action.

What can you do?
• Understand and show others that the rehabilitation of mentally ill persons is a duty of all society, with special preference for those in greatest need.
• Welcome all persons with disabilities into the parish community and embrace successful parish-based programs.
• Promote social and physical environments that enhance human relations and create for mentally ill persons a sense of belonging to a community.
• Foster the healthy development of children, including their mental functioning.
• Fight against mentalities of moral relativism, consumerism, sexual license and instant gratification.
• Share the Word of God with persons with mental illness, as their mental and physical condition allows it.

Rev. Richard Gill, L.C., was the founding president of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Va. He is director of Our Lady of Mount Kisco Family and Retreat Center in Mount Kisco, N.Y. The full-length version of this article is posted at www.usccb.org/prolife/programs/rlp/Gill.pdf.
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“Manhunt 2:” Most Violent Game Yet? - CBS

Video report here.

Oct. 30, 2007(CBS) Just in time for Halloween comes one of the scariest video games ever seen.

The objective: a mental patient tries to escape from a bizarre insane asylum using everything from a sickle to rip out a character’s skull to a club to attack a police officer, CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports.

As Scott Steinberg, a video game reviewer and author, demonstrated for CBS News, the experience is even more intense when it's played on Nintendo’s Wii, which gets players to act out the violence.

“We’re going to lure them into the open and then chop them up,” Steinberg explained while playing.

"The Wii has motion-sensing controls, and therefore to stab you're gonna mimic a stabbing motion, to swing a sledgehammer or a shovel you would do the same. Unfortunately it's probably not something you would want to have your kids get much practice on," Steinberg said.

That has parents' groups outraged, worried it will be played by teens and younger children.

"It is some of the most horrific, senselessly violent stuff you've ever seen," James Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, said.

CBS News invited Dr. Christopher Lucas, a child psychiatrist at New York University, to watch the game being played.

Sieberg asked him if this is a cause for worry for parents.

“I think we don't know at the moment, but I think this is the sort of game that is most likely to have an effect,” he said. “Games that actually have players act out things in a physical way, are more likely to have one.”

Researchers have not found a direct scientific link between playing violent video games and carrying out those acts in real life. But some studies have shown children who play certain video games become more aggressive and could become desensitized to violence.

The entertainment software rating board has rated "Manhunt 2" "M" for “mature,” meaning no one under 17 should be allowed to play or buy it. It’s made by the same company - Rockstar Games - that created the controversial and popular “Grand Theft Auto” titles.

What surprised industy watchers is that Nintendo, maker of the Wii, has allowed "Manhunt 2" to be played on its system. Nintendo has been known for its kid-friendly games, but now it will have an edgier reputation that may be good for business.

In a statement, Nintendo told CBS News: “Just as with movies, television, and books, different video games appeal to - and are appropriate for - different audiences."

Sieberg took "Manhunt 2" to a local gaming center and let three 20-something-year-old gamers get their hands on it. They enjoy playing, but even these hard-core gamers recoiled at the violent imagery.

“The game looks like they made it like this just to make it controversial, just to bring something up, because there's no reason for the amount of, the level of violence in the game,” said Jackie Waldman.

“This definitely takes the cake as probably the most violent thing I’ve played,” another player, Chris DeMaida, said. Read more!

U.S. Supreme court stays execution in a sign of a broader halt - International Herald-Tribune

By Linda Greenhouse

WASHINGTON: Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.

The vote was not immediately announced but there were two dissenters, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito Jr.. Neither the majority nor the dissenters gave reasons for their positions. The stay will remain in effect until the full court reviews an appeal filed on Monday by lawyers for the inmate, Earl W. Berry, who is on death row for having killed a woman 20 years ago.

While there is no schedule for that review, it almost surely will not take place until the court decides the Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees, which will be argued in January.

The issue in that case is not the constitutionality of lethal injection as such, but rather a more procedural question: how judges should evaluate claims that the particular combination of drugs used to bring about death causes suffering that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Even without a written opinion, the Supreme Court's action Tuesday night clarified a situation that had become increasingly confusing as state courts and the lower federal courts, without further guidance from the justices, wrestled with claims from a growing number of death-row inmates that their imminent executions should be put on hold.

Of these inmates, Berry had perhaps the weakest case. He had run through many appeals in the 19 years since he was sentenced to death, but had not challenged the method of execution until recent days. His federal court lawsuit on which the justices acted was not filed until Oct. 18. The Federal District Court in Jackson, Mississippi, dismissed it as untimely on Oct. 24 in a ruling that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed last Friday.

The appeals court said that, under its own precedent, a late-filed challenge to a method of execution warranted automatic dismissal. The pending Supreme Court case was irrelevant to its determination, the appeals court said, adding that if the justices had a different view of the matter, they should say so.

David Voisin, one of Berry's lawyers, said he had not yet read the order but felt that the court's decision to issue a stay made would "put everyone on the same page" on the issue of lethal injections.

"I think it's a positive sign that as long as this issue is under consideration the court is going to hold executions," Voisin said.

Berry was condemned for abducting and killing Mary Bounds, 56, as she was leaving her church in Houston, Mississippi, on Nov. 29, 1987. Berry, who had been drinking heavily, drove the victim to the edge of a remote field intending to rape her, prosecutors said.

Then he decided not to rape he, but beat her with his fists. Afterward, Berry, who is 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs more than 250 pounds, carried his victim into a patch of woods, where she was found dead of head injuries a few days later. The trail soon led to Berry, who was convicted in Chickasaw County Circuit Court in March 1988.

Berry was a troubled young man who twice tried to kill himself by swallowing razor blades, according to evidence introduced in his case over the years. He has been treated for mental illness, and doctors have rated his intelligence as well below average.

He spent time in prison for assault, larceny, burglary and other relatively minor crimes before the murder. Since then, he has had a good record in prison, state authorities say.

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta and David Stout from Washington . Read more!

Psychologist says teacher in student sex caseis bipolar - Associated Press

October 30, 2007

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - A psychologist says a former Lawrence High School teacher who pleaded guilty to having sex with a male student has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Testifying in Meredith Kane's sentencing hearing yesterday, Dr. Bruce Cappo said the condition inhibited her judgment. The hearing continues in December, and Kane is expected to testify.

According to testimony, the victim -- now 16 -- also suffers from the disorder.

Cappo said Kane saw herself as someone who could help a student who also was having severe problems.

Kane and the youth had a consensual sexual relationship that began in August 2006 and continued until officials discovered it in March.

She pleaded guilty July 2nd to one felony count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. In August Kane was ordered back to jail after prosecutors alleged she was still having contact with the boy.

Information from: Lawrence Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com

Read more!

Guides on Sharing Information Released - The Washington Post

By Maria Glod
October 31, 2007

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings yesterday released what she called "user-friendly" guidelines to help educators and parents interpret federal privacy laws in an initiative prompted by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Concerns about properly balancing privacy and safety concerns have been on the minds of educators nationwide since the April 16 massacre. A panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) found that "widespread confusion" about privacy restrictions led to communications lapses among officials who dealt with mentally ill student Seung Hui Cho before he shot and killed 33 people, including himself.

Spellings appeared with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez at Mount Vernon High School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County for a presentation on school safety.

The Virginia Tech shooting has sparked many efforts to tighten school security, improve mental health services and create systems to alert students of danger. Spellings said schools also have asked for guidance on what information can be shared among government agencies and parents under the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

"People often thought that information couldn't be shared when, in fact, it could be," Spellings said. She said the guidelines help explain "the rules of the road as we share information about students."

The Education Department released three brochures on the law: one for K-12 educators, one for colleges and one for parents. They will be sent to schools, school boards and education associations.

Lawmakers are also considering revising the privacy law. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) has introduced legislation to allow school officials to contact parents if a student is considered suicidal or a threat to attack someone. The law already allows officials to share information with parents or other agencies if there is a health or safety emergency, but Murphy contends that the language is vague.

Spellings said that before any changes are made, officials and educators should understand current law.

Kaine's panel found that at Virginia Tech, officials and others sometimes wrongly believed that educational or medical privacy laws prevented them from sharing information. The panel found, for instance, that police could have informed Cho's parents when female students complained about his behavior. The report also noted that the law applies only to records, and that professors or administrators who notice a student acting strangely can share that information with police and parents.

Lawrence K. Pettit, former president of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, recently completed a report on the shootings for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities that summarizes the panel findings. He is advising university presidents to work with state attorneys general to better understand the intersection of federal educational and medical privacy laws, as well as state restrictions.

"It's become pretty complicated, and I think it's incredibly important that we come to some understanding on how to interpret these laws, and how student affairs officials and faculty and others can proceed when they suspect there's a problem," Pettit said. "What we are trying to do is get all the value we can out of hindsight." Read more!

An autism activist who gets noticed -Chicago Tribune

By Julie Deardorff
October 31, 2007

Actress and comedian Jenny McCarthy was working on her latest book one Sunday when her 4-year-old son wanted to talk. He was so chatty — and distracting — that McCarthy finally said, "Evan, can you please just stop talking for a whole five minutes today?"

Then she covered her mouth with her hand. "Wow. Flash back in time and think about how I had wished and prayed to say that to my kid," she wrote in her best-selling memoir, "Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism" (Dutton $23.95). "I got down on my knees and said, 'No, Evan, Mamma made a mistake. You can talk and talk and talk and talk as much as you want, OK?' "

It's a moment most parents of children with autism only dream about.

But McCarthy's current mission in life — and the impetus behind her fourth book — is to use her famously big mouth to spread an unusual message: There is hope. Autistic children can recover.

"It's kind of like trying to shift the planet without causing a frenzy," said McCarthy, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year who is now a national spokeswoman for Talk About Curing Autism (TACA). "I'm really coming out on my own and saying things that no one has been able to say: Autism is treatable."

Not everyone agrees, which is part of what makes McCarthy's current media blitz so controversial. But Evan, who was diagnosed with autism after a series of seizures at age 3 — something McCarthy believes was triggered by vaccines — is now a typical and communicative 5-year-old who makes eye contact and no longer flaps his arms.

Though he's not completely "cured," McCarthy credits much of his turnaround to alternative "biomedical" interventions that include nutritional changes, detoxification therapies, gastrointestinal treatments and dietary supplements on top of intense behavioral and speech therapy.

When McCarthy removed wheat gluten and casein (found in dairy) from Evan's diet, she said he doubled his language and regained eye contact within two weeks. After treating his yeast overgrowth using antifungal medication, "his social development was back on," she said.

Although these treatments don't produce changes in every child, they're considered normal protocol by the Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) project, which brings together researchers and parents for biannual conferences. DAN! (autism.com) also provides contacts for the approximately 600 doctors in the United States who use complementary and alternative therapies to treat autism.

But biological interventions aren't recommended by mainstream pediatricians, who often are the first point of contact for parents concerned with their child's development.

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes the use of nutritional approaches to treat autism-spectrum disorders in a new clinical report to be released next week, it won't support or refute them until more scientific evidence is available. Many parents, however, believe there is everything to gain and little to lose.

McCarthy wasn't about to wait for evidence-based medicine; she felt she had a limited window of time to pull her son back into this world. After writing her book, she was floored by the number of parents who shared her experience.

"Jenny's story is my story, almost word for word," said Aurora's Jill Konczak, whose 6-year-old son, Kurt, is on the autistic spectrum, yet doctors never suggested removing milk from his diet. "(My) poor little boy literally went through the same withdrawal a crack addict would go through," she said. But "we reached huge milestones with that simple change."

McCarthy's impact on the autism community, meanwhile, has been so dramatic that some are referring to this period as "After Jenny." It's not just that she is voicing the same thing parents have been saying for years ("We vaccinated our babies and something happened") on high-profile programs such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Larry King Live."

"I want to be these women's voices," she said. "When I was 20, I had a feeling I'd be an activist, but I always thought, 'Please, God, don't let it be breast cancer.' Now I can't tell you how much I wish it was breast cancer."
Read more!

Autistic prodigy speaks at LCCC -Elyria (OH) Chronicle Telegram

By Shawn Foucher

ELYRIA — To enter Daniel Tammet’s mind is to enter a world where the number “333” looks like a lumpy glob of oatmeal or porridge.

Tammet’s 29-year-old mind is that of an acquired savant, a mind that possesses limitless talent for calculations and boundless capacity for learning.

For Tammet, it comes with a strange price: The things that make up human experience — the numbers, the words, the people — are transformed in his mind into shapes, textures and colors.

The number “11,” he says, looks beautiful.

The number “6” … dark, tiny and cold.

Tammet, of England, was a guest speaker at Lorain County Community College’s “Meeting Great Minds” series on Monday, where roughly 200 people showed up to learn more about this person that the world simply calls “The Pi Guy.”

“Numbers were my friends — they were the things I played with,” Tammet said, recalling his lonely childhood despite being one of nine children.

An acquired savant — think Dustin Hoffman in “Rainman” — Tammet has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a minor form of autism characterized by social detachment from other people. As a child, he suffered seizures that scientists suspect may have contributed to his remarkable abilities, which include memorizing vast stores of information in short periods of time.

His international claim to fame came just a few years ago when, for International Pi Day, he memorized what most people know as pi — 3.14 — to more than 22,500 decimal places. The number can continue infinitely.

“Like someone gorging on chocolates, I gorged on numbers,” he said of the feat, which was performed in front of Albert Einstein’s blackboard in a museum. “It took me a long time to get there — over 22,500 numbers, in fact.”

In short, his childhood was marked by severe isolation from other children, and he found solace in numbers and things of structure: LEGO blocks, buildings blocks, sand and bricks.

“They reminded me of how numbers can be used in your mind — they could be manipulated into any combination,” Tammet said.

As he grew into his teenage years, however, Tammet said he began recognizing his desire but complete inability to interact with other humans and understand intangible, abstract emotions like love.

His achievements on that front — learning to love, laugh, cry and convey all the emotions that come so naturally to regular folks — proved no small feat.

Tammet said he learned to associate the textures, shapes and colors of numbers with actual emotions: When a person said they were sad, he’d think of the number 6 to gain some perspective on their state of mind.

“I’d at least get some sensation of what it meant to be sad,” he said.

His journey to become more human, in a sense, is what makes him so remarkable.

Tammet said neuroscientists have valued him for his keen ability to describe precisely how his mind is processing his higher-level thoughts and calculations, since most acquired savants have remarkable abilities but aren’t able to describe how their thoughts are processed.

Tammet can describe those thoughts, even turning them into drawings and paintings.

What’s more, his capacity for understanding human emotion and the way human beings interact, think, learn and reason is astounding.

He speaks with a thick British accent, and his speech is fast, but also methodic and smooth — hypnotic, to be sure. The crowd of listeners at LCCC’s Stocker Center on Monday were either transfixed by his mesmerizing voice or simply touched by his unbelievable story.

Tammet’s journey to unravel the mysteries of life has pushed him to learn seven languages — including learning to speak Icelandic in just seven days — and meet with some of the 50 other acquired savants who are known to exist worldwide.

Languages, he said, allow you to “inhabit another world.”

“I liked this idea very much,” Tammet said. “That in my mind, I’m able to inhabit other worlds.”

He’s turned down job offers from people trying to get him to predict trends or shifts in the stock market — likely a lucrative career — and instead focuses on teaching people how to speak new languages through his own Web site, www.optimnem.co.uk.

Through it all, he says his quest to understand life’s mysteries has brought him full circle, with one mystery leading to another.

But his ability to overcome his obstacles — the social introversion and inability to connect with human emotion — has allowed him to be more a part of the human experience.

Like learning about love.

“Love makes you realize the value of every human life,” Tammet said. “It’s this common thread that connects us all."

--------------------

In the mind of a savant:
• Daniel Tammet associates people with colors and numbers. He doesn’t necessarily remember names, but remembers details about a person — their buttons, pins or other items.
• He loves prime numbers and children’s books, such as “The Little Prince,” because it taught him to identify what it means to be an outsider, and even taught him a few things about human emotion.
• He offered this quote about love from the book “The Little Prince”: “Love is when you look into a sea of a million faces and you see only one.”
• Whatever feeling he gets from a person, he associates them with a number that matches that feeling. George Bush, for instance, he associates with the number 6: “dark, tiny and cold.”


Contact Shawn Foucher at 653-6255 or sfoucher@chroniclet.com. Read more!

Coping with disabilities others can’t see -Binghamton (NY) University Pipe Dream

By Alana Casanova-Burgess, Editor in Chief
October 30, 2007

When Barbara Jean Fairbairn started as the first full time director of Binghamton University’s Services for Students with Disabilities in 1977, there were 18 students who sought help from her office.

Today, there are about 300.

And while 30 years ago most of the disabilities were physical, Fairbairn estimates that as many as two-thirds of today’s disabled students at BU are coping with learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, autism and attention deficit disorders.

These disabilities — sometimes called “invisible disabilities” — cannot be easily detected by their peers, and coping academically can often be more difficult for students who process the material differently.

ASKING FOR HELP

SSD has two foci to help students, said Bethany Beecher, the learning disabilities specialist. They offer classroom accommodations, like extra test time and note taking. They also offer workshops and support services to build organization, studying and time management skills to help students cope with their disabilities.

Dr. Linda Tessler, a licensed psychologist who advocates for awareness about learning disabilities, encourages students to thoroughly understand their conditions and discuss them with professors.

“You never want to appear like you’re using your disability as an excuse,” Tessler said. “People resent that, and they should.”

Faculty are understanding, Fairbairn said, and at times even refer students they see struggling to SSD. Professors also work to keep the student and their disability confidential from the rest of the class.

Fairbairn’s office arranges for accommodations like note takers. The office hires about 90 note takers every semester, a different one for every class a student needs.

They also provide specialized software and are working on manually recording.

“We’re not creating differential standards, we’re just creating equal access,” Fairbairn said. “Some students may need books on tape because they have difficulty with the visual reading, not necessarily because of a vision impairment, but visual processing. But they can understand it fine if they’re hearing it.”

This semester has been the most difficult, Fairbairn said, as more students need taped book services — a labor intensive process that requires permission from a publisher and a signed agreement of use.

First, Beecher said, SSD takes books from students and removes their bindings. The pages are then fed through a high speed scanner. SSD staff then edit the work so that it reads properly.

“For some of the students, if the word is just slightly off from what its supposed to be, it’s going to throw off the whole context of the sentence and not make any sense to them,” Beecher said.

The recordings and the newly-bound books are given back to students.

New York State law requires that publishers provide textbooks to disability offices in alternative electronic formats if they are available, Beecher said. But the law does not cover many of the books covered in literature classes, and the software publishers have is often in formats that cannot be reproduced or converted.

“We have seen a huge increase in that service need, and the labor that it takes … is very manually intense, and staff intense,” Fairbairn said.

But for some students, books on tape are simply not helpful.

Michael, who graduated in May 2007, has Central Auditory Processing Disorder and hyperlexia. The unusual combination means he has difficulty processing what is said, “like a slow hard drive on a computer,” and also anticipates words in reading, a condition nearly the opposite of dyslexia.

“It’s like your mind plays tricks on you,” Michael said. “You hear something and it’s like free association until you get on so many tangents you don’t follow what the professor is saying.”

While Michael did get note takers through SSD, books on tape would bore him, so he began to use other techniques.

“When I read a novel or a play, I visualize it,” he said. “If my strengths are to visualize it. I direct a movie in my head.”

To keep track of his classwork as well as his extracurricular activities, Michael has used a notebook to track what he was doing in class and in his extracurriculars.

“The little details get lost in my head,” he said. “After a while I realized, you know what, there’s no shame in writing it down.”

GET SUPPORT

Tessler also recommends that students use a notebook — but a different kind.

Setting and tracking goals in a notebook is a way for students to monitor success and progress, she said.

“Schools do a lot of good work, but there’s an internal maintenance that they [students with disabilities] have to do that nobody else can do,” Tessler said. “It’s important to notice what they have accomplished.”

It’s essential to set goals that are within your control, she noted. Grades are not healthy milestones because they are up to an instructor, but goals of time management and studying are.

“Grades are going to come and you’re going to have self-respect,” she said.

Tessler, who is a member of the American Psychological Association, the International Dyslexia Association and the Learning Disabilities Association of America, was not diagnosed as dyslexic until she was 33 years old.

Growing up there was very little understanding about learning disabilities and even fewer accommodations for her.

Goals and pacing are so important because they boost self-esteem, she said.

“We all say things to ourselves that are crueler than anything you could ever say to yourself,” Tessler said. “Clean up that conversation.” Read more!

Sparing Berry would be cruel, unusual -Hattiesburg (MS) American

Ddrifter had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia.

Opinion:

It has been 20 years since Earl Wesley Berry snuffed out Mary Bounds' life. For 20 years he has been on death row, fighting the state's right to put him to death.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in and delays it, his execution will be carried out at 6 p.m. today at the state penitentiary at Parchman.

Much of Berry's story has dealt with efforts to save him. The other side of the story - Bounds' family - has received much less notice.

They are the ones who have had to live with the gruesome killing of Bounds by Berry after she left church in Chickasaw County on Nov. 29, 1987. They are the ones who have sat through his trial and listened to his appeals as they wound from the state Supreme Court to federal courts in Greenville and New Orleans.

They are the ones who have had to live without a wife, mother and grandmother.

Here are details of what happened on Nov. 29, 1987:

Berry, described as a 28-year-old "hot tempered" drifter who had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia and spent most of his adult life behind bars, was driving around Houston, Miss., in his grandmother's car when he spotted Bounds going to her car after church. Intending to rape her, he approached her, hit her and dragged her into his grandmother's car and drove out of town.

In his confession to authorities after his arrest, Berry said he took Bounds to the woods and ordered her to lie down, but he didn't rape her. He put her back in the car, drove elsewhere in the woods, dragged her from the car and beat and stomped her to death.

"The way he did her, it's not human. He stomped her. They found a tennis shoe mark on her face," said Chickasaw County Sheriff's Investigator John A. Porter.

That is the picture of Mary Bounds that her husband, Charlie, her daughter, Jena Watson, and her grandchildren have had to live with for the past two decades. Among her grandchildren is Rebecca Blissard, 25, a junior music major at the University of Southern Mississippi who plans to be at Parchman with her mother when the execution is carried out.

"I still remember everything that happened. It's one of my earliest memories," said Blissard, who was 5 when her grandmother was murdered.

Berry's death, she said, will finally bring closure to the long-suffering family.

It is possible that Berry's execution could be delayed by the Supreme Court until it hears a Kentucky case and determines whether lethal injection is cruel and inhumane and thus violates the U.S. Constitution.

That would be a disservice to Bounds and her family who have waited so long for justice to be meted out to Berry. It's almost ironic that a man who beat and stomped to death a woman now hopes the justice system will save him from a death he believes is "cruel and inhumane." Read more!

Obituary: Judge Lisa Richette -Philadelphia Inquirer

Ground-breaking jurist was caring, controversial

By Gayle Ronan Sims
October 30, 2007

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Lisa Aversa Richette, 79, an advocate of society's disadvantaged who was as comfortable stirring a pot of soup as political controversy, died of lung cancer Friday.

In a long and colorful career, Judge Richette was a ground-breaking role model who ascended to the bench at a time when female judges were rare. In her 36 years as as judge, she was known for her compassion for those she saw as society's victims, be they neglected children, battered women, or men who had suffered troubled boyhoods. That same compassion, however, often made her a lightning rod for controversy.

"As a judge, she had a wide discretionary handle on her cases. She tried to reform defendants and help them," Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said yesterday. "Sometimes you could not get her to put Jack the Ripper in jail. She wanted to save that person. Lisa just did her own thing and did not care what others thought."

Judge Richette did not care whether you agreed with her on the bench, she said.

"The operative word for Lisa is extravagant," Abraham said. "She marched to the tune of her own drum."

Judge Richette devoted much of her life to helping abused and neglected children and the mentally ill. Her interest in troubled young people could be traced to her time as a law student at Yale University, when she served as cottage parent at an institution for emotionally disturbed children. Judge Richette herself survived a public battle with depression.

Born in 1928, Judge Richette grew up in South Philadelphia. She recalled years later that as a young girl during the Depression, she watched an endless stream of down-and-out people come to her father's real estate office for help. That experience drove her later devotion to helping the homeless, Judge Richette said in a 1984 interview.

A graduate of Philadelphia High School for Girls, she earned a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated in 1949. In 1952, she was among the first women to graduate from Yale Law School, with honors.

She taught law at Yale and later at Villanova, Temple and St. Joseph's Universities.

In 1954, she returned to Philadelphia and became an assistant district attorney under District Attorney Richardson Dilworth. She was part of cadre of young, energetic prosecutors Dilworth brought into the office.

In 1958, she married lawyer Lawrence Jarvis Richette. It was her second marriage. She had been briefly married to Irving Sandler, an art critic.

She and her second husband had a son, Laurence.

The couple were great entertainers who threw lavish dinner parties in their Lombard Street home amid rich Italian furnishings. Judge Richette was renowned for her cooking.

The marriage ended in divorce. Lawrence Richette demanded that she stop using his name. But his ex-wife, by then a judge, won the fight to retain his name after she married Vero Ajello, a marketing executive.

Judge Richette briefly opened a Center City law practice and in 1969 wrote a ground-breaking book about children and crime, The Throwaway Children, which is still used in classrooms.

"I met her as an adversary in the 1960s when she was an assistant district attorney," said David N. Savitt, a retired Common Pleas judge and a longtime friend of Judge Richette's. "It was obvious that she really cared about these juvenile cases. She cared about them as human beings."

In 1971, Gov. Milton Shapp named her one of the first women to Common Pleas Court, where she earned a reputation as a vocal opponent of the death penalty and a dependable advocate for women, children and the homeless.

"Many lawyers would waive a jury trial and let homicide cases be decided by her because she was competent and fair," Savitt said. "Lisa had her own style. She had deep concern for others."

She earned her share of critics, most notably former Mayor Frank Rizzo, who labeled her "Let 'em Loose Lisa."

Although Judge Richette lost a bid for the state Supreme Court in 1977, city voters repeatedly chose to retain her on the Common Pleas Court bench. At the time of her death, she was a senior judge in Family Court.

In the late 1970s, Judge Richette sought help for clinical depression at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital. She did not hide the illness but encouraged others with similar problems to get help.

A devout Catholic, Judge Richette volunteered in the kitchen of the Center City hospice run by the Sisters of Mercy. In her haute couture and bejeweled hands with painted nails, she prepared and delivered food to the homeless.

"When I met Judge Richette more than 20 years ago, I knew I had met a 24-carat character," said Thomas Massaro, a friend and construction project management consultant for the House of Umoja Boystown, a West Philadelphia home for young people operated by Queen Mother Falaka Fattah.

"Many times Lisa said a defendant had appeared in her court and instead of sending him to jail, she wanted him to work with me. She was beyond empathic. If she were a car, there would be no reverse gear."

One of her greatest challenges was her troubled son. In August, Judge Richette's son was charged with seriously assaulting his mother and exposing himself to a TV reporter a day later.

Judge Richette, who spent her final days at Vitas Hospice at St. Agnes Continuing Care Center in South Philadelphia, has no survivors besides her son.

Friends may visit at 6 p.m. Thursday at the chapel at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, 18th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. A Funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Friday at the cathedral. Burial will be in SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery, Sproul and Crum Creek Roads, Marple Township.

Read more!

VT shootings used for political gain? -Columbia (SC) Examiner

Joe Rogalsky,
2007-10-30

WASHINGTON - The father of a student killed in the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech endorsed a Democratic state Senate candidate Monday, further politicizing the deadliest shooting ever on an American higher-education campus.

Joe Samaha, whose daughter, Reema, was among those killed inside Norris Hall on April 16, announced his support of Janet Oleszek in her 37th Senate district race against Republican incumbent Ken Cuccinelli.

Candidates have discussed their ideas for making campuses safer throughout the campaign and are often asked about the Virginia Tech shooting during citizen forums. Samaha is believed to be the first parent of a victim to use the incident as a reason to support a political candidate.

“When it comes to our children’s safety, there is no political color,” Samaha, who lives in the district, said in a news conference on George Mason University’s campus. “No blue, no red, just common sense. No politician should support easy access to guns. ... Since April 16, I’ve been compelled to speak out and advocate on behalf of Reema and many of her fellow students and professors killed that day. Now you and I can be Reema’s voice on November 6.”

Oleszek, who has pledged to support requiring background checks at gun shows and backs legislation banning guns from schools and day care centers, also collected the endorsement Monday from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Cuccinelli described his position as opposing “taking away constitutional rights. I believe law-abiding citizens have a right under the Second Amendment to posses guns.” He pointed out that he opposes allowing undergraduate students to carry guns on campuses and supports additional laws preventing mentally ill citizens from owning firearms .

Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said the Virginia Tech tragedy was bound to become electioneering fodder.

“This is one of the hardest-fought campaigns in the whole state,” he said of the Oleszek-Cuccinelli contest. “Everything candidates can bring to the table to get themselves elected will be up for discussion. The Virginia Tech tragedy has been discussed in political debates throughout Virginia.”

jrogalsky@dcexaminer.com
Read more!

Judge Lisa A. Richette (1928-2007) -Phildadelphia Inquirer

Editorial: A trailblazer for women's rights, children in troubled homes, the mentally ill.
October 30, 2007

Reading tributes to retired Philadelphia Judge Lisa A. Richette, who died Friday of lung cancer, it comes as no surprise to learn she was stage-struck as a tap-dancing youngster and, throughout her later years, loved the theater and attended opera regularly.

That's because Richette lived as if on a stage. She created a larger-than-life presence in Philadelphia legal and political circles. Hers was a real-life drama of many acts, punctuated by tragi-comic moments, pathos and the occasional histrionics.

Almost from the time she distinguished herself by earning her Yale law degree, Richette was a trailblazer for women's rights, children in troubled homes, the mentally ill (she also suffered from depression), and the homeless. In court, she showed compassion, was pilloried famously for it by former Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, but stuck to her guns.

It's unfortunate that Richette came to be best known in later years for her own brushes with trouble - as a victim of two robberies, an assault, and her recent injury in a family dispute. Then again, even these encounters distinguished Richette from the ordinary. Read more!

Manhunt 2' video game under fire -The Associated Press

By Rachel Konrad

SAN FRANCISCO - Child advocates are urging parents not to buy "Manhunt 2," a video game whose characters kill and torture using implements ranging from glass and shovels to a fuse box and a toilet.

The title goes on sale Wednesday - Halloween - rated "mature," appropriate for people 17 and up, for about $28. In the first-person killer fantasy, the players take on the role of a man escaping from an insane asylum.

Made for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2, the blood-drenched game has been sparking controversy since June, when the Entertainment Software Rating Board gave it a rating of "adult only" that would have excluded it from some big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Producers at Rockstar Games submitted a modified version of "Manhunt 2" later in the summer that got the "mature" rating in August.

"This is a very clear and firm warning to parents that the game is in no way intended for children," the ESRB said in a statement.

The British Board of Film Classifications banned the title and maintained the ban on the modified version. It said the changes don't "go far enough."

"The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient," the BBFC wrote. "There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the 'execution kills,' but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature."

"In my opinion, it's the most senselessly violent and offensive thing I've ever watched," said James Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that advises parents about television, movies, Internet sites and video games that may be inappropriate for children.

Steyer, who has not seen the version of the game being released this week, was talking about an unrated version that has been circulating free on the Internet since August. That version contains more violence and sexually explicit content than the one being released commercially, including a scene where a man's testicles are mutilated with a pliers.

"It's disgusting," Steyer said. "It's so violent, it struck me personally as pornographic violence."

A spokesman for New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. said the unrated version used a colour encoding system common to Western Europe and could be played in the United States only using a Sony PlayStation 2 console modified without company permission.

"The claim that an unreleased version of Manhunt is readily available on the Internet, and that children can easily download and play the unrated game, has not been proven," Take-Two's Ed Nebb wrote in an e-mail.

Professional gamers who reviewed the original and modified titles, which last 40 hours, say the original and the free download include a scene in which a character pummels someone's neck with a shovel that doesn't appear to have made the official cut, though the official game does allow players to use shovels as instruments of torture.

Similarly, the pliers-and-genitalia scene isn't in the official version, but players may use pliers to torture.

The Take-Two spokesman acknowledged that "Manhunt 2" was meant "specifically for those players mature enough to appreciate it."

"Take-Two believes in freedom of creative expression. We also believe in social responsibility," Nebb wrote. "Not all of our products are intended for all consumers and we responsibly market our mature products to adults. We firmly believe that informed adults should be able to make their own choices about entertainment products for themselves and their families." Read more!

Wilder discusses mental health among homeless -WWBT Richmond (VA)

Video report here.

The last in a series of town hall meetings hosted by Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder began at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Some of the focus was expected to be on public safety and mental health.

The meeting was taking place only a few blocks from where 70-year-old Susanne Thompson was stabbed to death Saturday morning. Police have arrested a mentally ill Richmond man who had been off his medication. Johnny Hughes, 52, is facing a murder charge for that attack.

The city was expected to provide police and mental health professionals at Tuesday’s town hall meeting to answer the questions and concerns of neighbors who live in the area.

This town hall is the latest in a series of meetings that allow Mayor Wilder to hear questions and give answers directly to the public.

“We must do all we can to avoid a recurrence of this type of horrific crime,” the mayor said on Monday. Read more!

Meritain examines workplace stress -Buffalo (NY) Business First

Links to the report can be found on the article home page here.

by Annemarie Franczyk Business First

Employees say that while stress negatively affects their job performance, their employers are not doing enough -- if anything -- to address stress, work/life balance or mental health in the work place.

That's according to a survey of 411 employees by Meritain Health and the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health.The national survey found that 94 percent of respondents believe their stress level affects job performance. However, 52 percent of employees said their employer does not address mental health issues and 40 percent of employees said they aren't aware of what mental health benefits are offered by their employer.

"These survey results illustrate the need for employers to better make the connection between untreated mental health conditions and lost productivity, offer more comprehensive mental health benefits and better promote these benefits to their employees," said Meritain Chief Medical Officer Dr. Larry Luter.

The Amherst-based Meritain provides services for self-funded health plans; the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health is a program of the American Psychiatric Foundation.

All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved. Read more!

Inadequate Mental Therapy Cited For Cancer Patients in US - Voice of America

Video link to this story here.

By Melinda Smith
30 October 2007

The U.S. Institute of Medicine has released a study calling for uniform standards of emotional therapy for cancer patients. VOA's Melinda Smith has more on the study.

These cancer survivors are sharing their stories of pain -- not just the pain of surgery or chemotherapy -- but the anxiety and depression which lingers long after treatment.

Beth Leibson-Hawkins is a cancer survivor. She says, "It would have been really nice to have somebody help me think about what it means to have cancer and how that affects the rest of your life."

While the study acknowledges that medical treatment for cancer has taken great strides, it says the emotional scars of these potentially life-threatening diseases are often left untreated. The report is especially critical of that lack of treatment at 20 of the nation's best cancer care hospitals. Only eight have routine psychological screening -- and that is offered only to some patients, not all.

"We have to take a wider view and treat the whole patient and take care of all of their needs, including their cancer," says Dr. Lee Schwartzberg, a cancer specialist at the West Clinic in Memphis, Tennessee.

At the West Clinic, patients respond to a questionnaire about their emotional well-being -- before they undergo a physical exam. The study by the Institute of Medicine wants this type of screening done along every step, from diagnosis to the last visit to the doctor.

Breast cancer survivor Karen Suddeth says that would have helped her cope during the many days of chemotherapy. "That was so, so hard for me. I mean, I will never forget the morning I knew my hair was going to have to come off."

The report also criticized medical providers for failing to refer patients to mental health counselors and cancer survivor support groups. One cancer patient found the experience of sharing helpful in recovery. She says, "Besides my family, who else did I have to talk to?"

One positive note: The American Society of Clinical Oncology, made up of cancer specialists, has announced it is offering a new training course to its members on how to be more sensitive to the emotional needs of their patients. Read more!

The meltdown in mental health-care -Sonoma (CA) Index-Tribune

By Emily Charrier

Mental health care is suffering on county, state and national levels due to lack of funding, lack of access and a lack of trained professionals.

"It's a whole national trend," said Rita Scardaci, director of the county's Department of Health.

Those in the mental health-care industry say the root of the problem stems from the fact that mental health care is not treated with the same attention or resources as physical health care.

"The political system has not treated mental illness and the treatment of mentally ill the same as physical health. Never have, still don't," said Dr. Richard Kirk, a Sonoma-based psychiatrist and chair of the Sonoma Valley Health Care District board. "If equity for mental health services was really put in the system, it would be a huge change."
All too often mental health care is considered a private insurance matter, with little access to ongoing psychological care. However, experts say even those with private insurance are not necessarily getting the care they need. Even worse, those who need access to care the most are all too often the ones with no insurance at all.

"Sonoma County is like many other places in the nation, struggling to meet the needs of the seriously mentally ill and just beginning the new frontier: How to prevent mental illness, how to grow a healthy child, how to provide access to mental health care in the absence of 'parity' laws, (which require) insurance companies to cover mental illness on par with physical illness," said Art Ewart, mental health service director for the county. "In the face of poor private insurance coverage, the community will continue to look to an underfunded public system and be disappointed."

Up until the closure of the inpatient unit at Santa Rosa's Psychiatric Emergency Services (known as the Norton Center), the facility acted as a sort of "holding pen" for all patients, regardless of what level of treatment was necessary. Although the facility is still open to patients in crisis, a majority of outpatients are being sent to other treatment facilities depending on what level of care is needed.

"Public mental health programs around the country are developing a far greater system of care than the private insurance sector can provide," Ewart said. That includes "everything from crisis intervention, to overnight care, to short-term stays of 10 to 14 days in a residential setting, to traditional outpatient case management."
Without parity laws to provide quality mental health care at least to those with insurance, the county is trying to get creative by launching mental health-care programs that cover a wider variety of needs. County officials say they are in the process of moving away from large mental hospitals in favor of smaller treatment programs that provide patients with an appropriate treatment for each specific situation.

"Clients treated in 'facilities' for long periods become institutionalized," Ewart said. "The age of 'Cuckoo's Nest' is long, long over."

In this vein, the county developed a six-bed residential crisis intervention program, where patients can voluntarily commit themselves to treatment in a smaller, more home-like environment.
"That has been huge," Scardaci said. "It's really a much more therapeutic environment."

While many county health-care professionals see this change as a positive move for adult patients, there is still the problem of juvenile mental health care. Children cannot be treated in the same facilities as adults, and the newly developed programs are mainly designed for adults. There is nowhere in Sonoma County to take a juvenile experiencing a mental health crisis. Ewart said even when a problem exists, the county tries everything possible to avoid hospitalizing a minor.

"Hospitals are not good places for children. They learn better how to threaten suicide, how to cut themselves, how to act out, and how to hear voices," he said. "So, we do everything possible to support to the family and keep the kid at home before considering a hospital." When keeping a child at home is not an option, juveniles are sent to the St. Helena Medical Center in Vallejo. Experts say this can compound the problem, by taking the patient away from his or her home environment.
"The farther away you take a patient, the more it adds to the problem," Kirk said.

Even with a more progressive mental health-care treatment plan, funding remains a concern. In May the Department of Mental Health Services released a report to the county's Board of Supervisors that stated plans to discontinue several mental health-care programs, including the Adult Service Team, which is estimated to serve at least 600 clients and the Resource Team, which aids 500 adults and 50 children. Despite slashing programs, more funding is still needed. The report estimated the Department of Mental Health, despite cutting nearly $7 million in programs, will still need around $2.5 million in additional funding for the current fiscal year.

Jennifer Hedgepeth, president of the Sonoma County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said her organization, along with other advocacy groups, has felt added pressure from the loss of these programs. "There is not enough money available to fund the services that the mentally ill depend on," she said.
Despite the county's attempts to develop unique treatment facilities, it is apparent mental health care will be a problem lawmakers continue to struggle with. First District Supervisor Valerie Brown summed it up when she said, "It's a broken system." Read more!

State mental agency admits deficit - Atlanta Journal

Short on money and staff, Georgia's mental hospitals bear daunting challenges.

By ALAN JUDD, ANDY MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Milledgeville — Georgia's state mental hospitals have operated at an average annual budget deficit of $11 million for eight years, contributing to the understaffing that has plagued the facilities, a state official said Tuesday.

"If you have to offset a deficit, you slow down your hiring or don't fill positions,'' Gwen Skinner, director of the state's mental health division, told Gov. Sonny Perdue's mental health commission.

THE STORY SO FAR
• Previously: Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed a commission to study Georgia's mental health care system after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on suspicious deaths and abuse of state mental hospital patients.
• The latest: The head of the state's mental health agency acknowledges chronic underfunding and overcrowding, which the newspaper said contributed to dangerous conditions in the seven hospitals.
• What's next: The commission will recommend improvements while the U.S. Justice Department investigates whether state hospital conditions violate patients' civil rights.

At the seven state-run hospitals, Skinner said, 39 percent of registered nurses' positions were vacant in September, with an annual turnover figure of almost one in three.

"This is a critical, critical issue for us," she said.

In her presentation to the commission, meeting at Central State Hospital, Skinner went into greater detail than ever before in acknowledging problems with underfunding, understaffing and overcrowding in the facilities.

Those problems were the subject of a series of articles this year in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailing questionable deaths and abuse in the state hospitals. The newspaper reported that, from 2002 through 2006, at least 115 state hospital patients died under suspicious circumstances. In another 194 cases, hospital workers physically or sexually abused patients, the newspaper found in its series, "A Hidden Shame.''

Perdue created the study commission after vetoing a General Assembly resolution forming a similar panel, saying lawmakers had excluded executive branch officials as members. The Perdue panel includes representatives from the departments of Corrections, Community Health, and Human Resources, which runs the hospitals.

At Tuesday's meeting, the commission's second, Skinner used newly compiled statistics to show the challenges ahead.

The hospitals typically have operated with occupancy rates in adult psychiatric units of more than 100 percent since March 2005, Skinner said. The optimal figure is 85 percent, she said.

Georgia is churning patients out of its hospitals at a rapid rate.

The typical length of a stay is six days for adult mental health patients, with more than one-third discharged in less than 72 hours.

Patients at Georgia's hospitals are twice as likely to return within 30 days of discharge as the national average.

The state's figures drew pointed questions from commission members.

"How good is the care we're providing?'' asked Dr. Charles Nemeroff, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine.

"This commission came together because of a crisis. It could be a heckuva lot better than what it is now.''

Nemeroff said after the hearing, "You can't really provide adequate care for people with a major psychiatric illness in three or four days in a hospital.''

Nemeroff and other commission members also targeted the lack of mental health services available in the community for discharged patients.

Angela Hicks-Hill, executive director of a community service board in the Milledgeville region, told the panel that funding problems have forced her agency to reduce mental health services, including those for children.

"Three years ago, we had programs in four of six counties,'' she said. "Now we are in just two [counties].''

Mental health advocates reiterated their call for an independent review of hospital deaths and allegations of abuse, and for an ombudsman's office.

Sen. Greg Goggans (R-Douglas), a commission member, said after the hearing that he was encouraged by the panel's discussion. "We've got a long way to go,'' he said. "But we understand our system is broken.''

"I think [the commission] will make a huge difference in the lives of these people.''


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Council Says Some Hospitals Don’t Follow New Law on the Uninsured - New York Times

By SARAH KERSHAW

Several New York City hospitals did not inform indigent patients lacking health insurance that they could qualify for public assistance as required by a new state law, according to a City Council investigation. Most hospitals in the study, however, did comply with the law.

The review was conducted by investigators who posed as patients when they called or visited the hospitals’ billing offices.

The new state law went into effect in January and was based on the case of an uninsured 24-year-old Long Island man, Manny Lanza, who died in 2005 of a brain ailment and whose family was billed $42,000.

He would have qualified for financial assistance under the new law, which requires that all New York hospitals tell patients without health insurance, verbally, in writing and through conspicuous signs in emergency rooms and other places, that they could qualify for financial assistance from a $847 billion state charity care hospital fund.

The City Council investigation of 59 hospitals found that 22 percent of the hospitals had no signs posted, but 63 percent had posters in two or more areas.

Investigators posing as patients or their relatives made one phone call and one visit to each of the hospitals to ask about financial aid; at 42 hospitals, the staff told investigators about the financial aid without prompting, but staff members at nine hospitals did not provide the information even after being prompted. At five hospitals among the nine, the staff members said patients would receive no care if they were unable to pay.

Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who introduced similar city legislation in 2006, said she was gratified that a majority of the hospitals complied with the new state law.

“We saw a significant amount of compliance, for this early in a law’s existence,” she said. “But the thing about a public health law is that if one person is forgotten, it creates the real possibility that that one person might not get the lifesaving information they need.”

One million adult New Yorkers are uninsured, and more than 700,000 of them are employed, according to the latest figures from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The new state law also set eligibility guidelines for charity care for the first time, requiring that patients with incomes at or less than the federal poverty rate, or $10,210 for one person and $20,650 for a family of four, are guaranteed lower costs, including no more than $150 for surgery or more than $15 for emergency room and clinic visits. Patients with higher incomes can qualify for care on a sliding scale set by each hospital, under the law.

The investigation found that staff workers at three hospitals, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center and New York Community Hospital, both in Brooklyn, and Caritas-Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens, failed to inform the investigators posing as patients or relatives of patients about the financial assistance both over the phone and in person.

Officials at Brookdale, which annually treats 110,000 patients in its emergency rooms and 230,000 in ambulatory care settings, said all 3,000 employees had been informed of the hospital’s responsibilities under the new law and that additional training was provided to more than 130 employees who work on billing and financial aid. A spokesman, Ole W. Pedersen, said that in light of the City Council report, the hospital administration would monitor the staff more closely.

Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a group representing 300 hospitals, said hospitals supported the new law and would work to comply, even as hospital charity dollars are being exhausted by unprecedented numbers of uninsured patients.

“Hospitals are in a fiscal crisis,” he said. “They are being squeezed by the payers and they are being squeezed by the uninsured, and then we have the social and moral imperative to do the right thing for the patient. We really are between a rock and a hard place.”


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Iraq, Afghan Vets at Risk for Suicides - Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mary Gallagher did not get a knock at the door from a military chaplain with news of her Marine husband's death in a faraway place. Instead, the Iraq war veteran committed suicide eight months after returning home.

She is left wondering why.

It's a question shared by hundreds of families of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have taken their own lives in a homecoming suicide pattern of a magnitude that is just starting to emerge.

Preliminary Veterans Affairs Department research obtained by The Associated Press reveals for the first time that there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001 and the end of 2005.

The numbers, while not dramatically different from society as a whole, provide the first quantitative look at the toll on today's combat veterans and are reminiscent of the increased suicide risk among returning soldiers in the Vietnam era.

Today's homefront suicide tally is running at least double the number of troop suicides in the war zones as thousands of men and women return with disabling injuries and mental health disorders that put them at higher risk.

A total of 147 troops have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the wars, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center, which tracks casualties for the Pentagon.

Add the number of returning veterans and the finding is that at least 430 of the 1.5 million troops who have fought in the two wars have killed themselves over the past six years. And that doesn't include people like Gallagher's husband who committed suicide after their combat tours and while still in the military -- a number the Pentagon says it doesn't track.

That compares with at least 4,227 U.S. military deaths overall since the wars started -- 3,840 in Iraq and 387 in and around Afghanistan.

In response, the VA is ramping up suicide prevention programs.

Research suggests that combat trauma increases the risk of suicide, according to the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Difficulty dealing with failed relationships, financial and legal troubles, and substance abuse also are risk factors among troops, said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Families see the effects first hand.

''None of them come back without being touched a little,'' said Gallagher, a mother of three whose husband, Marine Gunnery Sgt. James Gallagher, took his own life in 2006 inside their home at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

He was proud of his Iraq service, but she wonders whether he was bothered by the death of his captain in Iraq or an incident in which he helped rescue a soldier who was in a fire and later died. Shortly before his death, her husband was distraught over an assignment change he saw as an insult, she said.

''His death contradicts the very person he was. It's very confusing and difficult to understand,'' said Gallagher of Lynbrook, N.Y.

The family of another Iraq veteran who committed suicide, Jeffrey Lucey, 23, of Belchertown, Mass., filed suit against the former VA secretary, alleging that bad care at the VA was to blame.

And the family of Joshua Omvig, a 22-year-old Iraq war veteran from Davenport, Iowa, who also committed suicide, successfully pushed Congress to pass a bill that President Bush is expected to sign that requires the VA to improve suicide prevention care.

Suicides in Iraq have occurred since the early days of the war, but awareness was heightened when the Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops -- the highest in 26 years of record-keeping.

That compares with 9.3 per 100,000 for all military services combined in 2006 and 11.1 per 100,000 for the general U.S. population in 2004, the latest year statistics were available. The Army has said the civilian rate for the same age and gender mix as in the Army is 19 to 20 per 100,000 people.

Just looking at the VA's early numbers, Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's deputy chief patient care service officer for mental health, said there does not appear to be an epidemic of suicides among those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who left the military.

Katz said post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and problem drinking increase a person's suicide risk by two or three times, but the rate of suicide among those with those conditions ''is still very, very low.''

Katz acknowledged, however, that it is too early to know the long-term ramifications for those who served in the wars and said the VA ''is very intensely involved in increasing suicide prevention.''

''We're not doing it because there's an epidemic in returning veterans, though each death of a returning veteran is a tragedy and it's important to prevent it,'' Katz said.

The VA and Defense Department have hired more counselors and made other improvements in mental health care, including creation of a veterans suicide prevention hotline.

At the VA's national suicide hotline center based in Canandaigua, N.Y., counselors have taken more than 9,000 calls since July. Some callers are just looking for someone to talk to. Others are concerned family members. Callers who choose to give their names can opt to be met at a local VA center by a suicide prevention counselor; more than 120 callers have been rescued by emergency personnel -- some after swallowing pills or with a gun nearby, according to the center.

''It's sad, but I think in the other way it's very exciting because already we've seen really sort of people being able to change their lives around because of the access to resources they've been able to get,'' said Jan Kemp, who oversees the call center.

Penny Coleman, whose ex-husband committed suicide after returning from Vietnam, said she doesn't buy what she calls the ''we didn't expect this'' mentality about suicide.

''If you'd chosen to pay attention after Vietnam you would have and should have anticipated it would happen again,'' said Coleman, who published a book on the subject last year.

One government study of Army veterans from Vietnam found they were more likely to die from suicide than other veterans in the first five years after leaving the military, although the study found that the likelihood dissipated over time. There is still heated debate, however, over the total number of suicides by Vietnam veterans; the extent to which it continues even today is unknown.

One major hurdle in stopping suicide is getting people to ask for help. From 20 percent to 50 percent of active duty troops and reservists who returned from war reported psychological problems, relationship problems, depression and symptoms of stress reactions, but most report that they have not sought help, according to a report from a military mental health task force.

''It's only when it becomes painful will someone seek counseling,'' said Chris Ayres, manager of the combat stress recovery program at the Wounded Warrior Project, a private veterans' assistance group based in Jacksonville, Fla. ''That's usually how it happens. Nobody just walks in, because it's the hardest thing for a male, a Marine, a type-A personality figure to just go in there and say, 'Hey, I need some help.'''

While not suicidal, Ayres, 37, a former Marine captain from the Houston area who had the back of his right leg blown off in Iraq, has experienced episodes related to his post-traumatic stress disorder and said he worried about being stigmatized if he got help.

He's since learned to manage through counseling, and he's encouraging other veterans to get help.

Ayres is among 28,000 Americans injured in the war, more than 3,000 seriously.

In a study published earlier this year, researchers at Portland State University found that veterans were twice as likely to commit suicide as male nonveterans. High gun ownership rates, along with debilitating injuries and mental health disorders, were all risk factors that seemed to put the veterans at greater risk, said Mark Kaplan, one of the researchers.

While veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were not included in the study, Kaplan said that given the nature of the injuries of the recent wars and the strain of long and repeated deployments, the newer generation of veterans could be at risk for suicide.

Kaplan said primary care physicians should ask patients whether they are veterans, and if the answer is yes, inquire about their mental health.

''This is war unlike other wars and we don't know the long-term implications and the hidden injuries of war,'' Kaplan said.

Dr. Dan Blazer, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center who served this year on the military's mental health task force, said improvements in care will likely help some veterans, but he's concerned about this generation. He said he treats World War II veterans still struggling mentally with their military experience.

''There's still going to be individuals that just totally slip through all of these safety nets that we construct to try to help things in the aftermath,'' Blazer said.

Suicide, Blazer said, ''is a cost of war. It's a big one.''

------


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Study Tracks Suicide Rate in V.A. Care - New York Times

By BENEDICT CAREY

Veterans receiving treatment for depression are no more likely to take their own lives than are civilian patients, a large Department of Veterans Affairs study published yesterday found.

The study, a joint effort with the University of Michigan that included detailed records from more than 800,000 veterans, is the largest and most comprehensive in this group of patients and the first to include troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It found 1,683 suicides in all, a rate of less than one-quarter of 1 percent — far lower than some past estimates. But experts cautioned against applying the findings too widely, because most former servicemen and women with mental problems do not seek treatment in the Veterans Affairs system.

In contrast to most studies of nonveterans, which have found that the risk of suicide generally goes up with age, the rate was highest among those ages 18 to 44, dropped about 20 percent for those ages 45 to 64 and then rose again after that.

Paradoxically, those who had post-traumatic stress symptoms as well as depression were at significantly lower risk of suicide than those without trauma symptoms, the study found. Veterans being treated for both conditions were 20 percent less likely to commit suicide than those who were treated for depression alone. People suffering from two conditions are usually considered to be at higher risk for harm than those with one.

“It may be that those being treated for P.T.S.D. have more access to services, more psychotherapy visits, just more mental health services in general,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Marcia Valenstein of the University of Michigan and the veterans agency.

Dr. Valenstein added that the veterans being treated for post-traumatic stress were more likely than the others to receive income supplements from the government to cover the disability, which could also help account for the difference.

The Veterans Affairs and Defense Departments have been investigating suicide risk closely since a study of combat troops in 2003 found high rates of suicide. In another recent study, Oregon researchers found that veterans were about twice as likely to kill themselves as were people who had not served in the military.

The new analysis, published online in The American Journal of Public Health, focused only on those veterans who sought treatment for depression in the government’s health care system, and suggested that they might be different in some ways from others in treatment.

“This is an important study and adds a lot to what we know about this population,” said Mark Kaplan, a professor of community health at Portland State University in Oregon.

In the new study, a research team evaluated records for 807,694 veterans being treated in the V.A. system from April 1999 to September 2004. The group included men and women who had served in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf war, Iraq and Afghanistan, though the researchers did not do separate analysis for each.

The study did not evaluate the methods used in the suicides. The Oregon study, led by Dr. Kaplan and published last summer, found that more than 80 percent of veterans’ suicides were committed with a gun. The rate in nonveterans was 55 percent.


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Scientists Note Brain's Reaction to Fear - Associated Press

October 20

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Science is getting a grip on people's fears. As Americans revel in all things scary on Halloween, scientists say they now know better what's going on inside our brains when a spook jumps out and scares us. Knowing how fear rules the brain should lead to treatments for a major medical problem: When irrational fears go haywire.

''We're making a lot of progress,'' said University of Michigan psychology professor Stephen Maren. ''We're taking all of what we learned from the basic studies of animals and bringing that into the clinical practices that help people. Things are starting to come together in a very important way.''

About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in 1999 at roughly $42 billion.

Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to evolutionary survival. It's one we share with animals. Genetics plays a big role in the development of overwhelming -- and needless -- fear, psychologists say. But so do traumatic events.

''Fear is a funny thing,'' said Ted Abel, a fear researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. ''One needs enough of it, but not too much of it.''

Armi Rowe, a Connecticut freelance writer and mother, said she used to be ''one of those rational types who are usually calm under pressure.'' She was someone who would downhill ski the treacherous black diamond trails of snowy mountains. Then one day, in the midst of coping with a couple of serious illnesses in her family, she felt fear closing in on her while driving alone. The crushing pain on her chest felt like a heart attack. She called 911.

''I was literally frozen with fear,'' she said. It was an anxiety attack. The first of many.

The first sign she would get would be sweaty palms and then a numbness in the pit of the stomach and queasiness. Eventually it escalated until she felt as if she was being attacked by a wild animal.

''There's a trick to panic attack,'' said David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in treating anxiety disorders. ''You're experiencing this powerful discomfort but you're getting tricked into treating it like danger.''

These days, thanks to counseling, self-study, calming exercises and introspection, Rowe knows how to stop or at least minimize those attacks early on.

Scientists figure they can improve that fear-dampening process by learning how fear runs through the brain and body.

The fear hot spot is the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the deep brain.

The amygdala isn't responsible for all of people's fear response, but it's like the burglar alarm that connects to everything else, said New York University psychology and neural science professor Elizabeth Phelps.

Emory University psychiatry and psychology professor Michael Davis found that a certain chemical reaction in the amygdala is crucial in the way mice and people learn to overcome fear. When that reaction is deactivated in mice, they never learn to counter their fears.

Scientists found D-cycloserine, a drug already used to fight hard-to-treat tuberculosis, strengthens that good chemical reaction in mice. Working in combination with therapy, it seems to do the same in people. It was first shown effective with people who have a fear of heights. It also worked in tests with other types of fear, and it's now being studied in survivors of the World Trade Center attacks and the Iraq war.

The work is promising, but Michigan's Maren cautions that therapy will still be needed: ''You're not going to be able to take a pill and make these things go away.''

When it comes to ruling the brain, fear often is king, scientists say.

''Fear is the most powerful emotion,'' said University of California Los Angeles psychology professor Michael Fanselow.

People recognize fear in other humans faster than other emotions, according to a new study being published next month. Research appearing in the journal Emotion involved volunteers who were bombarded with pictures of faces showing fear, happiness and no expression. They quickly recognized and reacted to the faces of fear -- even when it was turned upside down.

''We think we have some built-in shortcuts of the brain that serve the role that helps us detect anything that could be threatening,'' said study author Vanderbilt University psychology professor David Zald.

Other studies have shown that just by being very afraid, other bodily functions change. One study found that very frightened people can withstand more pain than those not experiencing fear. Another found that experiencing fear or merely perceiving it in others improved people's attention and brain skills.

To help overcome overwhelming fear, psychologist Carbonell, author of the ''Panic Attacks Workbook,'' has his patients distinguish between a real threat and merely a perceived one. They practice fear attacks and their response to them. He even has them fill out questionnaires in the middle of a fear attack, which changes their thinking and causes reduces their anxiety.

That's important because the normal response for dealing with a real threat is either flee or fight, Carbonell said. But if the threat is not real, the best way to deal with fear is just the opposite: ''Wait it out and chill.''

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Protesting gun access -Raleigh News & Observer

By Cheryl Johnston Sadgrove

CHAPEL HILL - With Hokie-colored maroon and orange ribbons looped around their necks, 32 adults dressed in black stood quietly on the lawn at Polk Place as the UNC-Chapel Hill bell tower chimed 12 times Monday afternoon.

"It took the killer at Virginia Tech three minutes to buy his gun," Connie Padgett said, referring to the tragedy in April that took 32 lives at Virginia Tech University.

For the next three minutes, Padgett led a silent protest. Sunlight spilling over the Wilson Library dome bathed the solemn faces as students hurried by toward the Pit, already noisy with a lunchtime crowd.

This brief protest against the ease with which the killer at Virginia Tech bought a gun was the 32nd such protest against easy gun access.

Padgett organized the protest after participating in similar ones in Durham and Raleigh as a member of the Triangle Chapter of the Million Mom March.

North Carolinians Against Gun Violence co-sponsored the event.

The first protest was organized by Abby Spangler, a Charlotte native and the daughter of billionaire businessman and former UNC system President C.D. Spangler. She lives in Virginia.

Padgett said she and Spangler invited people to participate at Monday's protest, and Spangler had asked her to draw attention to the fact that it was the 32nd event.

Lisa Price, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, said that, as in Virginia, North Carolina does not enter data into the national database that gun dealers can check when someone is adjudicated as mentally ill and a danger to himself and society.

"We can change this law in North Carolina," Price said.

Padgett talked about this being homecoming week on campus and mentioned three UNC-CH-affiliated people who would not be able to be there because of gun violence:

* Travis Cooper, a UNC-CH student who had worked with her at the Carolina Population Center and was killed by gunfire in 1997 in Lumberton;

* Shennel McKendall, who was fatally shot in 2004 while walking in to work at a UNC Hospitals building near the Friday Center; and

* Jamie Bishop, a German instructor who applied computer technologies to language instruction while at UNC-CH, who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.

She chose not to mention the 1995 rampage of former UNC-CH law student Wendell Williamson, which left two people dead and a law enforcement officer seriously injured near campus.

Vicky Wells, who works with UNC Press, said she thought of her own children, the ages of college students and slightly older, as she participated in the event.

"It's not that we're anti-gun," she said. "We just don't want someone with proven mental instability to get guns."

(Staff writer Jane Stancill contributed to this report.)

cheryl.sadgrove@newsobserver.com or (919) 932-2005
Staff writer Jane Stancill contributed to this report.
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Provide priceless service with vote for levy -Lorain (OH) Morning Journal

OUR VIEW:

Small but mighty is one way to describe Issue 24, the Lorain County Board of Mental Health's renewal levy to support mental health services to local adults, children and families.

Issue 24 is ''small'' because its 0.6 mill rate costs property taxpayers only about $1.25 a month for each $100,000 of a home's value. That's less than the price of one cup of coffee a month.

Issue 24 is ''mighty'' because, applied countywide, that small tax generates more than $3 million annually toward the mental health board's budget of about $28 million. It also is ''mighty'' because it helps to provide crucial mental health services through more than a dozen agencies and programs. Some notable examples include The Nord Center, Far West Center, Gathering Hope House, Genesis House, Lucy Idol Center and the Mental Health Crisis/Rape Crisis 24-hour hotline.

Issue 24 will not increase taxes if approved by voters on Nov. 6. It would simply keep the current level of taxation going for another five years.

The need is great. The Mental Health Board supports services for several thousand Lorain County residents of all ages. The number of people seeking help is on the rise as outreach efforts improve and public attitudes change. The antiquated stigma associated with mental illness is evaporating. More people realize that it is a common, treatable illness as real heart disease or diabetes.

In our daily lives, those affected by mental illness, directly or indirectly, are all around. They are in our workplaces, classrooms and offices, even our own homes.

A personal struggle with a serious mental disorder such as depression may arrive with a job layoff or the death of a spouse. A high school grad sent off to college with great expectations can come crashing back home in a nightmare because that also is the age when schizophrenia emerges unexpectedly. Such trials are not the end for those involved; they are just the beginning of paths to making life manageable once again, with the help of people such as those at the Lorain County Mental Health Board and the agencies whose work it supports, in part, with our tax dollars. Remember this when you go to the polls to vote on Nov. 6.

Also, know that Lorain County is gaining a wide and well-deserved reputation for its strides in helping those with mental illness and their families to meet the challenge successfully.

We urge voters to help all of our Lorain County neighbors in need of mental health services by voting for Issue 24 on Nov. 6. The cost is minimal, but the help it provides is priceless. Read more!

Colleges boosting counseling efforts -U.S. News & World Report

By Nancy Shute

This fall, students at Penn State University-Altoona trudging back to their dorms demoralized by a failed test or a romance on the rocks can take advantage of free mental-health counseling, on the spot, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

At Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where foreign students tend to avoid the campus counseling center, a counselor now staffs an outpost in the international dorm so the isolated and struggling can drop in for an impromptu chat.

All students who come to the health center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, even if just for a sprained ankle or a case of the sniffles, soon will be automatically screened for depression and offered treatment if needed.

Galvanized by the April 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members and then committed suicide, colleges and universities around the country are urgently taking stock of the reach and effectiveness of their mental-health services. The goal is not just to avoid another catastrophe caused by a deeply troubled student who fell through the cracks. It's also to face up to the needs of today's students, who increasingly struggle with eating disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

The rate of depression among college students has doubled in just 15 years; last year, some 45 percent of all students said they've sometimes felt too depressed to function, according to an annual survey by the American College Health Association. Nine percent of college students seriously considered suicide.


Seeing and meeting needs

The thrust of the movement at institutions in the lead has been to redouble efforts to identify students in need of help and then make that help available. Some, such as Cornell and Wisconsin, are adding counseling offices in dorms and academic buildings so students have ready access; Cornell has two counselors on staff whose sole job is to talk with faculty and staff and pick up the first inklings of trouble. The University of Illinois requires anyone who threatens or attempts suicide to have a four-session mental-health evaluation.

Early-warning systems that involve the entire university community are a priority on many campuses. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., for example, faculty and staff can log concerns about academic problems or behavioral issues on a Web site that is monitored by an intervention team of representatives from the dean's office, faculty, housing staff, campus police and counseling center. The team meets regularly to decide on an appropriate response.

"There's a heightened awareness," says Joy Himmel, director of the health and wellness center at Penn State-Altoona, who says more faculty and staff members now serve as her "eyes and ears."

A huge obstacle to effective communication -- and a source of frustration to worried parents -- is the mistaken belief that privacy laws bar any sharing of information, either with others on campus or in a call home. Counseling and medical records are confidential once you turn 18. But professors and other staff who aren't mental-health professionals can discuss concerns about a student among themselves and contact parents, too.

Gregory Eells, head of the counseling center at Cornell University, says that residence-hall advisers sometimes tell him that they can't pass on worrisome information because it was communicated in confidence. "I say, no, actually you can report it, and you should," Eells says. "You can talk to parents; you can talk to anyone you think appropriate."
Read more!

County wants to change the way it houses mentally ill inmates - KHOU Houston

Video link from this page.

By Leticia Juarez / 11 News

Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas wants to treat mentally ill inmates better, so he is making some big changes.

The sheriff’s department is calling its announcement about its mental health unit a revolutionary program, but it has remained tight lip about what exactly that means.

Here’s a look at the current state of mental health within Harris County jail facilities.

The sheriff’s department oversees three main jail facilities capable of housing more than 9,000 inmates.

Data from an archive search of the Houston Chronicle indicated that of the inmate population, about 1,400 have serious mental illness, making Harris County jails by far one of the largest institutions responsible for the mentally ill.

But only 51 beds dedicated to serving that need.

Judge Jan Krocker was instrumental in placing mental health workers in the courtroom to help assess and treat defendants. She said many of the people who come through her courtroom are bipolar, schizophrenic or have other serious mental issues, and she’s in favor of any program dedicated to helping the mentally ill.

“In order to rehabilitate people and get them stable and get them competent to stand trial, we have to have them on good medications, and any kind of program in the jail is really going to help the community and help the criminal justice system,” she said.

One example is that of Darly Kelley, an inmate who died in custody following his arrest for allegedly stealing a car.

He was already receiving treatment at a private facility for schizophrenia, but when he was booked into jail, he refused to take his medication and became violent.
Read more!

Treat mentally ill like normal folks -Detroit News

Opinion

Learn from abuses of patients, such as those at former state-run hospitals
Tom Watkins

Today, beautiful upscale condos and a new shopping plaza are going up to grace the west and east corners of Five Mile and Sheldon in Metro Detroit. Yet memories of isolation, human warehousing, neglect and abuse come to mind when I pass this intersection.

This isn't a case of an overindulgent imagination -- but rather documented cases of abuse that took place on this site to some of our community's most vulnerable people: people with developmental disabilities. Ironically the name of this institution of abuse was then known as the Plymouth Center for Human Development.

This state institution was out of sight and out of mind located in the then countryside. When it opened in the 1960s, it was considered "state-of-the-art" and housed as many as 1,200 people there at its peak in 1970.

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Giving up philosophy

The conventional wisdom at the time was if your child was "disabled," give him or her up to the state. "Give them to the state and get on with your life" was the refrain. As a nation and a state, our history of care for people with disabilities has been vile and ugly.

Why bring up this unseemly history? Because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Last month I witnessed just how far we have come from this corner of abuse while attending the annual Friends of Community Living Services' "Evening with Friends Awards Ceremony." The evening was a celebration of the freedom that persons with disabilities have gained over the years. Nearly 1,000 attendees trumpet the value of their friends and family members who happen to have a disability.
Freedom brings triumph

If there ever was a cure for depression or being a sourpuss, it was attending this event. The triumph over adversity, love, friendship and pure human decency wrapped itself around you every second during this celebration of life, dignity and respect.

The man who captured this essence and brought tears to my eyes is Lake Orion resident Joe Johnson, the outreach coordinator and lead trainer at Community Media Network in Troy. Johnson has trained hundreds of community members in video production.

When people with disabilities signed up for his class, Johnson did not create a "special" segregated class for these men, but enthusiastically included them in his "regular" class. The fact that Johnson has the active support of H. Jay Wiencko Jr., executive director, just adds icing to the cake of human decency.

In accepting his award, Johnson said he was honored and felt he received much more than he gave.

Yet the most touching thing he said in accepting the awards was this simple truth: "I long for the day that common human decency to our fellow man, being kind, thoughtful and giving to allpeople, is the norm and not something to be singled out for recognition."

Yes, it will be a great day of celebration when that day comes but, until then, thank you and Community Media Network for helping to set the stage and lead the way for us all.

Remember, dignity is nothing more than the freedom of allowing people to be themselves.

Tom Watkins was Michigan's state superintendent of public instruction from 2001 to 2005 and Michigan's mental health director under Gov. Jim Blanchard from 1986 to 1990. Reach him at tdwatkins@aol.com. Please fax comments to (313) 222-6417 or e-mail them to letters@detnews.com. Read more!

Death penalty is inherently flawed -University Maryland Baltimore County Retriever Weekly

Editorial: By Saira Khan
Senior Staff Writer

In 2004 in Kansas City, MO, Lisa Montgomery, 36, strangled Bobbi Jo Stinnett, 23, who was eight months pregnant and then proceeded to cut out the premature infant from her womb; she was found guilty of kidnapping and murder. Now, the main issue lies in one question: should she be given the death penalty? The jury happens to believe so, because late last week, after deliberating for five hours, Lisa Montgomery was sentenced to death.Of course, the story doesn't end here. There will be appeals, and then some more appeals, and thousands of dollars will be spent in trying to drop her sentence to life in prison. Though Montgomery's crime was most heinous in nature, you must ask yourself this: who are we to take another's life?

Capital punishment has been a hot topic for decades now and many countries, including Canada, Australia, and all of Europe have gone as far as to completely outlaw it. Supporters of the death penalty state that it deters crime, and they believe that, as the Bible states, "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand" (Ex. 21:23, 24), the punishment should fit the crime--murder for murder.

Films such as Last Dance, Dead Man Walking, and The Life of David Gale do an excellent job of portraying the flaws in capital punishment; each film asks some very pertinent questions regarding matter like the state of mind of the criminal when the crime was committed and, of course, whether the accused is actually guilty or not.

For example, Lisa Montgomery was sexually abused repeatedly as a child, which, her defense attorney states, led to mental illness. It has been established that Montgomery used to use pregnancy as a way of getting attention and lied several times through the course of her life about being pregnant; her attorneys state that this shows a history of mental illness. Do you still feel that Montgomery deserves the death penalty? By ending her life, are we serving justice by murdering an extremely ill woman? Unfortunately, there is no simple black and white answer to the question; it's all gray.

And what are we supposed to do when we wrongfully put someone to death? Can we provide the formerly dubbed criminal, now the victim, with any form of justice? Is there any retribution for the family of the accused? I think not. "I'm sorry we killed your son for a crime he didn't commit - here's $20,000, enjoy!" says it all. People that I have spoken to regarding this matter who support the death penalty tend to beg the question, "How many times can that possibly happen?" But one wrongful death is more than enough, and considering the fact that we have convicted plenty of innocent men and women, some who served forty years before being exonerated, carrying out the death penalty on an innocent does not seem very unlikely. In the cases of the men and women who served days, months, and even years in prison for a crime they did not commit, the jury, the lawyers, and the investigators were, more often than not, one hundred percent sure that justice had been served; if they can be wrong about one case they can sure as hell be wrong about another.

Personally, I feel murders should be given life imprisonment, preferably solitary confinement (it gives them ample time to wallow in their misery and reflect on their wrong doings); they should not be given the luxury of companionship in the form of an inmate.

If you were to look at capital punishment from the economic perspective, then the pros of life in prison will most definitely outweigh the pros of the death penalty. In 1998, Phil Porter studied the costs the death penalty in states such as Texas, California, and Florida, and upon examining the results, stated that "sentencing a prisoner to life in prison is a better allocation of resources than sentencing him to be executed." To break it down, he states, "The cost of keeping a 25-year-old inmate for 50 years at present amounts to $805,000. Assuming 75 years as an average life span, the $805,000 figure would be the cost of life in prison. So roughly it's costing us $2 million more to execute someone than it would cost to keep them in jail for life."

Of course, the answer to the complex question regarding capital punishment cannot be answered in a mere less than 1,000 words article. However, I can state the following: Do I think kidnapping and murder are wrong? Absolutely. Do I think one who commits such a crime should also in turn be murdered? Absolutely not. There is no gray area here; no human on this earth has the right to take another's life, especially if there is a possibility that they may be innocent of the crime or they may be mentally ill. As clich 233 as it is to end something with a quote I feel obligated to say that Mahatma Gandhi had it right, an eye for an eye will definitely make the world go blind.

Copyright: The Retriever Weekly/span> Read more!

Woman arrested for "drunk insane/or disorderly" -Baxter (AR) Bulletin

Original story link if interested.

From staff reports
Oct. 9, 2007

A search for a missing woman that started late Friday continued intermittently throughout the weekend until officers located her early Sunday morning.

Gloria Montague, 43, of Jordan was found around 3 a.m. Sunday just off McGowan Mountain Trail, according to a Baxter County Sheriff's Office report.

The search started around 11 p.m. Friday when a 911 call from a fisherman on Norfork Lake reported a suspicious woman on the bank throwing rocks into the water, according to the report. When the caller asked if she was all right, she said she was lost and walked off into the woods, it was reported.

Deputy Henry Campfield patrolled the woods in the area near Jordan Road and Barren Creek using a thermal imaging device but did not locate the woman, according to the report.

Around 6 a.m. Saturday, James Montague, 19, reported his mother missing and said she had been released from the hospital where she was being treated for depression and schizophrenia, but she had not been taking her medications, according to the report.

Baxter County deputies, the sheriff's helicopter, the county boat patrol, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Arkansas Department of Correction tracking dogs and neighbors conducted a search of the area until 3 p.m. Saturday without success, according to the report.

About 8:45 p.m. Saturday, Gloria Montague reportedly was seen walking down High Top Hill, but officers still did not locate her, according to the report.

At 3 a.m. Sunday, officers responded to a request from the Montague family for an update, and, after arriving at the family's home, determined they would begin searching again, according to the report. Shortly thereafter, Campfield advised he had located Gloria Montague with the thermal imaging device just off McGowan Mountain Trail.

Gloria Montague was taken into custody without incident and taken to the Baxter County jail for an evaluation, where she also was fed, according to the report.

Gloria Montague was charged with being drunk, insane and/or disorderly. Read more!

New magnetic treatment for depression studied -Contra Costa (CA) Times

By BETSY MASON
October 29, 2007

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - A potential new treatment for depression involving magnetic pulses applied to the brain is getting a closer look from neuroscientists at University of California, Berkeley.

Known as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS, the magnetic therapy has shown promise in clinical trials, but scientists have little understanding of how it alters brain function.

Now, Ralph Freeman and a team of graduate students led by Elena Allen at Berkeley have taken a big step toward demystifying TMS. They discovered that how the brain stimulation affects neurons depends on what the brain is doing at the time.

Their findings could help psychiatrists better understand how to apply TMS.

"We have to know how it works before we can know how to use it," said psychiatrist Sarah Lisanby, director of the brain stimulation division at Colum-bia University in New York.

In a TMS treatment, a paddle containing a coil with electric currents pulsing through it is placed on a patient's scalp. The currents create a magnetic field in the underlying area of the brain, which changes the electrical signals sent by neurons.

To figure out what exactly TMS does to neurons, Freeman's team tested it on the brains of anesthetized cats, in the area that processes what the eyes see.

Using a surgically implanted probe to measure the activity of neurons, they found that after a few seconds of TMS, the neurons fired more rapidly for a minute, and then slowed down for several minutes.

But when the same pulses were applied while the cats were exposed to black and white bars flashing across a computer, which can be registered by the brain even under anesthesia, the TMS had a different effect. Instead of boosting brain activity, it slowed neuron firing for several minutes.

Though Freeman may be just scratching the surface of the magnetic effect, his study, which appeared in the Sept. 28 issue of Science, is an important step toward understanding TMS.

"It tells us a little bit about what the effects are," he said. "So you have a better idea what to try and what not to try."

Though the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved it for use on people, the agency is reviewing a TMS treatment device. The method has been approved in Canada, and is used in other parts of the world including Europe, Australia and South America.

Psychiatrist Bret Schneider, a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University, has had success in his private practice using TMS to treat patients with depression that haven't been helped by drugs.

"It seems to effectively treat the depression in one-third to two-thirds of the patients who have failed to get better with anything else," he said.

About one-third of the patients Schneider treated with TMS for 45 minutes a day, five days a week for two to six weeks went into remission for several months. Another third didn't get complete relief, but saw some improvement from the treatment. A third weren't helped by the treatments. Some people felt stinging on their scalp for the first few treatments, and others experienced headaches. But only one out of several dozen patients wasn't able to stick with the therapy.

It's not clear yet if returning for another round of treatments will help stave off depression for longer, or if medications can help prolong the remission. But the magnetic stimulation offers much needed hope for people who have tried several different types of antidepressants as well as psychotherapy to no avail, Schneider said.

"It's a tremendous relief. Patients have a hard time describing how wonderful it is."

Scientists hope that a better understanding of TMS could lead to treatments for schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Freeman hopes his work is a step in that direction.

One key will be to figure out why the treatments have a lasting effect on brain function, Lisanby said. "If we could understand that, we could really harness the clinical potential of TMS."

Distributed by MCT News Service. Read more!

Shelter looks to transform its fate -Contra Costa (CA) Times

By Sara Steffens
10/28/2007

The seedy sidewalks of lower Macdonald Avenue can intimidate newcomers -- and that includes first-timers arriving to claim a bed at the Bay Area Rescue Mission.

"I don't even take my children down the street to the store unless it's absolutely necessary," said Asonti Simpson, 32, who was sectioning orange slices for her preschoolers in the mission's dining hall. "I don't like the panhandling ... and I don't want my children to grow up thinking that's all there is."

In the heart of Richmond's troubled Iron Triangle, lower Macdonald offers few hints of what was once a thriving commercial district.

Boarded-up storefronts hide behind chain-link barriers. Vacant lots accumulate the distinct scent of urine. And men wander the sidewalks clutching brown-bagged bottles or pushing shopping carts.

Not long ago, memorial balloons and liquor bottles were clustered around a utility pole in front of the rescue mission, marking the spot where a 23-year-old was shot to death -- one of three young men lost to homicide in a single evening.

Adjusting to shelter life has been a struggle for Simpson's three children, ages 3, 4 and 11, their mother said.

"We've always had our own place, so the circumstance of
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just having to live here is a lot for them," said Simpson, who grew up in Pittsburg. "And they can't run around and express how they feel because of the way it is outside."

Still, Simpson plans to stay at the shelter as long as it will have her because she hopes it will become her doorway to a better life.

"They save your money for you, which is good, because I'm horrible at saving. And they help you out so you can get your own place."

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In an era of shrinking public investment in homeless services, the privately funded Bay Area Rescue Mission has boomed, becoming the largest homeless shelter in the East Bay.

Altogether, its collection of buildings provide 325 beds to anyone who needs them: Addicts. Parolees. The mentally ill. Senior citizens. Mothers with small children and no place to go.

The shelter is well-known as a refuge of last resort among social workers and other service providers, who must often convince reluctant clients that a bed in Richmond is better than no bed at all.

"The only time there's ever beds available is in Richmond, because no one wants to go," said Sandra Scherer, director of the Monument Crisis Center in Concord. "Not because of the shootings, but because of the unknown."

The mission inspires some grumbling among the homeless for its unabashed evangelism and frequent chapel services.

But most everyone agrees that the patchwork of buildings house people who would otherwise end up on the streets.

"If you don't have a friend in the world," the sign at the front door reads, "you can find one here."

For a neighborhood trying to turn blight into rebirth, that's part of the problem.

The mission has been a sore point for years for residents of the Iron Triangle, which suffers from widespread poverty and entrenched gun violence.

"As if we didn't have enough problems," said Lilliemae Jones, a board member of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council. "They put the people out at 7 in the morning and they ain't got nowhere to go but to the park. They create problems for the whole neighborhood, walking up and down in the community."

Like other neighborhood residents, Jones blames the mission for public urination, panhandling and other neighborhood nuisances.

City planners, too, have cooled to the shelter, saying it doesn't fit their long-term vision for the area.

A revitalization plan calls for rebuilding Macdonald Avenue with shops, cafes, new housing units and art galleries.

Some projects are under way, including construction of a new transit hub flanked by condominiums, ground-breaking for new senior housing and designs for a face-lift of Nevin Park, located a few blocks from the mission.

Earlier this year, Richmond city officials began negotiating to relocate the shelter -- an idea mission leaders say they are considering.

No one is naming any specific site or even saying whether it will be in Richmond, but both sides agree that the shelter could end up in a light industrial area close to transit.

To sweeten the deal, the city has hired an architect to draft plans for a new, improved building to house the mission's shelter and services.

Finding a site, and constructing or modifying a building, is likely to take two or three years, city planners say.

Although she is skeptical of the city's redevelopment plans, Jones said she is pleased that the mission and its residents may be on the way out.

"I don't want to close them down, I just want to relocate them, put them in an industrial park," she said. "That's where it is in the county; it ain't in no neighborhood ... We get bogged down with too many transients -- from San Francisco, from San Quentin and everywhere else."

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John Dimick had never heard of the mission before he came to Richmond a few months ago.

A 40-year-old San Francisco native, Dimick was lured to the area by its easy access to drugs, and he soon found his life spiraling out of control.

"I had been living in this abandoned house," he said. "And this old man recycling told me I could come here and get something to eat. That was my step into it."

Finding the mission was a godsend, he said. "I hadn't showered in days or had anything to eat."

"They really care here," Dimick said. "They do treat you like a human being here. They let you keep your dignity."

"You got only one way to go from here," he added. "Back up."

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When the mission was founded in 1965, no one talked of "shelters" for the "homeless."

"They were referred to back then more as the bums, the hobos, the derelicts," said Executive Director John Anderson. "They were basically all alcoholics or heroin-addicted men."

Rent was cheap when the mission, then called the Richmond Rescue Mission, rented the ground floor of an old hotel at 214 Macdonald and set up a dozen beds.

As poverty became entrenched in Richmond, so did the mission and its services.

In 1971, it bought the entire hotel building for $17,500, adding more beds.

As the '70s and '80s wore on, the mission settled in and spread out, adding an emergency family shelter, transitional men's housing, and a new chapel and dining hall, at 200 Macdonald and 224 Macdonald.

In 1992, mission officials purchased a large lot and warehouse across the street, 123 Macdonald, which became home to a food pantry and clothing distribution center.

Finally, in 1994, a local supporter and businessman donated a property a mile away, 2114 Macdonald, which became home to the mission's administrative offices, after-school clubs and its adult education classrooms.

Today, the mission owns 90,000 square feet of building space in the heart of downtown Richmond, as well as a car storage lot behind its administrative offices.

The nonprofit organization has matured into a political powerhouse, drawing support from across the Bay Area.

Its annual budget has grown to $7.3 million, half of which comes from donations of goods and services. Each month, 550 volunteers travel from across the Bay Area to visit the center and help its clients.

It houses hundreds of people each night and serves more than a half-million meals every year.

About 37 percent come from Alameda County, 34 percent from Contra Costa and the rest from other counties and even states, according to the mission.

"Today, people come to us with a variety of reasons for being homeless," Anderson said. "We have the working poor who can't afford living in the Bay Area. We have families. We do still have substance abusers. But we gear a lot more today to (teaching) job skills, life skills."

Anderson said mission residents are encouraged to stay on-site during the day, and residents are unfairly scapegoated for problems in Nevin Park and elsewhere in the neighborhood.

To relocate the shelter, he said, the new facility would have to encompass all its functions, including a kitchen and nearby food warehouse.

Because the mission owns its properties outright, the city can force a move only through an eminent domain fight.

Anderson said he hopes for a happier resolution.

"We're looking forward to working with the city on this. Our goal is to make it so we're not concerned."

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Rows of humble bunk beds accommodate short-timers at the mission, generally single men who are allowed emergency stays of no longer than 30 days. They have to wait another 30 days before returning.

"They get a (storage) tub they fill each day, and then they lock it up during the day," said men's counselor Patrick Davis, 45.

Those who sign up for the mission's longer-term recovery programs can settle in to slightly more comfortable accommodations.

The program lasts 14 months, including intensive counseling, four hours of daily Bible study and a six-hour daily work assignment.

"The goal is not to just work them, the goal is to change the person," said Davis. "To help them get a relationship with Jesus Christ and start changing their lives, and looking at the things that brought them to the mission."

"Nobody comes to the mission saying 'This is where I want to go.' By the time they come here, usually everything has fallen through in their lives.

"That's how it worked for me. This was the oasis in the desert for me."

Davis came to the mission seven years ago, fresh out of jail. A San Leandro shelter sent him in a cab.

"When I got off the freeway, I almost told them to take me back because I know what ghetto looks like -- and this is definitely it. The Iron Triangle was ghetto."

Shelter life can be hard to take, said Davis, because of its close quarters and all the rules and regulations residents must follow.

But part of the goal is to get them saying, "You know, I don't want to live like this."

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Homeless people aren't responsible for all the crime and drug dealing in the Iron Triangle, said Steve Duran, Richmond's community and economic development director.

But the mission's clientele "give cover to some of the bad elements," Duran said.

The mission brings people from a wide area into Richmond for a bed and a meal, said Duran.

Only a small percentage of people who stay overnight remain in the shelter during the day, he said. The rest wander on foot down Macdonald Avenue, headed for a soup kitchen up the street or another place to spend the day.

"If you've got people who don't have a job and don't have money and you're a block from the park and it's a nice day, they're going to go to the park. That's not compatible with moms and babies and other uses."

Otheree Christian, president of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council, said neighbors are tired of seeing people urinate, throw garbage and sleep in the park.

"There's a lot of families in the area; really they don't have nowhere to go right now," he said. "We definitely want that park where the kids can play -- soccer, football, baseball."

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On the wall of the mission's chapel room, a bold banner proclaims: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

A few worshippers take the scripture literally and doze off during the evening service. Others flutter through Bible pages, circulate a sign-up sheet or cough hard.

The windows are cracked open to the night breeze, circulating a sour unwashed smell. In the back row, a 2-year-old in her sleepers snuggles more deeply into her mother's arms, settling in to suck her thumb.

From the front of the room, guest Pastor Robert Scott tells the story of his own lost days, his addiction to drugs and women.

"On the outside I looked really good, but on the inside I was an empty shell," said Scott, a chaplain and teacher at El Sobrante Christian School. "The more I tried to get out of the world what I wanted, the emptier I got."

"I came here and I sat here just like you -- and the main thing that I found is that God loved everybody here."

Sara Steffens covers poverty and social services. Reach her at 925-943-8048 or ssteffens@bayareanewsgroup.com. Read more!

ST. JOHN'S GUNMAN COMMITTED - New York Post

By IKIMULISA LIVINGSTON

The St. John's University student who donned a mask and wandered the campus with a loaded rifle has agreed to enter a psychiatric hospital in exchange for having all the charges against him dropped.
Omesh Hiraman, 22, will go from Bellevue's psychiatric ward to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center for 90 days, after the Queens District Attorney's Office dropped the misdemeanor weapons charge.

Two psychiatrists found Hiraman unfit to proceed. The Jackson Heights man has a history of mental problems, including schizophrenia.

In September, Hiraman - wearing a Fred Flintstone mask and toting a one-shot rifle - terrorized the Queens campus.

"He's still hearing voices and still hallucinating," said Hiraman's lawyer, Anthony Colleluori.



Read more!

The meltdown in mental health-care - Sonoma (CA) Index Tribune

By Emily Charrier
INDEX-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Mental health care is suffering on county, state and national levels due to lack of funding, lack of access and a lack of trained professionals.

"It's a whole national trend," said Rita Scardaci, director of the county's Department of Health.

Those in the mental health-care industry say the root of the problem stems from the fact that mental health care is not treated with the same attention or resources as physical health care.

"The political system has not treated mental illness and the treatment of mentally ill the same as physical health. Never have, still don't," said Dr. Richard Kirk, a Sonoma-based psychiatrist and chair of the Sonoma Valley Health Care District board. "If equity for mental health services was really put in the system, it would be a huge change."

All too often mental health care is considered a private insurance matter, with little access to ongoing psychological care. However, experts say even those with private insurance are not necessarily getting the care they need. Even worse, those who need access to care the most are all too often the ones with no insurance at all.

"Sonoma County is like many other places in the nation, struggling to meet the needs of the seriously mentally ill and just beginning the new frontier: How to prevent mental illness, how to grow a healthy child, how to provide access to mental health care in the absence of 'parity' laws, (which require) insurance companies to cover mental illness on par with physical illness," said Art Ewart, mental health service director for the county. "In the face of poor private insurance coverage, the community will continue to look to an underfunded public system and be disappointed."
Up until the closure of the inpatient unit at Santa Rosa's Psychiatric Emergency Services (known as the Norton Center), the facility acted as a sort of "holding pen" for all patients, regardless of what level of treatment was necessary. Although the facility is still open to patients in crisis, a majority of outpatients are being sent to other treatment facilities depending on what level of care is needed.

"Public mental health programs around the country are developing a far greater system of care than the private insurance sector can provide," Ewart said. That includes "everything from crisis intervention, to overnight care, to short-term stays of 10 to 14 days in a residential setting, to traditional outpatient case management."

Without parity laws to provide quality mental health care at least to those with insurance, the county is trying to get creative by launching mental health-care programs that cover a wider variety of needs. County officials say they are in the process of moving away from large mental hospitals in favor of smaller treatment programs that provide patients with an appropriate treatment for each specific situation.
"Clients treated in 'facilities' for long periods become institutionalized," Ewart said. "The age of 'Cuckoo's Nest' is long, long over."

In this vein, the county developed a six-bed residential crisis intervention program, where patients can voluntarily commit themselves to treatment in a smaller, more home-like environment.

"That has been huge," Scardaci said. "It's really a much more therapeutic environment."

While many county health-care professionals see this change as a positive move for adult patients, there is still the problem of juvenile mental health care. Children cannot be treated in the same facilities as adults, and the newly developed programs are mainly designed for adults. There is nowhere in Sonoma County to take a juvenile experiencing a mental health crisis. Ewart said even when a problem exists, the county tries everything possible to avoid hospitalizing a minor.

"Hospitals are not good places for children. They learn better how to threaten suicide, how to cut themselves, how to act out, and how to hear voices," he said. "So, we do everything possible to support to the family and keep the kid at home before considering a hospital." When keeping a child at home is not an option, juveniles are sent to the St. Helena Medical Center in Vallejo. Experts say this can compound the problem, by taking the patient away from his or her home environment.

"The farther away you take a patient, the more it adds to the problem," Kirk said.
Even with a more progressive mental health-care treatment plan, funding remains a concern. In May the Department of Mental Health Services released a report to the county's Board of Supervisors that stated plans to discontinue several mental health-care programs, including the Adult Service Team, which is estimated to serve at least 600 clients and the Resource Team, which aids 500 adults and 50 children. Despite slashing programs, more funding is still needed. The report estimated the Department of Mental Health, despite cutting nearly $7 million in programs, will still need around $2.5 million in additional funding for the current fiscal year.

Jennifer Hedgepeth, president of the Sonoma County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said her organization, along with other advocacy groups, has felt added pressure from the loss of these programs. "There is not enough money available to fund the services that the mentally ill depend on," she said.

Despite the county's attempts to develop unique treatment facilities, it is apparent mental health care will be a problem lawmakers continue to struggle with. First District Supervisor Valerie Brown summed it up when she said, "It's a broken system."

Read more!

CU slashing suspect faces mental exam - Denver Post

Mental exam ordered for alleged CUCU student stabbed on campus

By Cassie Hewlings
The Denver Post

A mentally disabled man who allegedly cut the throat of a University of Colorado student on the first day of classes will undergo a state-administered psychiatric evaluation for competency, a Boulder County judged ruled Monday afternoon.

Kenton Astin, 39, faces charges of attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault with a deadly weapon after police say he slashed the throat of Michael Knorps on Aug. 27 in front of the University Memorial Center on the CU-Boulder campus.

Prosecuting attorney Bruce Langer requested that Judge John Stavely order the evaluation after Astin's attorney, Michael Connell, submitted a summary report of a private psychiatric evaluation Monday morning that questioned Astin's ability to stand trial.

According to court records, Astin faced similar charges of attempted first-degree murder in 2001 after he allegedly attacked a man with a knife in Longmont. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was released from the state mental hospital in Pueblo in 2005 after successfully completing treatment.


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Prison Is No Place To Put The Mentally Ill - Hartford Courant

ALLAN ATHERTON
Opinion

October 29, 2007

The recent controversy surrounding prison overcrowding in Connecticut has placed a spotlight on conditions for those with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system. All too often, people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses in prison have committed misdemeanors or nonviolent, low-level crimes because they have been forced to live on the streets because of the lack of supportive housing and treatment.

Many responsible citizens share the concern that there are not sufficient resources or treatment options to accommodate this population.

They are absolutely right - but the proper accommodation for those who have committed minor offenses because of their serious mental illnesses is not jail or prison - it's community-based mental health treatment and housing options. In 1999, an editorial in The Hartford Courant accurately said, "Psychiatric hospitals have been shut down, but care on the community level has not measured up to promises." Now, in 2007, the state still relies on even more inappropriate institutional care and grossly lacks adequate funding for community services for people with mental illnesses.

When it comes to mental illness, the thing that the public needs to grasp above all else is that it is treatable. Treatment, not imprisonment, is the way to address those who are sick.

Of course the prison system provides some medical treatment. But the right place to provide treatment for mental illness is in a recovery-oriented mental health service system. Yet only 50 percent of defendants with serious mental illnesses who are identified and evaluated can be diverted from jail - largely because the judge does not have any alternative.

Still, state policy-makers are currently contemplating the development of a $150 million "mental/medical" prison facility that will cost an additional $125 million to sustain annually. We could spend millions less and be more effective by serving people in the community with proven, fiscally sound solutions such as supportive housing. This is not just a social imperative - it's a sound investment in the productivity and the well-being of our state.

Making this happen will require policy-makers to address the state's basic and fundamental responsibility for adequate treatment and housing, and to not equate serious criminals of all types with severe mental illnesses.

If the state would separate these issues, it would be able to deal humanely with people who are sick and not criminals. It would also relieve pressure on the prisons and jails and allow corrections officials to focus their resources and attention on the people who are criminals, rather than trying to "treat" people who are not.

Allan Atherton is president of NAMI Connecticut, the state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

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Optimism lights up a brain part - LA Times

October 29, 2007

A person's optimism about the future seems to be controlled by a small front part of the mid-brain.

That area deep behind the eyes activates when people think good thoughts about what might happen in the future. The more optimistic a person is, the brighter the area showed up in brain scans, scientists reported in a small study published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

That same part of the brain, called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), seems to malfunction in people suffering depression, said the study coauthors, Elizabeth Phelps of New York University and Tali Sharot of University College London.

Researchers gave 15 people functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while they thought about future possibilities. When the participants thought about good events, both the rACC and amygdala, which is involved in emotional responses including fear, were activated. But the correlation with optimism was biggest with the cingulate cortex.

Psychologists have long known people have an "optimism bias," but the new study offers new details.

Having our brains wired to optimism is generally a good thing because "if you were pessimistic about the future, you would not be motivated to take a lot of action," Phelps said.

Read more!

How to Figure Out When Therapy Is Over - New York Times

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.

If you think it’s hard to end a relationship with a lover or spouse, try breaking up with your psychotherapist.

A writer friend of mine recently tried and found it surprisingly difficult. Several months after landing a book contract, she realized she was in trouble.

“I was completely paralyzed and couldn’t write,” she said, as I recall. “I had to do something right away, so I decided to get myself into psychotherapy.”

What began with a simple case of writer’s block turned into seven years of intensive therapy.

Over all, she found the therapy very helpful. She finished a second novel and felt that her relationship with her husband was stronger. When she broached the topic of ending treatment, her therapist strongly resisted, which upset the patient. “Why do I need therapy,” she wanted to know, “if I’m feeling good?”

Millions of Americans are in psychotherapy, and my friend’s experience brings up two related, perplexing questions. How do you know when you are healthy enough to say goodbye to your therapist? And how should a therapist handle it?

With rare exceptions, the ultimate aim of all good psychotherapists is, well, to make themselves obsolete. After all, whatever drove you to therapy in the first place — depression, anxiety, relationship problems, you name it — the common goal of treatment is to feel and function better independent of your therapist.

To put it bluntly, good therapy is supposed to come to an end.

But when? And how is the patient to know? Is the criterion for termination “cure” or is it just feeling well enough to be able to call it a day and live with the inevitable limitations and problems we all have?

The term “cure,” I think, is illusory — even undesirable — because there will always be problems to repair. Having no problems is an unrealistic goal. It’s more important for patients to be able to deal with their problems and to handle adversity when it inevitably arises.

Still, even when patients feel that they have accomplished something important in therapy and feel “good enough,” it is not always easy to say goodbye to a therapist.

Not long ago, I evaluated a successful lawyer who had been in psychotherapy for nine years. He had entered therapy, he told me, because he lacked a sense of direction and had no intimate relationships. But for six or seven years, he had felt that he and his therapist were just wasting their time. Therapy had become a routine, like going to the gym.

“It’s not that anything bad has happened,” he said. “It’s that nothing is happening.”

This was no longer psychotherapy, but an expensive form of chatting. So why did he stay with it? In part, I think, because therapy is essentially an unequal relationship. Patients tend to be dependent on their therapists. Even if the therapy is problematic or unsatisfying, that might be preferable to giving it up altogether or starting all over again with an unknown therapist.

Beyond that, patients often become stuck in therapy for the very reason that they started it. For example, a dependent patient cannot leave his therapist; a masochistic patient suffers silently in treatment with a withholding therapist; a narcissistic patient eager to be liked fears challenging his therapist, and so on.

Of course, you may ask why therapists in such cases do not call a timeout and question whether the treatment is stalled or isn’t working. I can think of several reasons.

To start with, therapists are generally an enthusiastic bunch who can always identify new issues for you to work on. Then, of course, there is an unspoken motive: therapists have an inherent financial interest in keeping their patients in treatment.

And therapists have unmet emotional needs just like everyone else, which certain patients satisfy. Therapists may find some patients so interesting, exciting or fun that they have a hard time letting go of them.

So the best way to answer the question, “Am I done with therapy?” is to confront it head on. Periodically take stock of your progress and ask your therapist for direct feedback.

How close are you to reaching your goals? How much better do you feel? Are your relationships and work more satisfying? You can even ask close friends or your partner whether they see any change.

If you think you are better and are contemplating ending treatment but the therapist disagrees, it is time for an independent consultation. Indeed, after a consultation, my writer friend terminated her therapy and has no regrets about it.

The lawyer finally mustered the courage to tell his therapist that although he enjoyed talking with her, he really felt that the time had come to stop. To his surprise, she agreed.

If, unlike those two, you still cannot decide to stay or leave, consider an experiment. Take a break from therapy for a few months and see what life is like without it.

That way, you’ll have a chance to gauge the effects of therapy without actually being in it (and paying for it). Remember, you can always go back.

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.


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Let's make it a goal to practice compassion -Waterloo (IA) Courier

By Donna Wood
October 28, 2007

The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, recently received a Congressional Gold Medal for his peace-making ventures. His writings and talks are dominated by compassion. What a model! What can he teach us?

Let's assume that most humans hold compassion as a virtue.Many religions teach compassion as an ideal for which to strive. Philosophers tend to approve of compassion as a valuable human state. And, compassion is the basis of charity and underlies the entire social justice movement.

There are many definitions of compassion, but most include two elements: a feeling of understanding the other's pain, and a motivation to do something that will relieve that pain.

What did Jesus say? Luke 6:27-28 (Revised Standard): "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."

What did the Buddha say? In the Theravedan Itivuttaka, we read, "a noble one produces an abundance of merit by having a compassionate mind towards all living beings."

What did the Islamic Prophet say? From the Qu’ran, 2.263: "Kind speech and forgiveness is better than charity followed by injury."

Now. consider our neighbors who make life difficult for us, or who would like to. These are the people who call working women

"feministic bitches," who hate gays and would eliminate them if possible, who are enraged over others' successes, who revile and ridicule others routinely, who "call the Courier" over the smallest infraction of law or rule, who snarl and try to bite those who disagree with their political, religious, social, or other views. Note that I am not talking about people who merely disagree, but about those who are venomous.

What would compassion look like if exercised on behalf of such people?

I admit, I struggle with this. I don't really want to feel the pain of people who hate those who are not exactly like themselves. I don't really want to relieve the suffering of people whose every molecule seems oriented toward shallow-minded rage. It's a challenge to exercise compassion, but let me try.

Some toxic people are merely ignorant and uneducated, while some have little native intelligence. Shouldn't those who can benefit from education receive a good one, and shouldn't those who cannot benefit be helped to find useful, meaningful work? Shouldn't all people have access to the opportunities they need to live rich and happy lives?

Some are mentally ill and need treatment. If our society understood and accepted mental illnesses for the biochemical brain disorders that they are, would our mentally ill neighbors be in so much pain? What must it be like to live with such suffering every day?

Some people have become hardened in their hatred by perceived or real injustices and abuses against themselves. Shouldn't they be enveloped in love so strong that it burns away their pain? Shouldn't they be encouraged to heal and move on?

Some feel so frightened and threatened in a world out of control that they grasp at whatever line of thinking gives them comfort and security, albeit false. They erect a harsh, spiky wall of hostility, hoping that it will protect them from those "different others" who seem to personify the threats.

This is hard for me too, because the world so often does seem out of control, frightening. And it's a reality, not just a perception; Golda Meier told us long ago that "paranoids have real enemies." But vulnerability is the human condition, and death stalks us all and wins. Why then should we hide our fright behind rage? Why not comfort one another and be kind, as we are all passengers on life's Titanic?

When trying to exercise compassion, I think of the hate-mongers as violent minds atop frightened souls. I send out blessings for all --- including my enemies and those who hate and revile what I hold most dear. I become aware of my own fear and anger at seeing violence and injustice in the world, and I turn some of that compassion inward. I write checks to groups that try to alleviate suffering. I vote for people who might be able to turn our great nation around before it drowns itself in hatred and fear.

That's what compassion looks like to me --- empathy and action. It's hard, and I often fail, but it's worth trying.

So, to any reader in need of compassion, whether you know it or not, I send blessings. Compassion is a practice, not a condition. Let's all practice. Read more!

Self mutilation - Silver City (NM) Sun-News

By Ashley Meeks
10/29/2007

LAS CRUCES -- Everyone knows that skin naturally recoils from the sharpness of a razor.

But sometimes, it doesn't. Not everybody knows that.

Like the 14-year-old with the horizontal slashes across her arm, with the scars on her ankles and knees from sixth grade.

She is one Mayfield High School freshman, among an estimated 13 percent to 20 percent of adolescents, the majority female, who have burns, scratches and self-inflicted cuts like hers. The Sun-News has honored her request for anonymity.

An estimated 50 percent of those who self-injure are at risk of suicide. For her, it started with those dark thoughts, in fifth grade. It progressed to self-punishment, cutting her knees with disposable razors -- what is technically termed impulsive, repetitive self-mutilation syndrome -- when she felt guilty after family arguments.

"I just thought maybe if I felt pain, it would teach me to learn a lesson," she said. She began to feel a drug-like release from her emotional pain. Endorphins. "It turned into a relief thing."

It progressed to sewing needles under her skin. Then she started cutting her wrists.

"I was always afraid, before, that I would hit a vein. It got to where I just stopped caring," she said. "If I
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died, I died."

Take the teenage pressure of a group of friends ditching class to do shots of Mad Dog 20/20 in a shady arroyo as a best-case scenario.

Take your first love leaving you for your best friend, a sister's miscarriage, a brother's drug-dabbling, the flunked five-paragraph essay on "Animal Farm" you spent an all-nighter on and the four prison walls of a bedroom on a bad day as a worst-case scenario.

And you're still probably nowhere near understanding it.

That was true for a close friend of hers, said the Mayfield girl. When she discovered her friend's self-injury, it threatened to destroy their relationship. The Mayfield girl re-prioritized.

She stopped cutting for seven months -- until a series of traumas triggered her again. She spent a week in the hospital after threatening suicide. She was prescribed anti-depressants, three kinds. A violent episode in a friend's bathroom -- one of 16 suicide attempts -- ended with her arms bloody and her hands in police handcuffs. She spent two more months in residential treatment.

Cutting increases, causes unclear

Psychologist Dr. Martin Greer said he's seen the problem throughout his 18 years with Las Cruces Public Schools, but more than half of his middle school counselors had recently been reporting an increase.

On Oct. 19, a daylong mental health conference gathered counselors, parents, students and teachers from across Las Cruces to focus on identification, prevention and intervention of suicidal or self-injurious behavior. The keynote speaker was Dr. Scott Poland, past president of the National Association of School Psychologists, who served on-site after the five major school shootings of the 1990s -- including Columbine -- and currently works as a crisis coordinator at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Preliminary results of a counselor survey -- which indicated that at least anecdotally, self-injury is perceived to be on the rise in Las Cruces -- were also presented by New Mexico State University's Dr. Lisa Grayshield, an associate professor of counseling and psychology. Grayshield called the day "baby steps" for the Las Cruces area.

"We have no national data (on cutting) that I know of as yet," she said, apart from a study this year that stated 20 percent of teens engaged in self-injuring behavior. "This phenomenon is fairly recent."

Right now, compared to bullies and drug abuse, she said self-injury doesn't rank high as a concern of the general population.

"It's not like it's reached some sort of critical mass," she said, though she says from what she sees, the 20 percent figure is "conservative."

"Counselors and nurses run across this because either a kid comes to a counselor or a teacher or friend or parent might refer them of course because they see a kid cutting on themselves and it's very, very serious."

But Grayshield cautions that self-injury only relates to suicide "a little bit."

"People who cut are at greater risk, but in terms of people who complete suicides, it's not a predictor," Grayshield said.

Greer says once more facts are in, "we need to pay it forward" by raising awareness among teachers, administrators, parents and students.

Poland says sometimes the behavior goes away after adolescence. Sometimes it doesn't.

Cutting fills various needs

For people dealing with it today, "the goal can't be to immediately eliminate the behavior," which releases endorphins and bottled emotions, Poland said. However destructive and dangerous, like smoking cigarettes or drinking to excess, self-injury "fulfills a number of needs ... cutting is working for them."

He recalls parents of a cutter who seemed oblivious to the wounds that never healed on her arms, who was using up bandages in bulk around the house. The daughter always claimed she got scratched up riding an ATV through the woods.

Brigitte Zigelhofer, whose son is in seventh grade in Las Cruces, said what she'd heard of the behavior worried her.

"Kids have so much stress on them these days that it seems like they just don't know where to turn for help," she said. "I'm one of the lucky ones -- my child will come to me when he's worried or upset, but not every child has that kind of connection with a parent."

Zigelhofer said parents need to open their eyes and make sure their kids have someone who will listen to them when they need it -- especially when they're sad or upset.

"What's important to a child may not seem like a big deal to an adult," she said. "We have to remember their worries are different from ours."

Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons" and the "Life in Hell" comics, was asked in 1993 why, as kids, "most everyone has a sense that things are screwy, how is it that, as adults, we perpetuate the screwiness?"

"Most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid," Groening said.

Perhaps the seminal song about cutting, "Hurt," a 1994 song by Nine Inch Nails, the video for which featured a fresh-faced, suburban Maggie Gyllenhaal harming herself, explains some of the mindset: "I hurt myself today to see if I still feel; I focus on the pain -- the only thing that's real."

The Mayfield girl is trying to move beyond that frame of mind.

It's been since June that she's gone without cutting herself. She's staying off the medicine. She gets along with her therapist. Home life is more stable. She has people to look up to.

Greer said in addition to getting help from family, neutral parties or therapists, people who self-injure can help themselves without risking permanent scars or injury.

When it is the pain they seek, they can hold ice cubes in their hands or snap rubber bands around their wrists or arms. When it is the sight of blood that relieves, cutters can replace self-injury by drawing in red marker, or by painting red nail polish on their skin, then flaking it off when it dries.

The Mayfield girl tried the rubber bands and the hot lines, but what helps her more is painting, venting online, writing stories, texting a friend and most of all, human contact. That helps her remember that she is a person -- a person who is loved. When she thinks about the impact her cuts, or her death, would have on the friends and family who care about her, she knows they would be devastated.

Grayshield said people who self-injure, especially at the middle school level, can be serious -- or copycats.

"There can be four or five kids where it's sort of a trendy thing that they do once or twice and they say, "well, that wasn't very fun.' But there are about 20 percent (of cutters) who have more serious psychological problems," she said.

The Mayfield girl can attest to the difference.

One friend did it when she was angry at her friends, to avoid lashing out at them. Others, girls two years younger, saw her scars and showed up the next day to show her their arms -- covered in cuts. The new trend.

Don't judge, don't ignore

Whatever the impetus, if you know someone who cuts themselves, professionals advise telling someone, just in case. The Mayfield girl says it is also important to lend an ear without judgment.

"It's the whole, "you wouldn't understand' thing," she said. "And the best thing to say is, "I know I don't understand. But I can be there for you. Don't be sorry for having feelings.'"

Poland says, "the typical response is to be horrified." A lot of adults, new to the issue of self-injury and unable to see the underlying struggle, say they couldn't work with such kids.

"I say, "well, don't," he said.

"They come and pull off their bandages sometimes, as a test: "Are you going to be grossed out? Are you going to focus on the wound? Or on me, as a person?'"

Parents and school staff often have a perception of self-injury that is connected to listening to gloomy music and wearing black. The perception says if you skateboard or listen to emo band Dashboard Confessional, you are more likely to slice your arms with scissors.

If only it were that simple.

Out of context, singing along to Gerard Way, of rock group My Chemical Romance, and his "songs that make you slit your wrists," can seem new and troubling to parents who were never fans of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, or the blues.

But saying self-injury can be contained within one clique of kids, one group of fans of one type of music, galls those who have been there.

"The quiet ones? You can't tell," said the Mayfield girl. "It's hard to tell who's doing it or not."

Nor does the perception, however prevalent, hold water, say the experts. Those who self-injure can -- are -- also the jazz-band members, pre-mission Mormons, theater kids and cheerleaders.

Poland said those who self-injure tend to be "likable, functional and intelligent kids, but they break down under stress."

The Mayfield girl prefers Slayer herself.

"It's not just emo kids," she says. "Pretty girls can do it, too."

Ashley Meeks can be reached at ameeks@lcsun-news.com

Traits

--Trauma history

--Mental disintegration under stress

--Rage toward a powerful figure in their lives that can not be expressed

--Impulse control problem

--Rigid all or nothing thinking

--Lack emotional closeness with others

Self mutilation

--Surveys have found up to 13% ofadolescents engage in it

--Usually begins and ends in adolescence

--Majority are female

--Often associated with sexual abuse, family violence, PTSD and eating disorders

--Triggers: recent loss, peer conflict and intimacy problems

What do kids say?

--Want to feel concrete

pain when psychological pain is

overwhelming

--Reduces numbness

--Keeps trauma from intruding

--I cut so I will not kill myself

--Gets attention of others

--Discharges tension, anger and despair

--Gain a sense of control

--Punish myself

--Cutting "is better than going out and getting drunk"

Resources

Web sites

--Self harm.org

--Self-abuse.com

--Palacenet/llama/psych/injury.html

Books

--"The Scarred Soul" by Tracy Alderman

--"Bright Red Scream" by Marilee Strong

Phone numbers

--Southwest Counseling Center hot line: (800) 964-1542

--La Piñon 24-Hour Crisis Hot line: (888) 595-7273

--Agora Crisis Center: (866) 435-7166

--Nationally: (800) 784-2433 or (800) 366-8388

To view the presentation on suicide and self-injury presented at the Oct. 19 conference in Las Cruces, or to download a survey about self-injury to assist with the NMSU research project about the topic, click here.

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Broughton tunnels: What was the real reason for them - Morganton News-Herald

October 28, 2007
Editor's note: Today we continue a series of stories The News Herald is reprinting just in time for Halloween. These stories first appeared in a special magazine called Burke Believe It Or Not. Former News Herald writer Kerri McFalls wrote this one.

MORGANTON - They rest deep under the earth's surface and wind through the campus of Broughton Hospital.

When the hospital was built in the 1870s to accommodate the mentally ill, it was built with a series of tunnels, said William F. Brown III, the safety director for the hospital.

Rumors as to what the tunnels were actually used for have swarmed for years, Brown said, but the actual reason for their existence isn't an exciting one at all, he added.

"They are just utility tunnels," Brown said. "All of the tunnels end at the steam plant."

Seth Hunt, the director of the hospital, said some of the rumors included using the tunnels to transport patients who were extremely dangerous, their use in the underground railroad or as a place to chain patients up against a wall and leave them for the rats.

Determined to dispel the rumors, Brown and Hunt left the comfort of their offices, grabbed a flashlight and went down under. Brown used a key - only certain employees have one - to get through a metal door. A brightly lighted, descending hallway with arched ceilings was on the other side.

"This really isn't a tunnel," Hunt said, adding that the real tunnels weren't as nice.

Once they got to the bottom of the hallway they came into a room with several dark tunnels leading in different directions. When Brown shone his flashlight into a tunnel, the light disappeared in the darkness.

"Watch where you step," Brown said. "Be careful."

In some parts, the floor was uneven and covered with debris and while Brown and Hunt made their way through the tunnels they had to duck under hot steam lines.

"See that light up ahead," Brown said. "That's a man hole."

Hunt joked that the tunnels were a good place to come and secretly listen to employees talk. After searching through the tunnels the men concluded that there were no signs of patient abuse or locks and chains. And the only sign of death that the two men could find was the skeleton of a dead rat.

"I'd say he's been there for a while," Hunt said of the shattered bones.

Brown also dispelled the rumor that the tunnels were used to transport "crazy" patients by saying that the tunnels only went to one place, the steam room.
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Doctors call for earlier autism screening -Associated Press

By Lindsey Tanner


CHICAGO–The leading pediatricians' group in the United States is making its strongest push yet to have all children screened for autism twice by age 2, warning of symptoms such as babies who don't babble at 9 months and 1-year-olds who don't point to toys.

The advice is meant to help both parents and doctors spot autism sooner. There is no cure for the disorder, but experts say that early therapy can lessen its severity.

Symptoms to watch for, and the call for early screening, come in two new reports.

They are being released by the American Academy of Pediatrics today at its annual meeting in San Francisco and will appear in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics and on the group's website, aap.org.

The reports list numerous warning signs, such as a 4-month-old not smiling at the sound of mom or dad's voice, or the loss of language or social skills at any age.

Experts say one in 150 U.S. children have the troubling developmental disorder.

Autism Society Canada puts the figure at about one in 165 children.

The new reports say children with suspect cases should be treated before a formal diagnosis is made.

In Ontario, there has been no push for testing, although the provincial government has explored the feasibility of universal developmental surveillance – which includes early signs of autism – focused on 18 months as a start, said Dr. Wendy Roberts of the autism research program at the Hospital for Sick Children.

There are basic warning signs at 12 months, including babies not pointing at things of interest in attempts to get their parents to look.

Debbie Hrybinsky, president of the Toronto chapter of Autism Ontario, and parent of autistic son Matthew, 7, called the U.S. recommendations a positive step. Her son's autism was confirmed by the time he was 3.

Her son would have benefited from the guidelines being proposed in the U.S., she said.

"If we got the diagnosis sooner I think he'd be further ahead,'' Hrybinsky said last night.

Dr. Chris Johnson, co-author of the new reports and a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, said: "Parents come into your office now saying `I'm worried about autism.' Ten years ago, they didn't know what it was."

The authors caution not all children who display a few symptoms are autistic and parents should not overreact to quirky behaviour.

Just because a child lines up toy cars or has tantrums "doesn't mean you need to have concern, if they're also interacting socially and also pretending with toys and communicating well," said co-author Dr. Scott Myers, of Danville, Pa.

Recommended treatment for autism should include at least 25 hours a week of intensive behaviour-based therapy, including educational activities and speech therapy, according to the reports.

For very young children, therapy typically involves fun activities, such as bouncing balls back and forth or sharing toys to develop social skills; there is repeated praise for eye contact and other behaviour autistic children often avoid.

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County pays $1.5 million to aid homeless inmates Ontario (CA) Daily Bulletin

By Alison Hewitt
Oct. 28, 2007

For five years, the sheriff's Community Transition Unit has tried to connect homeless inmates with services before releasing them from jail.

Now, Los Angeles County hopes to expand the program.

As part of a $100 million homelessness prevention plan, $1.5 million was set aside to hire a nonprofit to continue the work.

"Study after study has shown that jail isn't helping people. It's making things worse," said Brian Center, the unit's commander. "The only way to keep them off the street or out of jail is to get them services."

Before the Sheriff's Department got involved, homeless inmates were likely to be released from jail in downtown Los Angeles with nothing to do but walk a few blocks south to Skid Row, officials said. From there, many ended up back in jail, said Center, who emphasized most are in for drug or other nonviolent charges.

Garrison Smith, the county's homeless coordinator, said there's no opportunity for the former inmates to stabilize.

"If they don't have anything to go to when they leave prison, then why wouldn't they end up back on the street?" Smith said.

It costs more money to house them in jail than to provide services, he added.

"These aren't
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special services," Smith said. "These are benefits that anyone who's destitute qualifies for."

But the services are hard to find for the 2,000 people a month the unit helps. Homeless inmates often need supportive housing, job placement, drug treatment and Social Security income or general relief income, Center said.

"There's a bias," Center said. "There's a perception that people coming from jail are scary, when in fact a lot of these guys are not. They just need some help. They're just homeless people who got caught up in the justice system."

Center and his team link inmates to services all over the county - places such as Tarzana, Lancaster, and locally, the Central San Gabriel Valley Worksource Center in El Monte. Program manager Gordon Porter said that of the 2,000 people who use the center to find jobs each month, about 80 are recently released inmates.

"The fact that you have a criminal background prevents you from getting most apartments and jobs," Smith said. "So they end up on Skid Row."

But the El Monte center has relationships with employers willing to hire people with records, Porter said. A grocery store recently hired 13 of their "special needs" clients, he added, though he was reluctant to specify which store.

"People are prejudiced," Porter said. "But we have more successes than failures."

In fact, the center has found that its clients with records are more likely to keep their jobs for a year than the rest of the people who use the center, Porter said.

El Monte Councilman Juventino "J" Gomez said he was unaware of the county's efforts to find services for recently released inmates.

"If they're not from El Monte, then I don't want them coming to El Monte," Gomez said. "We'll deal with our own homeless population."

The Sheriff's Department should let El Monte police know if it sends people to the city, Gomez added.

"Everyone needs an opportunity for rehabilitation ... and we want to provide services, but we want to provide services to our community," he said. "I was not aware of the criminal element, and that puts up a big red flag that I will need to follow up on."

That's a common reaction, Center said, and added that most of the former inmates return to neighborhoods where they have friends or family, although that isn't always the case.

Center calls the people who cycle through the jail again and again "frequent fliers."

"The folks we're dealing with, they're just mentally ill or drug addicted and they just need help, or they'll be back in jail 50 times," he said. "All it would take is a little bit of money to help them stabilize their life. It's a no-brainer to me." Read more!

Jail looks for ways to ease overcrowding -Springfield (IL) State Journal-Register

By JOHN REYNOLDS
October 28, 2007

While overcrowding continues to be a problem at the Sangamon County Jail, officials say there are no plans on the table to expand the existing jail or build a new facility.

Instead, they have implemented a variety of measures to reduce the daily jail population and have hired a consultant to advise them on possible long-term solutions.

"The goal of this study is not construction. Our goal is the proper management of the jail population," said Sangamon County Administrator Ryan McCrady. "If we find out we've done everything we can and we still have to expand the jail, then at that point, we will look at construction. But that is a last resort."

Overcrowding has been a recurring problem at the county jail over the past few years. The jail was built to hold 314 inmates, but in August 2006, the average number of inmates in the jail was 422.

A few years ago, people from the jail, sheriff's office, state's attorney's office, courts, probation department, public defender's office and McCrady's office began meeting to see if they could alleviate the problem.

McCrady said they have had some success.

"We've tried to take a look at people who are

in the jail awaiting trial and can't make their bond," McCrady said. "We look at their cases more closely and review their criminal history to see if they are a candidate for bond reduction to help them get out or to see if they are a candidate for home monitoring."

So far, the efforts seem to be working. Figures from the county indicate that through August of this year, the average population of the county jail has been the same or lower when compared to the same time period last year.

In August, for example, the average number of inmates was 374 as opposed to the August 2006 number of 422.

However, 374 still is well above the jail's 314-inmate capacity.

To get the number even lower, the county has hired the consulting firm MGT of America to examine the criminal justice system in Sangamon County. The group is looking at several county offices connected to the criminal justice system and is expected to release its report next month.

"They've been interviewing all of the stakeholders. They've also been interviewing people outside the county, like the U.S. Marshals Service, who house federal inmates here," McCrady said.

The county is paying MGT about $68,000.

"When they bring back a report, they will say things like, if you make change A, we project you will see X impact on your jail population. If you do B, you would expect this impact," McCrady said.

One of the people contacted by MGT was Springfield defense attorney Jon Gray Noll. In an interview with The State Journal-Register, Noll agreed that prosecutors, defense attorneys and the court system can affect the jail population.

"The courts are really the engine that pulls the train," Noll said. "To a large degree, the jail personnel are at the mercy of defense attorneys, the state's attorneys and the court system."

One suggestion Noll had dealt with people accused of misdemeanors who may not have enough money to make bail.

"Let's say you have a misdemeanor offense and a guy can't post a $500 bond. You know his sentence is going to be, probably, just 30 days anyway if he's found guilty," Noll said. "What I've seen some jurisdictions do is, after 10 or 15 days, they pull (the guy) back in, and they will automatically lower his bond because they know he's already done about half of his sentence anyway."

Factors that have contributed to the larger jail population include mandatory sentences for some non-felonies and growth of Sangamon County's population in general.

"The other thing to consider is that we could be a victim of our own success," McCrady said. "The sheriff started the DIRT (drug) team back in 2004. They've made, I think, thousands of arrests since then, and a lot of those people ended up in jail."

One of the recommendations in the MGT report could be to expand the jail or build a new facility. McCrady estimated the cost of a new jail at $40 million and said the county would have to go to the taxpayers to raise such an amount.

With recent projects such as the juvenile detention center, the new 911 building and the renovated Office of Emergency Management facility, the county has not had to ask the public for a tax increase.

"Expanding the jail would be a huge project, and we don't think it would be fair to go back to the taxpayers unless we prove that we've done everything in our power to prevent having to do that," McCrady said.

Sangamon County Board member Andy Goleman, chairman of the finance committee, agrees.

"The last possibility that we would look at would be to build a new facility," Goleman said.

John Reynolds can be _reached at 788-1524 or john.reynolds@sj-r.com.

Stories of inmate, county differ on jail conditions

By JOHN REYNOLDS

STAFF WRITER

Earlier this month, Springfield resident Gary Brady turned himself in at the Sangamon County Jail to begin a 10-day sentence for driving under the influence.

What happened next depends on who is telling the story.

Grady, 43, says he was crammed into a booking cell for several days that had urine and feces on the floor, and that he also witnessed guards torment a mentally ill woman.

Officials at the county jail dispute Grady's account and are standing behind the correctional officers.

Grady admits that when he arrived at the jail Oct. 5, a Friday, he did not expect to get a five-star room. The accommodations he did get, however, were a bit of a shock.

Four men were put into one cell, and there was just enough room on the floor for each person's mattress. While Grady said the mattress was dirty, county officials say the mattresses are regularly sanitized. Grady said he spent about five days in the cramped cell, during which time he didn't have a shower and was forced to wear the same clothes.

"The air vents on the ceiling (in the cell) were covered with mold and mildew. They also had toilet paper with excrement and other body fluids of all types hanging from them," Grady said.

Grady said the cell inmates asked jail officials for cleaning materials, but were turned down.

Terry Durr, administrator of the county jail, said the holding area cells are cleaned every Monday through Friday, except when Monday falls on a holiday.

Grady was in the jail over the Columbus Day weekend, but Durr said Grady's cell was not in the condition he described.

Also, Durr said jail records indicate Grady was moved from the booking area Oct. 8, which was three days after he arrived.

"We don't like it, but it's something that happens," Durr said of keeping some inmates in holding cells that long.

The booking area is on the ground floor of the jail. It consists of a large room with a control center in the middle. Cells are along the perimeter of the room. Each cell door has a window so that some inmates can see the control center or possibly other cells.

While in the booking area, Grady said he could see into one cell that housed a woman who had obvious mental problems. The woman would expose her breasts and other parts of her anatomy, and she would also run around her cell and bite herself.

"The guards were taunting her. As soon as the supervisor would go around the (corner) and go do something ... they would taunt her," Grady said.

A man who was in the county jail at the same time as Grady confirmed Grady's account of the unsanitary conditions and the taunting of the woman. The other inmate declined to be identified.

Durr said there was a woman in the holding area who was a patient at a mental facility, but he denied that guards taunted her. He said the guards were trying to calm her down.

"If we have complaints about people taunting anybody, we investigate it. But I don't believe our officers were taunting this woman to make her do any of the activity she was doing," Durr said.

Grady also said he could see the computer screens of workers at the control area. Some people checked their MySpace accounts, and one woman downloaded music, he said.

Durr said jail officials are looking into the report of improper use of county computers.

Once he was moved into general population, Grady said, his stay was easier. He could walk around, take a shower, and, after six days, brush his teeth, he said.

"That was really nice. The things I've taken for granted in life, I don't any more," Grady said.

Grady wrote a letter about his experience and sent copies to Williamson, Durr and the health department, as well as to The State Journal-Register. Although the letter outlined the problems Grady said he experienced, he also praised several guards who went out of their way to treat inmates humanely.

When it comes to some of the other guards, however, Grady said they should lose their jobs.

"Honestly, I would like to see a large amount of people who don't take their job seriously lose their jobs," he said. "I don't think they know what having a job and being respectful (is about)."

Except for the allegations about computer abuse, Durr and Sheriff Neil Williamson are standing behind the employees at the jail.

"We have 14,000 people a year come through the jail, and we get maybe a dozen complaints about the condition of the jail," Williamson said. "I'll be the first to say, it's not the Renaissance (hotel). It's the county jail. We do the absolute best we can. We clean it, and we give them the necessary bedding and equipment and showers."

Durr added that guards are instructed to treat people in the jail with dignity and respect.

"If we have a complaint that's substantiated, we take action," Durr said.

John Reynolds can be _reached at 788-1524 or john.reynolds@sj-r.com.

An inside look at the lockup

By BRUCE RUSHTON

STAFF WRITER

I’ve been in more jails and prisons than I can count.

But not like this.

On July 4, a Sangamon County deputy decided I had broken the law and hauled me to the pokey. Prosecutors didn’t see anything more serious than a misdemeanor, but a few hours spent in the Sangamon County Jail as an inmate instead of a journalist proved an enlightening experience.

First, jailers act a whole lot differently when they don’t know you’re a reporter. Second, there’s actually a laugh or two to be had behind bars. Third, there isn’t very much space to sleep.

The arresting deputy said I had fled from him on motorcycle. I denied it, but was nonetheless arrested on charges of aggravated fleeing and eluding — a felony. The cuffs went on, and the adventure began.

I arrived at jail soaking wet, owing to a rainstorm that broke out shortly before my encounter with police began. After I waited about 10 minutes in a barren office while the deputy wrote his report, he took me to the booking area, where I was dubbed “Evel Knievel” by the staff.

They took my wallet, keys, shoes and belt — wouldn’t want any hangings, I suppose — and told me to sit on a bench until called to the booking desk.

This wasn’t the sort of operation a law enforcement agency would want most taxpayers to see.

A sergeant at the desk was playing something on a computer that contained more scatological terms and vulgarities regarding body parts and sexual intercourse than an Andrew Dice Clay performance. Whatever it was, the crew at the desk found it hilarious, and they had it turned up loud. Later, I heard them playing what sounded like a video on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Memo to Sheriff Neil Williamson: You might want to check how your jail officers entertain themselves when business is slow.

After an officer got my name, address, birth date, names of medications, etc., I was placed in a large holding cell and told I’d be released in about 10 minutes. The cell had a large window that looked out on the booking area. The glass wasn’t soundproof — inmates in surrounding holding cells shouted out to officers, who shouted back. Nothing urgent and nothing rude, just casual banter conducted at the top of their lungs. Everyone seemed to know everyone else’s name.

I was alone in the holding cell, but over the next 90 minutes or so, other barefoot arrestees, still in street clothes, joined me. By the time an officer buzzed the door open and called my name, there were four of us.

I got my shoes and belt back, posed for a mug shot and was escorted to an ATM, where I withdrew bail money. Then it was back to the bench.

A bit of drama broke out when a new arrival, who looked no heavier than 150 pounds and considerably shorter than six feet, warned officers he was going to kick some butt as soon as the cuffs came off. I know I’m gonna lose, he said, but I’m gonna get my licks in. Didn’t yell, didn’t appear at all unruly, just warned in very polite tones, and several times, that he was going to go berserk.

The staff summoned a cadre of officers who ranged from burly to NFL lineman size. They all donned rubber gloves, surrounded the prisoner and unlocked the cuffs. Everyone in the booking area leaned forward to see a show that never came. The prisoner walked into the holding cell like he was walking into church. Several of us laughed out loud.

Finally, they called me from the bench to the desk. I counted out the bail money, an officer put it in an envelope, and I was about to walk when a sergeant said hold it: This prisoner cannot be freed. The staff briefly debated whether the accusations against me were serious enough that I had to see a judge before I could go.

The sergeant prevailed. So the jail staff took my belt, shoes, wallet and keys back and sent me to a room where I was told to pick out a set of striped clothes and some rubber sandals. I changed in a bathroom. You’ll be here until court at 3 p.m. tomorrow, an officer told me.

The corrections officer who escorted me to the clothing area sniffled constantly. I asked him if he had a cold. No, he replied, just jail air — he said every work shift was an eight-hour runny nose. The air was, in fact, rank: Think dirty socks and body odor.

They gave me a sleeping pad and put me in another holding cell.

That’s when the reality of an overcrowded jail hit.

The cell, barely larger than a bathroom, had two bunks. There were four of us in there, and the floor had room for just one sleeping pad. One of us would have to stand while the other three laid down.

They let one of us out a few minutes after I arrived. Now there was room to lie down, but I had things to do the next day — waiting until 3 p.m. to see a judge wasn’t an option. So I called my fiancee and asked her to get hold of my lawyer.

Twenty minutes later, the door buzzed open and I walked out. A judge — to this day, I’m not sure who — had ordered me released on bond.

This time, the booking area was silent. No one was cursing anymore. No one called me Evel Knievel. No videos played.

“He’s from the newspaper,” an officer said quietly.

An officer asked for the name of my lawyer. Another asked if that was my wife in the waiting area pacing around. Then the desk sergeant asked what kind of motorcycle I owned.

“A Honda,” I answered.

“What kind of Honda — crotch rocket or cruiser?” he asked.

“A motorcycle,” I said.

The sergeant wouldn’t give up. He told me he owned a Suzuki Hayabusa, which has a top speed of more than 180 mph and is known as the fastest production motorcycle on the planet. He told me how he often drove crazy-fast.

Right, I thought: And I own a French poodle named Fluffy.

The sergeant was a stout man, to put it politely, not the sort who looked like he would enjoy riding hunched over on a bullet bike only slightly larger than himself. But he persisted, telling me that when he had the throttle screwed down tight, he always concentrated on the road ahead instead of what was behind him. That must’ve been what happened to you, right? You just didn’t see the officer, right?

No one had mentioned Miranda all day, but I exercised my right to remain silent. I was a free man minutes later.

All in all, I thought the staff did a fine job in what must be a tough situation. Blue language and Evel Knievel notwithstanding, every correctional officer demonstrated respect and professionalism (in contrast to other elements of the news media, which broadcast news of my arrest without seeking comment from me, but that’s another story). I’m sure jail can be a rough place, but the correctional officers I encountered were not folks whose knuckles dragged on the ground.

One thing was abundantly clear, however. Jail is not, or at least should not be, a place for long-term confinement. It’s too loud, too smelly and too crowded to warehouse people.

Fortunately, the charges against me didn’t hold up. Otherwise, I definitely would have wanted a speedy trial.

Bruce Rushton can be

reached at 788-1542 or bruce.rushton@sj-r.com. Read more!

The Jesters ‘can do it' -Ft. Wayne (IN) Journal Gazette

By Emma Downs

The Jesters are sitting in the parking lot of the Weatherhead Gallery, taking refuge in a small patch of shade.

It’s hot – summertime weather in early October and the temperature is close to 90 degrees – but the group of about 20 young actors, all of whom have mild to moderate mental and physical disabilities, sits close, knees touching, huddled in a cool corner of the lot.

In front of them, two of their fellow actors are practicing a sword fight, a choreographed dance of sorts all of the actors must learn before the group’s annual performance in March.

One by one, they take turns grabbing a sword and taking the impromptu asphalt stage.

“One! And Two! And Three! Four!”

Allen Etter, the group’s director and the author of all of its plays, counts off the beats for the sword fight. He and a young man with Down syndrome – black glasses, blond crew cut, big smile – hold wooden dowels aloft, clanking them together. At some point during the fight, one of them is supposed to spin around and take a dramatic step forward. The young man spins twice and repositions his glasses, his sword held close to his chest.

“Wait, wait,” Etter says, guiding the boy’s shoulders. “We’ve got to get this down by February, OK? Just spin once.”

The young man finishes the sword fight and turns to look at his fellow actors. The Jesters – all of them – applaud.

“OK,” Etter says. “Who hasn’t had a turn yet?”


The singer

Walk through the empty corridors of the art building at the University of Saint Francis on a Saturday morning and you’re bound to hear the booming voices of the Jesters, the city’s only theater troupe for people with special needs.

Founded in 1978 by the late Saint Francis professor Hal Gunderson, the Jesters program was originally designed to showcase the singing and acting talents of children. Nearly 30 years later, the program has expanded to include a visual arts program, and the 45 current members of the group range in age from 9 to 36.

The group’s motto? Once a Jester, always a Jester.

Elizabeth Koehl has been a member for 8 years. Adopted at the age of 3, she developed a mild mental disability in infancy that affects her intellectual capacity but not her ability to sing. On Saturdays, you can hear Koehl’s voice – humming, singing – coming from a room in the basement of the art building. It’s the kind of voice usually described as “sweet.” High and melodic, a warm soprano. But, with enough power behind it, it becomes extraordinary, pitch-perfect and capable of creating winding scales that tug at the ear.

“I haven’t stopped singing since I was 7 years old,” Koehl says. “Someone at church told me I had a beautiful voice. And I said, ‘I know, I do have a beautiful voice.’ So I never stopped.”

Last year, during a Jesters’ performance of “Come In Out of the Rain,” Koehl, 24, performed a solo for about 300 people at Scottish Rite Center. Her performance left the audience stunned, Etter says.

“They sat there with their mouths open,” Etter says. “And then they just went wild. It was wonderful, because she might never have gotten a chance to do that otherwise.”

According to Etter, Koehl is the Jester who gives the most hugs. On Saturdays, she’s the first to send up a cheer when pianist Bill Brune enters the rehearsal room, walking toward the piano with a stack of sheet music under his arm. And with several of her fellow actors in tow, she runs toward Brune with her arms spread wide.

“When I sing, I think about the words,” Koehl says. “I think about the words I have to sing and then I just sing. But I think about people too, like (Bill) and (former Jesters director) Jim Didier.”

After morning play rehearsal, the Jesters usually walk to the basement of the art building for lunch, plunking quarters into vending machines or unwrapping sandwiches. With the melody of a song lingering in her mind, Koehl continues to hum and softly sing throughout the morning.

“I can’t seem to get that song out of my mind,” she says.

“I can tell,” Etter says. “But it doesn’t bother us.”

When Koehl and the rest of the Jesters take the stage in March, the group will be entering its 30th year. And for the first time in three decades, the actors will perform their play, “The Pirates of Charity Island Resort” – a sequel to last year’s play – in their own theater, the former Abundant Life Tabernacle across the street from the University of Saint Francis. The school and the Knights of Columbus sponsor the group.

Etter hopes the new theater – and its location on campus – will expose the Jesters to a wider audience.

“The assumption is that art or theater created by people with special needs just won’t be as good,” he says. “And that’s not true. People always leave the shows entertained. There’s a lot of special talent here.”


The drummer

A few cursory digs at the pile of clay on the table in front of him, and Kurt Grossman pushes the mound aside. He needs to make room for his hands – two large mitts with 10 tapered fingers that could easily spread the octaves of a piano.

Grossman, 21, who was born with a moderate mental disability that combines elements of Down syndrome and autism, begins to drum.

Using every inch of his hands, he creates a thundering solo on top of the desk – palms acting as bass drums, the tips of his index fingers like goose-neck cymbals, brushing out a nimble rhythm on an imaginary high-hat. The beat is complex, colorful, filled with the intricate lacework of someone with a preternatural understanding of time. And yes, it’s a little distracting, too.

“Kurt,” a student yells from across the room. “Stop it!”

He continues.

“Kurt!”

“Knock it off!”

“Stop it, Kurt!”

He grabs his clay and takes a few more stabs at it. A flicker of emotion – A thought? A feeling? – creeps across his brow. And the drumming begins again.

After play practice Saturday mornings, Grossman and the rest of the Jesters spend two hours participating in the Jesters’ visual arts program, where the actors learn elements of drawing, photography, pottery and painting.

But Grossman is more of a music fan, a frequent patron at the Firefly Coffee House on Friday and Saturday nights, where he sits at a table, bobbing and drumming along to the live music.

“The musicians love him,” says his dad, Gary Grossman. “Because instead of sticking his head inside a book, he gets into the music.”

Onstage with the Jesters, Kurt Grossman is given a large set of conga drums to play while the other actors sing or dance. He is a quiet guy, frustrated occasionally by his own silence. But when it comes time to perform, he blossoms, his father says.

“It’s hard to get words out of him,” he says. “He has an aversion to talking. It’s like he forgets how sometimes, which is frustrating. But put a microphone in front of him and he loves it. You have to practically pull him off the stage.”

This is Grossman’s second year with the Jesters, and his drumming ability is just one of the special talents Etter uses to craft his plays, he says.

“I know which of the actors can tell jokes,” he says. “I know who can dance, who can sing, who can create the backdrops. The plays pretty much write themselves now.”

Like the other members of the Jesters, Etter isn’t a stereotypical theater type (no black turtleneck or clove cigarette). Dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, with his curly hair hidden by a baseball cap, he looks more like a high school basketball coach than a playwright. But Etter, 40, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall, has never played basketball, “if you can believe that,” he says.

“But I give (the actors) someone to look up to,” he says. “Literally and figuratively.”

Before landing the job as director of the Jesters six years ago, Etter, who runs both the Jesters and the group’s accompanying visual arts program, had never worked with people with special needs. During his job interview, he told the program’s administrator that his lack of experience was an advantage, not a liability. Etter didn’t like labels, he said. He wasn’t going to spend a lot of time learning which actor had which developmental delay, disorder or physical disability.

“Because then it becomes, ‘This person has Down syndrome. That person has autism,’ ” Etter says. “It wasn’t important to me. I wanted to see them as people first. Now I know all I really needed was a big heart and lots of patience.”


The artist

She wants to make a bowl, she says. So with her wheelchair pushed as close to the potters’ wheel as possible, Molly Kearney leans toward her clay and allows Etter to place her hands on the spinning wet mound. Her work is slow and meticulous, pinching the clay with her hands and raising it slowly, squishing and flattening the whirring mound.

“It sure is funny,” she says. And to punctuate the point, she begins to laugh – the kind of jangling giggle your ear follows up the scale and back down again.

Then – completely by accident, right? – she plops a big, wet chunk of clay onto Etter’s arm.

“Hey!” he says. “You just … you just smeared a bunch of … hey!”

More laughing. A full three minutes of laughing.

“If I had a room full of Mollys, I could be a stand-up comedian,” Etter says.

Kearney, 21, who was born with brain trauma, prefers the art program to being onstage. She’s sensitive to light and sound, occasionally battling seizures. But, in art class, her creativity is allowed to flourish at its own pace, says her mother, Ginna Kearney.

“She really seems to have a knack for the art part,” Kearney says. “Her dexterity isn’t the greatest, but she’ll make vases, bowls, pots. She’s really a kind of free spirit in some ways. She doesn’t have many inhibitions, and you can see that in her art.”

The Jesters’ visual arts program began six years ago as a way to give students access to another art form and another outlet for creative expression and socialization, says Rick Cartwright, program administrator and dean of the School of Creative Arts at Saint Francis.

“For many, the art projects help develop fine-motor coordination and physical skills,” he says. “With the addition of the new facility, it is our hope to someday add a dance component to the program as well.”

Currently, Molly Kearney is working on Christmas gifts for her family – clay bowls and vases, painted purple and pink. Her sister, hundreds of miles away in Texas, recently hung one of Molly’s paintings in her house, a reminder of sorts of the sister she misses.

“The painting is really beautiful,” Ginna Kearney says. “Bright colors, very abstract. And her sister loves it because it reminds her of Molly.”


The passion

At the end of every performance, the Jesters gather to sing “If Just One Person,” a lilting show tune from the musical “Snoopy!!!,” the sequel to “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.” The song is about the power of emotional support – when one person believes in you, soon others will. The Jesters sing the song at the end of rehearsals, too, arms wrapped around each other, heads resting on each other’s shoulders.

“If just one person believes in you,” they sing. “Deep enough and strong enough, believes in you. Hard enough and long enough, it stands to reason that someone else will think, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’ ”

And if you happen to be at rehearsal – within arm’s reach of a Jester – you may feel an arm clamp around your own shoulders and a gentle push, an invitation to begin swaying to the music.

“Everyone who has ever watched a production is a part of this program,” Etter says. “And if you’re a happy person – if you smile a lot – the actors are going to take a shine to you. They’ll hold on to you, and they won’t let go.”

edowns@jg.net
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Lovable pooch rescues a life -Ankorage Daily News

By GEORGE BRYSON
gbryson@adn.com
October 28, 2007)

A miracle dog lives in Anchorage. Her name is Halo. She hasn't caught any criminals or won a sled dog race but a 4-year-old Oceanview boy named Leo really likes her.

So much so that Leo is content to go to preschool each morning now (instead of crying or having a tantrum), if he gets to take his dog.

And he calmly stands next to Halo and her handler in a busy grocery store, rather than wander away from his family.

And talks to Halo. And hugs her frequently, instead of clinging so desperately to his mom.

Just that much is a kind of miracle, since Leo -- the youngest of David and Peggy Bernert's four children -- was born with autism, the puzzling brain disorder that can make it hard for children to do any one of those things.

And Halo, a 1-year-old golden retriever specially trained to be an autism-assistant dog -- the first of her kind in Alaska -- makes it all possible.

"She's trained in something called 'lap command,' where she'll go sit by my son and lay her head on his lap," says Peggy, 45, a native of Anchorage. "And that cheers him up."

Halo, however, is not just a calming touch, a social anchor, a friend. She's also a potential life-saver. And therein lies a story.

A WANDERER

A year and a half ago, the Bernert family was living in Girdwood, where David worked out of his home as an Alaska sales rep for a national flooring manufacturer and Peggy cared for the children.

Back then, Leo (named after Peggy's dad, the late Alaska pioneer and building contractor Leo Walsh) was still a 2-year-old. He'd been officially diagnosed for autism the previous December.

Like many children with autism, Leo has a tendency to wander. And when anyone in the family calls out his name in an effort to find him, he rarely replies. That's made for some anxious moments.

The worst of all came a year ago last spring. It was break-up in Girdwood, and Glacier Creek was running high. The front door was open and Leo was missing.

"He loved to throw rocks in the (roadside) culvert," Peggy says.

She was positive that's where he'd gone. But when she reached the culvert's swiftly flowing water, there was no Leo to be found. Peggy was frantic. Soon all the neighbors joined in the search. They'd been looking for about 20 minutes -- Peggy was on the brink of dialling 911 -- when her oldest daughter, McKenzie, now 16, called out that she'd found Leo. He'd been sitting in their garage all along, hidden behind a dog kennel.

"So that's when I said: 'Well, a dog would have found him. A dog would have known exactly where he was,' " Peggy says.

The Bernerts already had two dogs, a dachshund named Oliver and a Lab named Mugs. But neither exhibited the necessary skills.

Within a few minutes of finding Leo, Peggy sat down at the family computer and Googled the words "autism" and "dog" -- and quickly located the Web site of an Ohio-based organization called "4 Paws for Ability," which specializes in training dogs for autistic children.

What happened next -- from the initial phone call to 4 Paws, to the extensive application process (specifically requesting an autism-assistant dog with the special capability of scent-tracking Leo), to raising the $12,000 cost of buying the dog, to traveling to the nonprofit's headquarters on the outskirts of Dayton last summer for a two-week dog handler course, to returning to Anchorage in August with Halo in tow -- took nearly a year and a half.

And was worth every minute of it, Peggy says: "This dog has changed our lives."

CONNECTIONS

Relaxing Monday afternoon in the family's new residence overlooking a bluff in South Anchorage -- where the Bernerts moved a year ago to be closer to Leo's multiple therapy sessions in town -- Peggy motioned to her son, tangled with his dog on the floor.

Leo was giggling.

"This is what she does for him," Peggy said. "She makes him happy."

That's because Halo fulfills some of Leo's needs. Types of autism can vary, Peggy said, but lots of autistic children -- Leo included -- strongly crave something that therapists call "deep pressure."

"When he was a baby, I would hold him for hours," she said. "He would just sit with me as long as I would let him. And just hug on me and put his head on me. He just needs to know where he is in space. Now Halo provides that for him too."

But the caressing and rough-housing that Halo has been trained to endure with so much patience and apparent good humor might be one of her simpler skills. She's also learned to accompany Leo into public settings and sit silent and still, without budging an inch.

For such outings Leo dons what appears to be a fisherman's vest, and Halo wears her "on duty" harness. Then Peggy connects a 4-foot-long nylon strap between the harness and the vest, snaps a leash on the dog -- and off the three of them go.

Thanks to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, "certified service dogs" like Halo are permitted to enter virtually any public building. So Peggy and Leo and Halo can venture into shopping malls or large warehouse stores like Costco without fear of losing each other.

Halo also accompanies Leo to some of his therapy sessions. (In addition to preschool and visits by a teen caregiver, he attends weekly sessions of speech therapy, occupational therapy and aqua therapy in a pool.) And now, Peggy says, with his dog along, Leo doesn't feel such a dire need for his mom to always be present. Now she can remain in the waiting room, and Leo -- with Halo at his side -- focuses more on the therapist.

"And it's enabling him to do more of his therapy."

TRACKER NEEDED

But none of that was why David and Peggy initially decided to get Halo. They wanted a dog that could find their son in an emergency. And that's what Halo was specially trained to do.

4 Paws dogs learn specific skill sets, depending on each family's needs. Some are "seizure assistance dogs" capable of detecting the signs and scent of imminent epileptic seizures before anyone else, says founder Karen Shirk. Others are "mobility assistance dogs" that know how to open doors and turn on lights.

But the highest demand -- "Our No. 1 requested dogs," Shirk says -- are those designed to help autistic children. About four out of every five dogs are animals that have been recovered from local shelters. But only about 2 percent of the pound dogs are suitable for tracking.

"It has to do with their heart, and obviously their nose -- but also their will to keep on doing it," says Peggy, who underwent two weeks of training in Ohio as Halo's designated handler.

During those sessions, she used Halo to track down Leo both indoors and out -- through crowded shopping malls filled with hundreds of other scents and across a mile or more of open fields.

For her own part, Halo managed to commit to memory Leo's special scent. Now she doesn't even need a clothing cue. Peggy simply attaches her tracking collar and the ritual begins.

"First you get her excited. You say, 'You ready? You ready? You ready? ...' And then I snap the leash on and I say 'Track!' and she's off."

Since the Bernerts returned from Ohio last August, Halo has managed to sniff down Leo twice. Once was by design, Peggy says. But the second incident wasn't planned.

Attending a party at the very large home of a friend one night, Leo suddenly turned up missing.

"After looking, looking, looking, I just hooked Halo up and off we went," Peggy says. "She just took me directly to him -- upstairs two flights and in a back bedroom. She found him immediately."

It was like the Girdwood incident all over again, but this time without the panic or the neighborhood-wide alert.

That was exciting and reassuring, Peggy says. But she also values the quieter moments, when Leo and Halo finally tire of wrestling on the floor and simply collapse in a bundle together.

One night they even reversed roles -- as Leo tracked down Halo.

Peggy had gone downstairs for something and was surprised to find that her son had slipped out of bed and joined his dog in her basket.

"And he was curled up, and she was curled up, and they were both sound asleep," Peggy said. "It was just pretty neat."

Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318. Read more!

Life on the edge for once homeless teen -Orlando Sentinel

By Erika Hobbs
October 28, 2007

Daniel Lazzatti finished his computer test, sure he had failed.

His mind went blank. He slumped over his keyboard.

A teacher later told Daniel he fainted.

The 18-year-old who once called a backyard shed his home was exhausted after a turbulent summer.

Just weeks before, Daniel had left the ramshackle structure and moved into a garage apartment behind a Winter Park mansion. He took a second job and began classes at a technical school.

Yet he couldn't escape the family turmoil that left him homeless in the first place.

As the August air inside the summer-school classroom closed in around him, Daniel shut his eyes and, for a moment, blacked out the world.

It was late June when Daniel finally dared to look out his new apartment window. He could see green treetops, red-tiled roofs and blue swimming pools.

His landlord, the Winter Park lawyer who had offered the homeless teenager a rent-free apartment and the chance of a better life, lived in the big house on the other side of the pool.

Daniel had a new job, too, with real responsibility. His shoulders straightened every morning when his boss at Nodarse & Associates in Winter Park handed Daniel a clipboard with a list of the day's tasks.

Need envelopes? Got it. A lightbulb changed? He's the man. Lock the gate? Done.

Soon, Daniel would be able to test the strength of concrete, a skill lab techs at the environmental firm were happy to teach him.

The women in the office fawn over Daniel. They bake him cookies, buy him groceries and help him draft a budget. But when Daniel tried to save laundry quarters by wearing a lime-green shirt one day too many, a manager bought him khakis and oxfords and showed the 6-foot-4-inch teen what to wear to work.

His boss, Darlene Bradley, scheduled Daniel's hours around classes at Winter Park Tech, where he studies computer-support systems. He divided his week between Nodarse, school and weekends working at Burger King.

Jennifer Eubanks and Cheryl Romaine, the teachers who steered Daniel through graduation from Edgewater High School in May, shuttled him to appointments, filled out college paperwork and bought him vitamins. Each new problem he faced led to a flurry of phone calls from Eubanks to Romaine to Bradley and others who provided the calling tree that became his lifeline.

The teachers had become surrogate mothers to the young man whose own mother, never a stable part of his life, had finally walked out when he was about 14.

'I worry about him every day,' Romaine said.

Now the teachers can't imagine life without Daniel. He is their surrogate son.

Daniel calls them his 'momish friends' but yearns for his mother, Marcia. She calls sometimes from Sanford, usually drunk. Often homeless.

'I still miss my real mom,' Daniel said, drawing on childhood memories of his mother in their Home Acres house, baking him macaroni and cheese and brewing sweet tea.

Like another world Life was good for Daniel, but problems were just days away.

His brother, Joseph Lazzatti, never meant to cause Daniel trouble.

During the summer, Joseph and his wife, Mercedes Borges, had moved back to the neighborhood from Leesburg so they could be closer to Daniel. The 21-year-olds were caught up in their own tailspin of despair after an accident in an uninsured car left them with no ride, no jobs and more bills.

When Daniel moved out of the shed, Joseph and Mercedes moved in.

Despite his own troubles, Joseph felt obliged to look out for his younger brother.

'I was worried about whether or not he'd make the right decisions,' he said.

So one night, after Daniel's Burger King shift, Joseph, his wife and a friend walked Daniel home.

It was 3:30 a.m., and the streetlights burned softly through the Spanish moss that hangs from the oak trees, illuminating a brick-paved cul-de-sac. It was only two miles from where they grew up, but it was another world.

The trio marveled at Daniel's new place: a former bachelor's pad equipped with games and a karaoke machine.

Inside, they played air hockey for a few hours before crashing on the floor for the night.

Trouble was, Joseph, Mercedes and their friend weren't supposed to be there.

Daniel had promised Eubanks and Romaine that neither family nor friends from his old life would visit his new home.

The teachers wanted to insulate Daniel from a culture that had robbed him of bikes, pocket change, an Xbox, his childhood.

But the next afternoon the landlord's daughter spotted the visitors leaving in a taxi and told her father.

The landlord, who does not want to be identified, was willing to let Daniel continue living in his garage apartment. But he was concerned about the type of people Daniel was hanging out with. So he reached out to the calling tree for advice.

At first, Eubanks cried. Romaine nearly vomited. Finally, the women came to a bitter conclusion: Daniel had to leave if he was to be protected from the endless demands of his family.

'We're not trying to be mean,' Eubanks said. 'We're just trying to make him successful in life.'

He had lived in the Winter Park apartment for seven days.

Daniel doesn't like to talk about that night.

It was a test, he said. Teenagers are supposed to test their limits.

How could a visit be so wrong when a broken bond between brothers isn't?

He shrugged: 'Blood is thicker than water.'

A sheet for a mattress For four weeks stretching into July, Daniel was homeless again.

He told his teachers that he would sleep on a recliner at a friend's Apopka home while they hunted for another apartment.

Instead, he turned to the woman who had helped him two years earlier when his father could not afford to pay the rent on his own home. Sondra Allen had cleared her shed to provide Daniel with a refuge.

Joseph had the shed now, so Daniel slept in the only space Allen had to offer: the concrete carport with a dirty sheet as a mattress.

The day Daniel returned, his father stopped by.

'What are you doing here, Danny?' he asked.

Daniel told him he had been evicted.

Al Lazzatti shook his head.

Daniel felt paralyzed, fearing he had disappointed his father.

Later his boss, Darlene Bradley, noticed the changes in Daniel. He had stopped bathing, talking, smiling.

Daniel, who in grade school was diagnosed with a mild form of autism, needs routine and order to help him cope. As his world crumbled, so did Daniel.

Bradley phoned the teachers.

Dad demands a house Al Lazzatti's voice fills with resentment at mention of the two teachers who are helping his son. He thinks money raised for Daniel after the Orlando Sentinel first told his story in May should be used to buy the family a house so they can all live together.

'Those women kicked out my Danny,' he said. 'They need to get us a house.'

The father is a grizzled man who wears his hair in a low ponytail under knit caps and braids his beard in two sections. He is homeless and admits he smokes crack cocaine.

But Lazzatti insists he was there for Daniel from the day he was born. He gave him his name and raised the child as his own, even though he isn't the biological father. When Lazzatti, Daniel and Joseph were evicted from their home in 2004, the father said he made sure to pitch his tent in the woods within whistling distance of Daniel.

He brought his boys what he could. Bummed cigarettes for Joseph. And for Daniel, bear-claw pastries and bananas that the 7-Eleven was about to discard.

'I was there until the end, studying with him,' Lazzatti said, referring to Daniel's high-school graduation.

Daniel was a golden boy to the residents of Home Acres, a neighborhood of condemned houses and stinking septic tanks that decades earlier was touted as a dream development.

Lazzatti made that clear late one hot night in 2006 as he escorted his son to the shed after a study session at a nearby house where the father sometimes crashed.

'You know you're going to be the savior for everyone here,' Lazzatti said, turning to his son. 'You're the Lazzattis' Jesus.'

Daniel remembered that his father walked so slowly it felt as if he were pulling Earth to a stop.

'Those are pretty big words to say,' Daniel said later, awe in his voice.

Daniel still enjoys an occasional Sunday-evening chat with Lazzatti, whom he refers to as the old man.

Old man, not Dad.

That's because Daniel's mother taught him an important survival lesson before she left: Think of your parents as friends. It hurts less that way.

Because while Daniel is sure that Lazzatti likes him, that's where his certainty ends.

'If he loves me,' Daniel said, 'I'm not too sure about that.'

Pals ask for help While Daniel was battling despair, Eubanks and Romaine, unaware that he had returned to his old haunts, were struggling to find him a place to live.

At the end of July, after scores of phone calls and visits to rental units, the teachers found an efficiency for $454 a month located less than four blocks from Daniel's old shed.

If anyone else stays, they admonished the teen, you'll be kicked out. You'll be homeless again.

Daniel agreed that he would abide by their rules.

But he didn't know how to escape his family or Sondra Allen and her sons, who were constantly seeking help.

His story had brought him celebrity, donations and a new job. As his fortunes improved, people around him started demanding a share.

Dan, can you lend us a couple of bucks? We got nothing to eat here.

Dan, how about we go to the ATM?

Because Sondra Allen always opened her house to stragglers she could not afford to feed, Daniel let her borrow from his pantry. The sacrifice left him eating out and eating less.

Daniel also fronted Joseph $50 to pay a cell-phone bill. Daniel had lost touch with his brother when he moved to the shed, even forgetting the sound of his voice. That must never happen again.

He bought an Xbox to cheer up a friend with a broken home. He ordered Domino's pizzas for some new friends, whom he allowed to pull all-nighters at his efficiency to practice for a video-game competition.

His checking account dipped to $1.67.

Once again, Romaine and Eubanks stepped in.

They set up a budget and paid a year's rent on the apartment by dipping into donations.

Daniel fought the teachers over using the fund.

That's for emergencies, he said. 'This is not an emergency.'

Bruised but not afraid By the August afternoon when Daniel passed out in class, he had worked or attended school every day for three weeks.

He flunked that test but later earned a certificate to work on a computer help desk. He quit his second job at Burger King three days later and spent his first free weekend in two years playing video games in his apartment.

Daniel's new place is neither the shed beyond the Allens' empty pool nor the swanky garage apartment above a glittering one. It's somewhere in between.

He has enough room for a TV, a futon, a computer desk and a dresser.

Daniel sees his father in 20-minute capsules, sometimes crossing paths at the Sunoco or in front of Nodarse.

Yet his life is still dogged by fear and violence.

Last weekend, Daniel forgot to lock the gates at Nodarse when it closed for the day. It was 2 a.m. Sunday when he realized what he had done, so he grabbed his keys and ran the eight blocks to work.

As he crossed the parking lot, three men jumped him. One hit Daniel hard over the eyebrow with a cell phone or possibly a gun. Daniel isn't sure. The attackers punched and kicked him to the ground. They fled with his empty wallet, house keys, flash drive, MP3 player and cell phone.

He called the police, then walked home armed with a 2-by-4 for protection.

His father stopped by later and told Daniel that he had found his credit, debit and laundry cards in the grass near where the assault took place.

Daniel was bruised but not afraid.

'That's just life in the neighborhood,' he said.

Daniel grew up expecting to be hurt.

He said he never deserved the life the Winter Park lawyer offered him. How could he have ever paid back such benevolence?

But now he is learning to take responsibility. Too much has slipped away in his life, he said.

This time, he's in charge.

'I wouldn't trade this for anything,' Daniel said. 'Not even for a million dollars.'

DANIEL'S ODYSSEY For nearly two years, Daniel Lazzatti lived by himself in a shed. The Winter Park teenager beat poverty, homelessness and a learning disability to graduate from Edgewater High School this year. This is one in a continuing series of articles about his extraordinary journey.

Erika Hobbs can be reached at 407-420-6226 or ehobbs@orlandosentinel.com.

Copyright © 2007 The Orlando Sentinel, All Rights Reserved.
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Bound and determined -Vacaville (CA) Reporters

Author's books teach her son, others

By Melissa Murphy//Staff Writer
A10/28/2007

Brett Emigh is a good-humored, 15-year-old boy who has an infatuation with trains.

Earlier, several diagnoses had failed to explain Brett's difficulties, leaving his parents, Karen and Ken, scrambling for answers.

Then, when Brett was 11, they were told that he has Asperger's syndrome, the highest-functioning form of autism.

Some of the signs that someone may have Asperger's include social behavior and language red flags, such as an inability to interact with peers, limited use of body language and facial expression, delayed development in speech and formal pedantic language.

In an effort to help her oldest son answer questions and improve his social skills, Karen started playing words games with Brett.

"I started noticing he
had language issues," Karen explained. "He couldn't answer 'why' or 'what.' One night I woke up at 1 a.m. and couldn't get the idea out of my head so I typed everything out. By 8 a.m. I contacted an illustrator and we rolled on from there."

Since then, Karen has published three books, using a boy named Brett as the main character.

"Who Took My Shoe?" takes the reader on an entertaining search for a lost shoe while focusing on the words who, what, where, when, why and how, and what they
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mean.

Another of her books, "Herman's Hiding Places," is about a game of hide-and-seek that's a fun-filled way of learning the spatial concepts of up, in, under and behind.

"Bookworm" focuses on the abstract concept of idioms while Brett and Herman make their way through their hometown. With the use of a map, Brett and Herman head to the library and talk to familiar faces. When Brett confuses idioms for literal meanings, funny interactions result.

"It's about knowing how to get him to
Karen Emigh kicks up her feet as she talks about the children's books she's authored to help her son, Brett, who has Asperger's syndrome, the highest-functioning form of autism. (Ryan Chalk/The Reporter)
understand," Karen said. "I wasn't willing to leave it up just to the schools."

Although Brett has weaknesses, Karen said he's a great problem solver and very artistic.

"It's been difficult, but it could be much more difficult if he had a lower-performing form of autism," Karen said. "We're pretty open about what happens in our family."

The family's sense of humor seems to be what has kept them going.

"We may look like we have it together, but there are times I break down and cry," she said. "It hasn't always been easy on a marriage and Bryce."

Bryce, Brett's younger brother, is a sixth-grader at Tremont Elementary School who loves to play baseball and football.

In a lot of ways, Bryce has been the older brother to Brett, Karen said.

"He doesn't quite like to do the things we do," Bryce added. "He doesn't see the world the way we do."

Struggling in the conventional schools, Brett was moved in April to Anova Center for Education, a school in American Canyon that works with children with high-functioning autism, Asperger's syndrome, and other learning disabilities.

"He couldn't handle the stress before," Karen said. "But now that Brett is at Anova, he's doing great."

Sometimes Brett gets out of his comfort zone to take special trips with his mother to Asperger events and book signings to tell their story.

"It's kind of embarrassing," said Brett, who took a break from his daily routine of watching cartoons after school to talk to The Reporter.

Laughing with his mom and brother in front of the camera Brett said, "I don't like a lot of attention, but I do like being a star."

Karen will be speaking Jan. 10 at the Mother's Club at the Dixon United Methodist Church, 209 North Jefferson St.

For more information about Asperger's syndrome and Brett visit www.karenemigh-aspergers.com.

Melissa Murphy can be reached at dixon@thereporter.com. Read more!

Want to Do More for Your Children? Then Do Less - New York Times

By IHSAN TAYLOR

STANDING before two dozen parents at a lecture on a muggy Tuesday evening in Armonk, Paul J. Donahue dropped his voice to a whisper: “If there’s one mantra I want you to come away with tonight,” he told the audience, “it’s to think about doing less.”

Dr. Donahue, a clinical psychologist, has been spreading a message of moderation to parents, teachers and mental health professionals throughout Westchester and southern Connecticut for years. Now he’s taking it nationwide with his latest book, “Parenting Without Fear,” a guide to raising resilient children, partly by leaving them to their own devices.

Published in August by St. Martin’s Griffin, the book, in its second printing, addresses parents’ most common fears in a “new age of anxiety” and suggests lessons that can be learned by confronting them. “If we spoon-feed our children healthy doses of enrichment, but don’t give them time to struggle, to be frustrated, and to fail,” Dr. Donahue writes, “they are not likely to put their fledgling talents to full use down the road.”

“Parenting Without Fear” was inspired by Dr. Donahue’s observations at two preschools, in Scarsdale and Rye, as well as by his private practice. The book focuses on a prevailingly middle- and upper-class problem: raising children with too many, rather than too few, expectations. But, Dr. Donahue said, it was his work with homeless children in the early 1990s that helped shape his approach, convincing him of the potential strength and resilience of all children.

In his light-filled second-floor office, Dr. Donahue, a married father of three, described the problems that bring comfortably suburban children to his practice, from illness to family tragedy to, of course, the stress of high expectations.

“I’ve seen kids who on paper look great,” Dr. Donahue said, “and at 16 they crash and are in my office.” He talked about parents who feel pressured to keep up with the Joneses and get their children involved in extracurricular activities at an ever-earlier age. “Kids get to a point where they’re stretched very thin and they start to push back,” he said.

Born in Methuen, Mass., Dr. Donahue, 47, received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the City University of New York in 1991. In 1999 he moved his practice from Rye to Scarsdale, where he started Child Development Associates. He is co-author of “Mental Health Consultation in Early Childhood” (2000), a professional-development book about children and trauma.

Cheryl Flood, director of the Rye Presbyterian Nursery School, said Dr. Donahue’s work there with children, parents and staff was integral. “It’s really difficult for parents today to say no to things without feeling they are depriving their children,” she said. “Things that Paul talks about — knowing the values you want to impart to your children, trusting your instincts — are either lost or forgotten.”

The fall season is a busy time of year for Dr. Donahue. For parents and children it’s a time of renewed expectations — and ratcheted pressures. “It’s back to school,” Dr. Donahue said. “Parents get back into a mindset of, ‘O.K., now we have to get down to business.’”

At the Family Symposium at Byram Hills High School, in Armonk, Dr. Donahue was part of a panel of speakers; topics ranged from “Empathic Parenting” and “Raising Sexually Healthy Young People” to “Success in College and Beyond.”

Split into groups, the audience was smaller than Dr. Donahue was used to — dozens, not hundreds. Slowly circling a music stand at the front of an orchestra room, Dr. Donahue affably cautioned parents against overscheduling children’s activities, encouraged them to make time for family dinners, and expressed his fondness for “pluggers,” children who learn from trial and error.

“Eighty, 90 percent of the parents I see have good instincts, they care about their kids,” he said. “They just need reassurance that they’re on the right track.”

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The generous ones put much on the line -Greenville (NC) Daily Reflector

OPINION

At the very heart of generosity is risk.

The loss of time, of resources, of money — some portion of these are lost whenever we follow Luke's biblical tenet, "But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return." But as recent events in the region have so sadly shown, the generous must be ready to lose far more — even their lives.

Ten days ago, Debbie Kornegay, 58, director of Rocky Mount's Meals on Wheels program and a woman described as a compassionate and active Christian leader, was stabbed to death at a church where she and Eve Beasley, 60, her program assistant, were preparing that day's meals. Beasley also was stabbed and remains in critical condition at Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

The women had been trying to find assistance for an apparently homeless man who had approached them while they worked that Thursday morning. Kornegay had made phone calls to more than one shelter, trying to find the man a place to stay. But according to police, the man turned on the women, stabbing them. Kornegay died at the scene.

Ask any church pastor or secretary in Pitt County and they likely will tell you they deal with requests not unlike that presented to Debbie Kornegay and Eve Beasley on a weekly basis, if not more often. The church is known as a place of refuge, where kindness supersedes suspicion and a higher calling to compassion trumps indifference. Anecdotal reports suggest that such encounters are on the increase as the region grows and more of society's disenfranchised become more desperate.

The accused in the case at hand serves as an example.

Tommy Lee Holiday, 30, who has been charged in Kornegay's death, has spent time in prison for larceny, robbery and burglary. His record suggests a cycle often seen and described by social work professionals:

A young man with little support at home drops out of school. Without education he can't find a job. He hangs out on the street, gets involved in criminal activity, maybe becomes part of a gang. He commits a felony and goes to prison. When he gets out, jobs are even harder to find. His prison connections lead to more serious crime.

Professionals say, too, that mental health issues are often involved, associated with life on the street or substance abuse. Some suggest that recent statewide moves to privatize mental health services have made getting help more difficult for some of these people, maybe just difficult enough to leave a hopeless man on the street and prone to desperate acts.

In Pitt County, there are places for referral. Emergency Assistance Ministries, formerly Church Ministries United and now operated by the Greenville Community Shelter, is one. The Real Crisis Center and Salvation Army are others. Many churches have benevolence funds or programs or have available food or energy vouchers.

But even so, it falls back to the pastors and those who volunteer at these agencies and churches to be the ones who come face to face with the least fortunate and often most desperate among us. They shoulder the community's risk while at their disposal are only stopgap solutions. They need help in the form of more comprehensive safety networks for the helpless.

It is difficult to imagine a sadder circumstance than that defined by the death of Debbie Kornegay. It can only be hoped that added to this tragedy will not be an ever decreasing number among us willing to "do good, and lend." That is perhaps the greatest risk of all. Read more!

Clinics probed in deaths linkedto methadone - Charlotte Observer

ERIC FRAZIER

N.C. health officials are investigating the deaths in the past year of at least 16 patients treated for drug addiction at clinics run by a Charlotte company.

The probe comes as the state tries to combat a growing number of deaths involving methadone, a drug traditionally used to help heroin addicts but increasingly prescribed as a painkiller.

In 2004, North Carolina's 245 methadone-poisoning deaths trailed only Florida's, according to a new federal study.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating 13 patient deaths this year and three from late last year involving McLeod Addictive Disease Center. Health officials list the probable cause of death as methadone toxicity or a lethal combination of methadone and other drugs.

Little comparative data exist on methadone deaths involving clinics; state and federal authorities couldn't say for certain whether McLeod's 16 deaths are unusually high.

"I can only say that would be troubling to us here," said Robert Lubran, head of the federal agency that regulates methadone clinics. He said N.C. officials have asked for help in responding to the deaths at the company's clinics.

McLeod President Eugene Hall said his company runs an exemplary program that follows all state and federal guidelines. McLeod operates eight clinics throughout the Charlotte region and in Marion and Boone. It bills itself as the Carolinas' largest methadone treatment program.

Hall said his clinics serve more than 6,000 people each year, an increase of about 2,000 in the past three years. By his company's count, 19 patients died this year in methadone-related cases -- the same number as in each of the two previous years. (McLeod defines methadone-related deaths more broadly than the state, thus the higher number.)

"I've welcomed (state officials) down to look at our program," he said. "If we're not doing it right, then nobody's doing it right."

State rules require clinics to report all deaths to county-based regulators, and state officials are supposed to track such statistics.

But methadone clinics, like group homes and other state-regulated facilities, operate largely on an honor system when it comes to reporting deaths.

When asked last week how many clinic patients have died statewide, N.C. officials said they did not have the data readily available.

Prescribed more as painkiller

Methadone traditionally has been used to wean heroin and other drug addicts of their habits. Increasingly, doctors have prescribed it for chronic pain, or for patients who've become addicted to powerful painkillers such as OxyContin.Methadone prescriptions nationwide jumped from about half a million in 1998 to more than 4 million last year, federal statistics show. Most of the new users are patients with prescriptions for pain medication.

Experts say methadone is so powerful that improper dosages, or combining it with other drugs such as cocaine, Valium or Xanax can prove fatal.

In North Carolina, methadone-related deaths of all types jumped from 121 in 2001 to 318 in 2005, state figures show. South Carolina had 37 deaths in 2004, according to a federal study.

Government and academic researchers say clinics aren't to blame for much of the increase. Instead, they point to the growing use of the drug as a prescription painkiller. The amount of methadone sold to N.C. pharmacies and hospitals quadrupled between 1997 and 2001, one study showed.

Patients who take the drug at home, rather than in the controlled doses offered at clinics, are more likely to misuse it, said Lubran, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Federal officials in recent months have been warning all states to keep an eye out for increases in methadone deaths.

N.C. health officials say such federal advisories prompted them to investigate McLeod, a nonprofit company with nearly 300 employees.

Lethal drug combinations

McLeod treats addicts on a walk-in basis, charging them $10 per day for pre-measured doses of methadone after they've been examined by a doctor. Some come to McLeod because judges have ordered them to get treatment.

Hall said his clinics saw a series of deaths from the fall of 2006 until this spring. In an Oct. 17 letter to state officials, McLeod's medical director, Jana Burson, said the company investigated and found that most cases involved fatal combinations of methadone and other drugs.

Patients nationwide have been known to use it with Xanax or Valium in search of the kind of euphoric high methadone alone can't provide. The McLeod clinics responded to the deaths by restricting admissions of patients suspected of such addictions and by more aggressively warning of the dangers of such lethal drug cocktails, Burson wrote.

Hall said investigators have visited five of the eight McLeod clinics in recent weeks. "The findings have been absolutely minimal in terms of finding anything wrong," he said.

State health official Spencer Clark declined to discuss what was found on those visits, saying the information is part of an ongoing investigation.

But Hall provided a copy of a report filed after state auditors in September visited the McLeod facility in Marion. The report showed minimal problems.

The Observer, using the N.C. open records law, also received copies of the state reports McLeod filed for each fatality. State officials blackened out the patients' names and personal information, and many of the reports shed little light about the deaths.

One case, though, involved a woman who traded her methadone to a drug dealer, then overdosed on what she received in return. Several others died after mixing methadone with alcohol and other drugs.

Two other companies operate methadone clinics in Mecklenburg, but neither has reported any deaths since 2004, said Grayce Crockett, head of Mecklenburg Area Mental Health.

Crockett's agency is responsible for monitoring the sole McLeod clinic in Mecklenburg and submitting quarterly reports to the state. She said a visit this summer to the facility on Remount Road turned up no problems.

"We found everything was appropriate and in place," she said. "Our medical director didn't have any recommendations for them as a result of the review."

McLeod only clinic probed

Clark, of the Division of Mental Health, said his agency also is checking to see if any deaths have been reported at the 27 other clinics around the state. But he stopped short of saying whether any of those facilities is being investigated.Lubran, the federal methadone regulator, said N.C. officials have expressed concern only about McLeod's numbers, but he wants a statewide look at clinic deaths.

Depending on the results of the state investigation, McLeod could lose federal certification and be forced to close. Lubran said three out of more than 1,100 clinics nationwide have been closed this year.

Hall, the McLeod president, said the state would not know of his clinics' deaths had he not been scrupulous about reporting them. The state doesn't have accurate totals, he said, because many other clinics don't report.

"We're being punished, essentially, because we were attempting to comply."

Methadone Precautions

Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory about the use of methadone:

• Patients should take methadone exactly as prescribed. Bigger doses can slow or stop breathing and can be fatal.

• Patients taking methadone should not start or stop taking other medicines or dietary supplements without talking to their health care provider. Taking other medicines or dietary supplements may reduce pain relief. They may also cause a toxic buildup of methadone.

• Trouble signs: Difficult or shallow breathing, extreme fatigue or sleepiness; blurred vision; inability to think, talk or walk normally; and feeling faint, dizzy or confused. If these signs occur, patients should get immediate medical help.

For more, visit www.fda.gov/CDER/Drug/advisory/methadone.htm

History of Methadone

Methadone is a synthetic narcotic similar to morphine. Synthesized in Germany, it came into clinical use after World War II. When methadone is given to a heroin addict who is later withdrawn from methadone, the addict will undergo methadone withdrawal instead of the more severe heroin withdrawal. In the 1960s, Drs. Marie Nyswander and Vincent Dole promoted methadone as a therapeutic tool to rehabilitate narcotics addicts. The drug is now in use in maintenance programs in the United States, Thailand, Sweden and Hong Kong. Methadone is mostly dispensed in oral form, as a liquid or a wafer, under supervision.

Source: Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Read more!

Homeless are only L.A.'s new `campers' -Los Angeles News

Homeless classified as "urban campers."

Commentary: BY DOUG MCINTYRE

It's time once again to break out our Politician-to-English dictionaries, because the Statesmen of Spring Street have done it again - boldly taking language where even George Orwell dared not tread.

The latest assault on sanity is Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry's negotiation with Ramona Ripston and the American Civil Liberties Union over Skid Row sidewalk encampments.

While the entire issue has devolved into a Rubik's Cube of nuttiness, the L.A. Language Police have put a chokehold on English by redefining the homeless as "urban campers."

And where are the campsites? Right in front of your home.

That's right, your city elders actually negotiated the right for the homeless to sleep anywhere in the city.

Anywhere! Skid Row, Hancock Park, Encino, Woodland Hills, Mount Washington, maybe even right on the sidewalk at 1616 Beverly Blvd., the L.A. headquarters for the ACLU.

In its infinite wisdom, the City Council has legalized vagrancy, torpedoed quality of life, created a public health hazard and once again punished the citizens of the city because council members don't have any answers.

So what do they do? They rewrite the English language. Presto! The homeless are now campers.

Why stop there? Let's really go for it and start calling them Nobel laureates. "Welcome to Los Angeles, home of 80,000 Nobel Prize winners!" Take that, New York.

It has to be a great solace for the down-and-out
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to know they're no longer homeless, they're ... outdoorsmen!

But this is L.A., and you can't have a dumb government action without discovering it was done willfully and with punitive intent. The outrage cherry atop the stupid sundae comes courtesy of Perry, who wouldn't sign off on the settlement unless the right to "camp" applied to the entire city, not just her district, which includes Skid Row. Perry wants to spread the pain and actually convinced her colleagues to go along with this craziness.

So when you discover panhandlers sacked out in front of your home, squatting with the Sunday crossword puzzle in your pachysandra, give a big "attaboy" to Greig Smith, Dennis Zine, Wendy Gruel, Tom LaBonge, et al. This is the kind of outside-the-refrigerator-box thinking we've come to expect from City Hall.

There are as many reasons for homelessness as there are homeless people. Everyone on the street got there on a different path. There are common traits: booze, drugs, mental illness and abuse. But the sad truth is, in a nation of 300 million-plus, some people go feral.

We increase homelessness by accommodating it. Even San Francisco is feeling the backlash against the libertine attitude of their Board of Nitwits who turned the "City by the Bay" into Flopsylvania.

It's labor-intensive to reclaim a single lost life. It's a good fight, an honorable fight, and we should help the folks at the Midnight Mission and others who are doing God's work. But the answer to homelessness won't come by pretending they're, "just like you and I." That we're all "just one paycheck away."

The homeless are very different from you and I. They're alienated not only from their families and friends, but from every other human relationship. What city, county, state or federal program is going to undo that damage? Rebuilding Arrowhead or post-Katrina New Orleans is a lay-up compared to picking up the wreckage of a single human being.

L.A. won't be shocked into caring by exporting homelessness from Skid Row to Sherman Oaks. It is not the role of government to deliberately lower quality of life for the functional, even if you think you're helping the dysfunctional. This settlement doesn't help anybody.

The ACLU says we can enforce vagrancy laws if we pony up 1,250 units of low-cost housing. This is the same failed policy we've followed for four decades - it's a guilt tax.

Nobody has the guts to do what really works - a massive expansion of mental health facilities, exponential increases in drug and alcohol programs, and an aggressive police policy like the one LAPD Chief Bratton had been using in Skid Row. Arrest vagrants until they seek help or take their act someplace else.

L.A. is not a public toilet. Ventura Boulevard is not Will Rogers State Park. The homeless are not urban campers. The sidewalks shouldn't be a bed-and-breakfast, and the truth should not be negotiable.

Sadly, in Los Angeles, it often is.

Are homeowners required to leave a mint on the sidewalk?

Doug McIntyre hosts the "McIntyre in the Morning" program on Talk Radio 790 KABC,

weekdays from 5 to 9 a.m.
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Covering up suicide only makes the problem worse, say experts - Calgary (Canada) Herald

By Michelle Magnan

Rob Little sometimes wished he were dead. He never attempted suicide, nor did he want to. But as a third-generation farmer near Fairview, an hour north of Grande Prairie, Little worked long hours on the family farm. He felt stressed and struggled to do things most people take for granted, such as eating, sleeping and relaxing.

Little did not realize it, but he was wrestling with a depression that had dogged him for years.

Finally, just over 10 years ago, he went to his family doctor.

"I didn't go there thinking I was depressed," says the 54-year-old. "I just thought I wasn't feeling good."

His doctor recognized the symptoms and diagnosed Little with clinical depression. He encouraged the farmer to not only take medication to improve his mental health, but to make some big life changes.

Little, a married father of three boys, started medication and changed the way he farmed. He decreased the amount of acres on his farm and focused more on his livestock, which made the work more manageable.

At the age of 49, Little left farming for good. He began a new career as an oil landman and gave control of the farm to his middle son, Andy.

Andy was up to the task. He had already received his agriculture diploma in livestock management from Fairview College and was a

4-H leader and a bull-rider. He loved their land and livestock.

Things were looking good for Little and his family.

And then, in February 2003, just three months into his new job, Little faced something unexpected and devastating: Andy killed himself.

Unfortunately, suicide isn't rare in Alberta -- more than 400 Albertans kill themselves every year. In a booming province full of jobs and opportunities, authorities are perplexed as to why so many Albertans are taking their own lives.

No one, it seems, has the answers, but the uncertainty haunts families that, like Little's, are left behind to grieve for their loved ones.

Looking back, Little says depression pushed Andy to suicide. The young man wasn't sleeping or eating well, he was always working and he seemed nervous.

Little missed the signs.

The irony of the situation does not escape him.

"It was really hard for me to take, having gone through a depression and not seeing Andy's," he says.

But on the surface, and to others who knew him, Andy was a happy 23-year-old who was living the farming dream.

"He was a very jovial, outgoing person. Of all the people you would pick, it wouldn't be Andy."

Pictures of other Albertans who have died by suicide adorn a blue and white banner that hangs at The Support Network in Edmonton.

They look like everyday people -- friends, parents, neighbours.

Suicide does not target a certain economic class, age group, or gender, and it permeates communities throughout Alberta.

Every year for almost a decade now, more Albertans have died at their own hands than in motor vehicle collisions.

According to the Pembina Institute think-tank, Alberta's suicide rate has averaged 122 per cent of the national average for more than 40 years. In 2004, Alberta's suicide rate was 14 per 100,000 people, the second highest among the provinces, behind Quebec. The national rate was 11.3 per 100,000.

Why is our suicide rate so high?

"That's been the great question everybody's been trying to figure out," says Diane Yackel, executive director of the Calgary-based Centre for Suicide Prevention.

NATIONAL COMPARISON

Alberta's suicide rate ranks second highest among the provinces. Here is the breakdown of suicide rates per 100,000 population in 2004, according to Statistics Canada:

Canada 11.3

Quebec 15.3

Alberta 14.0

New Brunswick 11.8

Manitoba 11.3

Saskatchewan 11.2

British Columbia 11.1

Newfoundland and Labrador 10.2

Nova Scotia 9.6

Ontario 8.2

Prince Edward Island 5.8

SUICIDE WITHIN ALBERTA

Here is the breakdown of 2003 suicide rates per 100,000 population by regional health authority, according to the Chief Medical Examiner of Alberta:

Aspen (Cold Lake to Hinton) 25.1

Peace (North West) 21.2

East Central (Lloydminster) 19.8

David Thompson (Red Deer) 17.0

Palliser (Medicine Hat) 13.8

Capital (Edmonton) 13.7

Chinook (Lethbridge) 13.5

Calgary 11.5

Northern Lights (Far North) 11.4
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After the shots, the questions -Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune

Family of man killed by officer is left to mourn him and reflect

By BILLY COX
billy.cox@heraldtribune.com

LAKEWOOD RANCH -- When Dr. Joe Millin learned his brother-in-law had been shot to death by Sarasota police, the details triggered an automatic flashback to 2003.

Back then, it was the latest final straw for Richard Gouveia, whose once promising management career had collapsed as he fueled a bipolar disorder with crack cocaine. The house rules laid out by Millin and his wife, Gouveia's twin sister Deb, had been clear: Gouveia could stay so long as he refrained from doping and boozing. But there they were, under the bed -- empty alcohol bottles.

"I wanted to kick him out," recalled the Lakewood Ranch physician. The two went toe-to-toe, with Millin looking up at his normally mellow 6-foot-2 houseguest. "And he said, 'What are you gonna do? Hit me?' He was just egging me on. 'Go on -- hit me. Hit me.'"

But neither had an appetite for duking it out, and tensions quickly deflated. "We were not going to get violent," Millin said. Gouveia, whose usually easygoing personality was girded by a sense of humor, stayed on for a week or so. He left the house without incident, and resumed his descent into the itinerant fringe of addiction.

So when, on the evening of Oct. 9, an agitated but unarmed Gouveia reportedly baited Sarasota Police officer Helios Blanco by daring him to "Kill me, kill me," before two fatal gunshots blew him off his feet, his horrified family recalled the earlier incident.

For all of his numerous, drug-related brushes with the law, distraught relatives argue the 41-year-old father of two -- who once pursued a management track with Publix in Sarasota -- was a nonviolent person who would have backed down if police had done the same.

Gouveia was shot to death at about 8 p.m. at the corner of U.S. 41 and Princeton Street, shortly after police responded to Gouveia's 911 cell phone pleas that someone was trying to kill him.

Three police officers attempted to subdue his aggressive behavior. Tasers were fired, but missed their mark. Blanco resorted to lethal force when Gouveia, having tossed his cell phone at them, his arms flailing, ignored commands to stop approaching him.

Sarasota Police spokesman Jay Frank said the department forwarded the results of its investigation to the state attorney's office for review last week. But he said a full picture will not be available until November at the earliest, pending the completion of toxicology and medical examiner's reports.

The irony, says Joe Millin, is that, in the week or two preceding Richard Gouveia's death, a prescription cocktail of psychiatric medications -- Topamax, Seroquel and Effexor -- appeared to have been working.

Richard had been living at the Salvation Army in Sarasota, according to the Millins, and he had helped move them into their new Lakewood Ranch home earlier this month. He was good with his hands, and eager to take on additional projects.

"The last time I talked with him," recalled Joe Millin, which was less than a week before the shooting, "I was driving him into the city, and I told him how these last few weeks had been absolutely great. I said, 'You're becoming the brother-in-law I've always wanted.'"

Deb had been noticing a return to normalcy as well. But on the Friday before that fateful Tuesday, she was not certain her brother was out of the woods.

"He seemed a bit distracted. I could tell something was on his mind," she said. "He said he hadn't been sleeping well."

In fact, Richard told Joe several days before he died that his medications were running low. Joe volunteered to help, but Richard said he would handle it.

For Richard and Deb, the old saw about the deep bonds connecting twins evidently held strong until the end. "I love you, my little sister," he wrote to her in a text message two hours before he died.

Deb, an account manager with Cisco Systems, said she had "a horrible, hovering feeling that something horrible was going to happen -- and I could not shake it."

The premonition occurred shortly before her business trip to North Carolina. That is where she was when her husband called with the stunning news on the morning after.

Joe, who had been informed of the shooting by police about midnight, had decided to let Deb and her mom, Doreen Gouveia of Bradenton, get some sleep before tending to the grim business of notification.

"Joe called me over at 7:30 that morning and said he needed me over there," said Doreen. "When I arrived, he took me upstairs and sat me down, and I thought, 'Gee, I've done something wrong.' And he handed the phone to me, and Debbie got on. But she was sobbing so much I couldn't understand what she was saying."

Doreen and her late husband, insurance salesman Albert Gouveia, adopted the twins when they were six months old. In 1981, the family moved from Montreal to Sarasota, where Richard and Deb enrolled at Cardinal Mooney High School.

Deb says her IQ was measured between 140 and 145 in Canada, "but Richard's score was higher than mine." She and her mother say education was a family priority. The twins were sent to separate private schools in Montreal. Yet Richard struggled with grades, back before attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder -- and its management options -- gained clinical recognition. Doreen is convinced ADHD impeded Richard's success in the classroom.

Deb and Richard entered the working world via Publix while still in high school. Deb attended Florida State University, but Richard's brief fling with community college suggested he was ill-suited for academics.

So he returned to Publix, which became a 15-year career culminating in a promotion to assistant manager at a Sarasota outlet. Deb said he even got a commendation from the Sarasota Police Department for foiling a thief attempting to rip off the store.

Meanwhile, though, his family life was collapsing. Richard's ex-wife says their marriage was derailed by infidelity and drinking. Their two children, now 12 and 10, have only dim memories of him, she says.

"But he was not a bad person in any way," said Christina Hess, remarried and living in Maryville, Tenn. "He was never abusive. That's why I was shocked to hear that he died the way he did. I don't think that's right at all."

Hess says she never saw Richard use illegal drugs, and speculates those pursuits began after their 1998 divorce. He eventually quit showing up for work, and it cost him his job and his house.

Deb says her brother was initially diagnosed as having bipolar disorder in 1995, a fact he concealed until a second therapist reached the same conclusion in 2005.

"If we'd known earlier on, it would've made a huge difference," said Joe Millin. "By the time we finally got a handle on what was going on, it was out of control because it had been mixed with substance abuse for so long."

Court records indicate Richard was arrested 21 times by various Florida law enforcement agencies, mostly misdemeanors from possession to larceny. Deb says Richard would disappear for two to three months at a time without a word, often hanging out with girlfriends mired in their own drug problems. She estimates he spent a total of 18 months in jail after his arrests began in 1999.

That was the year Richard lost his Publix job -- just weeks before Albert Gouveia died, at age 80.

"When our father became ill and went into hospice care, that deeply affected Richard," Deb said. "My father was very successful and he had a lot of expectations of Richard. He felt Richard had the potential, but wasn't applying himself, for whatever reason. Richard could never get the approval he sought. It was a vicious circle of disappointment."

The family agrees that the downhill spiral accelerated at that point. To his credit, Richard voluntarily sought help for his addictions. He successfully completed Mental Health Court earlier this year, and was in a Salvation Army rehab program when he was shot.

In the aftermath, amid the spread of snapshots charting Richard's evolution from childhood to handsome young man, his survivors inevitably wonder if they might have averted the tragedy by doing more -- or doing less. The pattern of tough love and second chances never could break the cycle for very long.

"I tried to ignore it," said his mother of his behaviors. "I was enabling."

But some wounds can no more easily be healed than the past can be rewritten. Doreen Gouveia remembers the way her son would show up late, after visiting hours, and get special permission from hospice to keep vigil by his dying father's bed.

"He would spend two or three hours there," she said, recalling the stark final images from that unreconciled relationship, "as my husband lay sleeping."

Read more!

House of horrors -Boston Herald

Danvers State Hospital site still emits ghoulish aura

By Robert Buckley

DANVERS - The fire could have been smoldering for hours, but when it at last roared to life it launched towers of flame from the summit of the drumlin that dominates the suburban North Shore landscape here into the gloom of a nascent April morning.

Truckers plying Interstate 95 and Route 1, which skirt the hill, called in the first reports. By then the inferno could be seen from 20 miles around as it consumed buildings intended for luxury rental housing.

When fire crews arrived there was little they could do but douse the flames and keep them from units completed and occupied. The April 7 blaze would be likened to a lumberyard fire, intense and rapacious. But in the light of day, only the uncompleted construction was found destroyed and no injuries were reported.

The fire was a spectacle by any measure. But this fire occurred on Hathorne Hill in Danvers, former home of the legendarily wretched Danvers State Hospital, considered by some one of the most haunted sites in America.

When it comes to spectral locales, few would dispute that the brooding Gothic-style compound, once the site of unimaginable horrors for the mentally ill warehoused within, stands among the state’s eeriest.

From the howls of inmates past to the embers of April’s inferno, the now-demolished hospital continues to cough up memories of woe and tales of the accursed.

Today, developers are hoping to give it new life as condos with soul and cachet. But authors, paranormalists and embracers of Halloween mythology see a site that will always carry with it an aura of the ghoulish and the grim.

Sinister History

The hill’s nefarious reputation reaches back more than three centuries to its namesake and original owner, John Hathorne, great-grandfather to author Nathaniel Hawthorne and one of the notorious judge-inquisitors during the Salem witch trials.

Its link to the witch hysteria is fortified by the fact that two of the chief accusers during that sorry time lived on land below the slopes of the hill, and today lie buried in unmarked graves in a tiny family cemetery still maintained by their descendants, just across Route 62 from the hill’s northern slope.

But Hathorne Hill’s most sinister legacy is founded on a boggling irony. In the mid-18th century, a fervor for compassionate care of the mentally ill led the commonwealth to build the Danvers State Lunatic Asylum. By the 20th century, factors that had little to do with care, much less compassion, combined to make Danvers State Hospital a place of loathing and fear, its magnificent Gothic (some would say magnificently grotesque) architecture a looming presence that dominated the surrounding towns like a crown of thorns upon the hill.

Horror tales

It is believed to be the model for H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitorium, a place where the doomed protagonists of his horror stories were consigned after going mad from touching unspeakable evil.

Long after the facility was closed and practically abandoned by the state, it became the setting of the 2001 independent horror film “Session 9.” The hospital, with its gloomy exteriors and dark, ominous interiors, was another character in the tale of a group of workmen who uncover terrible secrets while removing asbestos from the aged structures.

According to artist-historian Michael Ramseur in his book “The Eye of Danvers,” neither pulp fiction nor cinematic horror could hold a shuddering candle to the real tragedies of Danvers State Hospital and its forlorn patients.

Ramseur became obsessed with the imposing relic while a social worker here. In his book he explains how the hospital came into existence with the best of intentions, based on a plan for treating the mentally ill formulated by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.

Best Intentions

Kirkbride condemned the use of restraints to control mentally ill patients. Instead he believed serene, isolated settings in areas of rural beauty, fresh air and work would return afflicted patients to a state of mental balance.

Around the country so-called Kirkbride institutions rose, architecturally striking facilities, since Kirkbride maintained that places where patients were sheltered should also be beautiful.

Massachusetts’ response was the Danvers State Lunatic Asylum, designed by Boston architect Nathaniel Bradley. Built from 1874 to 1878 in Danvers red brick, granite and copper, it was state-of-the-art and considered a masterwork of peaks, spires and gables. Completed at the then-astounding cost of $1.5 million, it was, at the time, the most expensive building constructed by the commonwealth.

The asylum was intended to house 450 patients, Ramseur said, but if the attics were opened they could accommodate 600- a figure that would be surpassed, to the detriment of patients and staff.

Patients were put to work maintaining gardens and growing their food on the facility’s farmland on the slopes of the hill, another precept of Kirkbride’s philosophy: vigorous work would help restore mental balance.

Ridicule & criticism

But Ramseur says Kirkbride’s vision was rapidly undermined by a combination of economics and resentment. Residents of Danvers derisively labeled the facility the “castle,” or “the lunatic palace.”

“People would say, ‘Why are we spending so much money to coddle these lunatics?’ ” Ramseur said.

Politicians responded to the grumbling, and Ramseur cites one politician’s dismissal of the folly of what the public deemed luxury housing for the insane: “Even many a royal palace is neither so large nor so pretentious architecturally as the hospital at Danvers.”

Discontent translated into budget cuts and diminished staff. But as resources declined, the patient census soared. Many people were consigned to the hospital under a broad definition of mental aberrations that included alcoholism, retardation, substance abuse, eccentricity and an unwillingness to conform to community norms.

“Young boys were committed to Danvers because they lifted a girl’s skirt for a peek,” says Ramseur. By the early 20th century, he said, Danvers State had become the “snake pit that we all envisage.”

Therapy and control

New techniques for treatment and control came into play and in some cases were used ruthlessly. Ramseur says a persistent claim that Danvers pioneered the lobotomy is likely apocryphal, but notes that hundreds of the procedures were performed there. The psychosurgery house once stood where the fire occurred in April.

Hydrotherapy was employed not so much as therapy but for controlling the population. Persons would be locked into tubs of frigid water with only their heads sticking out, Ramseur said.

Innovations such as electroshock were used too, not because they were understood, but because it was “the latest big thing, the latest promise of a ‘cure,’ ” Ramseur explains. Minimal staff coped as best they could before the advent of tranquilizing drugs. Ramseur cites a shift in the mid-1940s in which nine staff were left in charge of 13 wards and 2,300 patients. Even so, the hospital saw exceptional care provided by dedicated staffers who Ramseur describes as saintly.

Stigma & preservation

Cloaked in stigma, the facility continued to deteriorate, and patients, some hidden and abandoned by their families, lived out their lives and died there, never leaving the grounds. Two cemeteries on the slopes contain the bodies of perhaps 800 patients.

State mental hospitals were considered failures by the late 20th century, and the hospital was closed in 1992. It would remain essentially abandoned for more than 10 years before it was sold by the state to AvalonBay Development in 2005.

Between those years, the buildings would be invaded by vandals, documented surreptitiously by urban explorers and paranormal investigators and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Members of the Danvers Preservation Commission maintained a running battle for two years with the initial developer and then AvalonBay to preserve as much of the facility as possible.

Eventually AvalonBay agreed to preserve the administration building and two wings, maintain the patient cemeteries and construct a memorial. Demolition of the rest of the facility and “outlying historically significant buildings,” according to Danvers Town Archivist Richard Trask, was swift and irrecoverable.

Trask laments what he calls a Disneyfied preservation effort by AvalonBay, saying: “Fifty years from now, people are going to wonder how we allowed something so magnificent to be destroyed.” But Danvers was eager to get a piece of prime property on its tax rolls. A reported $2 million was also offered by the developer to the town in mitigation and preservation funds for other projects.

Some see a success

Trask’s colleague on the commission, John Archer, a preservationist and businessman, is not so melancholy, and says AvalonBay has done a good job with the small portion of the old facility it has preserved. He considers the result a success story.

“You saw ‘Session 9?’ ” he asks. “That movie was completely accurate.” The film portrayed workers finding patient records and uncovering dark secrets in the gloom of melancholy buildings.

“It was like the day they closed it, after the last shift, everyone put on their coats and just left everything as it was: equipment, documents, everything. Nobody came to get anything,” he said.

When patient records and other artifacts began turning up on Internet sites, such as eBay, the state belatedly moved to secure abandoned records and launched an investigation.

Archer doesn’t fault AvalonBay’s business decisions. “They’re a private company; they have to answer to the bottom line.”

For Ramseur and the patients who suffered at the asylum, the bottom line is far starker. As Ramseur writes of the site, scene of so many anguished cries and true-life terrors for the benighted patients:

“I turned from the window to the rest of the castle, brick after time-stained brick . . . turret after turret, window after window . . . with torn and grimy curtains hanging from gaping holes - all eloquent symbols for the passage of time and the stigmatized history of Danvers State Hospital. I had looked into the eye of Danvers, and it had winked to let me know all the folly of wishing to comprehend that degree of bedlam.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1040949 Read more!

Infant dies in care of ill mom -Associated Press

The Associated Press

MILWAUKEE — A child welfare worker left a 5-month-old boy alone with his mentally ill mother and within a half hour of the worker leaving the boy had died.

Now the police are investigating the case as a homicide.

The death comes after a state report was released last month that accompanied a plan to beef up programs to keep children at risk of abuse or neglect safe, after a review of more than 600 active Milwaukee child welfare cases.

The review was ordered in May after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported the suffocation death of a toddler, Alicia Burgess, who was left in her home by child welfare workers despite warnings by two doctors that the child and her brother were in danger. The mother’s boyfriend is charged with first-degree reckless homicide.

In February, the newspaper reported that a 7-month-old baby starved to death as child welfare workers regularly stopped by her Milwaukee home to check on an older child who had been abused. The bureau had been warned of concerns about the baby’s health, but caseworkers reported that the parents refused to let them check on her conditions.

In the latest case, police said the 29-year-old mother lost custody of the boy in July because her mental illness interfered with her ability to care for the child. The baby was placed in foster care. On Oct. 19, the woman’s niece was granted custody of the infant and the mother was granted visitation rights, police said.

Police did not know if the visits were to be supervised.

Police say the 24-year-old visitation worker picked the infant up from the niece’s house at 9:45 a.m. Friday for a visit at the mother’s apartment at 10 a.m.

She told police that she was only supposed to supervise the mother’s visit for the first half hour and the last half hour of the visit and left at 10:30 a.m.

At 10:45 a.m. a mental health social worker checked in and was told by the mother that everything was fine. That worker told police that she could hear the baby cooing and that the mother was coherent.

About 25 minutes later the mother called the worker back and said something was wrong with the baby and the worker called 911.

The mother told police that she overdosed on medications and passed out, leaving the baby in the bathtub. The mother, who police said suffers from an undisclosed mental illness, was being held at the Milwaukee Mental Health complex.

Police said they did not know where the baby was when the fire department arrived, but that there was some water in the tub.
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Read more!

A chance to celebrate -York (PA) Sunday News

Autistic children, families gathered for Halloween fun

By TOM JOYCE

The festivities at Blue Hound Farm in Newberry Township included pony rides, trick-or-treating, hayrides, crafts and contra dancing.

So what was Anthony Lubbers' favorite part?

“The ladybug!” he replied, then ran off.

The ladybug in question was actually 23-year-old Erin Adams, dressed in a ladybug costume, with whom Anthony, 6, had become rather smitten in the course of the day. He ran up behind her and started yanking on her glittery wings. She just smiled.

Anthony's mother, Kathy Lubbers of Palmyra, said that kind of tolerant behavior is what made Saturday afternoon's gathering such an enjoyable one for both the children in attendance and their parents.

“Everyone else around is people who get it,” Lubbers said.

In another setting, Anthony's behavior might be deemed strange or inappropriate. People might stare and attribute it to bad parenting. But it's not bad parenting that makes Anthony behave the way he does. It's autism.

Kate Valsing of Shiremanstown, one of the event's organizers, said autism is often called an “invisible disability.” Unlike many other disabilities, it frequently isn't obvious to those who haven't been informed that somebody has it. So a child's behavior may seem puzzling if, for example, he or she suddenly starts screaming because the sensory overload of a shopping mall or amusement park has become painful.

Valsing said such circumstances can also be difficult for a sibling who becomes aware of other people's stares, and isn't yet emotionally mature enough to simply shrug them off. Too often, she said, parents of autistic children find themselves planning separate family outings for the children with and without autism.

That led her and her husband, André, to form Adventure and Days Together, a group that allows families with autistic children to get together in an informal setting and set aside some of the pressures they ordinarily have to cope with.

The Autism Society of America also helped sponsor Saturday's Halloween gathering, which about 40 families from Central Pennsylvania attended.

Valsing said the gathering allowed the children to take part in some Halloween fun that might ordinarily be restricted to them. For example, many autistic children have food allergies to glutens, which are common in the type of Halloween candy they'd get from trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods.

So on Saturday, the organizers set up a bunch of trick-or-treating stations with allergen-free candy.

It's also a relief knowing that you're surrounded by other parents who know how to look after autistic children, so you can relax a little, Valsing said.

“It's not like a therapeutic setting,” she said. “It's like a community.”

Reach Tom Joyce at 771-2089 or tjoyce@ydr.com. Read more!

Lighting Up When Home Is A Hospital -Hartfourd (CT) Courant

Rights Issue Clouds Psychiatric Hospital's Smoking Ban
By KATHLEEN MEGAN
The Hartford Courant

In Ken Kesey's film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," a climactic scene occurs when Cheswick explodes and demands that Nurse Ratched give him his cigarettes.

The cigarettes represent freedom. Controlling them seems so important because, for these patients, so much is out of their control.

The state of Connecticut is no Nurse Ratched, but in many ways, the state's plan to ban smoking at Connecticut Valley Hospital because smoking is so unhealthful has summoned that same kind of passion.

"I think we should have a choice, and they are not giving us a choice. I was in the service; I fought for the freedoms of this country," said Bill Johnston, who has been a patient at CVH for 26 years. "They shouldn't come in and say you're not having this.'

"I think we're grown adults. Everyone is over 18," said Johnston. "I think it's a choice."

Or Anthony Dyous, who has been at CVH for 24 years and believes "You cannot deprive me of my personal liberties: to play chess, to play baseball, to smoke a cigarette. … If you want to ban [smoking] on this campus then make it illegal all over the country. Don't use it as a political ploy to make your point."

For anyone with an understanding of all of the health hazards of smoking from cancer to cardiovascular illnesses banning smoking at CVH, as the state had planned to do, is a logical step.

This is especially so considering a recent study that showed that adults with serious mental illness treated in public systems die about 25 years earlier than most Americans, often from conditions related to smoking.

But smoking has a long and complicated history in psychiatric hospitals and is far more complex to address than in a non-psychiatric population.

And so, just before the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services was about to implement its tobacco ban at CVH on Oct. 1, Dyous, Johnston and several other patients filed a federal lawsuit claiming that this measure would violate their civil rights.

Since then the department has opted to hold off on implementing the ban until "there is greater clarity around the lawsuit," Wayne Dailey, a spokesman said.

The state has asked for the dismissal of the suit, arguing, as Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said last week, that "the doctrine of equal protection does not apply when there is a recognized interest in protecting people from secondhand smoke" and when people are in a "limited space and cannot readily or voluntarily leave."

Because smoking is allowed only in outside areas at CVH, smoking patients say others are not exposed to secondhand smoke.

Meanwhile, the issue is debated by professionals with long careers in the mental health field, roughly dividing them into those who see health as the primary issue and those who believe that the right to self-determination is even more important.

A Need For Nicotine?

Part of what makes a smoking ban at a psychiatric hospital so thorny an issue is the apparent therapeutic value of smoking for some psychiatric patients.

It has long been observed and more recently supported by scientific study that smoking actually does make many psychiatric patients feel better. Alex Cardorni, senior scientist at the Burlingame Research Center of Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living says recent studies show that nicotine helps people with schizophrenia focus by filtering out environmental stimuli that can overwhelm them. Experts also say that for some patients, nicotine creates a sense of well-being and counteracts the sedative effects of powerful psychiatric medications.

Dyous, one of patients at CVH, can confirm this. When a psychiatric medication makes you feel like you want to "jump out of your skin … a cigarette is almost like a 'must have."

"It calms you down," Dyous said. "It takes some of the discomfort away from certain side effects from medication."

Perhaps the same effect could be obtained by nicotine patch, but as patients like Johnston will tell you, the smoking break itself along with the smokes is enjoyed. "It makes you focus and concentrates you," said Dyous. "It relaxes you, so we can socialize with our buddies. If they couldn't smoke, they wouldn't socialize. The tobacco makes them come out of themselves and they talk to each other.'

Many experts believe that the high rate of smoking among psychiatric patients 75 percent of those with severe mental illness smoke compared with 22 percent in the general population has been a kind of self-medication.

Less seemly is the historical role of cigarettes as a tool in behavioral treatment. Over the years, hospitals have often doled out cigarettes and smoking breaks as rewards for good behavior and rescinded smoking privileges as punishment for bad. And often hospitals have offered little in the way of recreation or social opportunities other than smoking breaks..

Karen Kangas, a retired executive with the state mental health agency and a longtime advocate for people with mental illness, remembers that years ago, "We encouraged cigarettes and we also gave cigarettes out."

Sometimes patients who didn't smoke took it up, Kangas said, because it was the only way they were allowed outside. State officials said cigarettes are no longer used as reward or punishment in state psychiatric facilities.

Robert Glover, executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, which is leading an effort to make all public mental health hospitals tobacco-free, said it's clear that the hospital system "has been part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution."

In its position paper on the subject, the association of mental health program directors states that smoking "is a poor (and often only) substitute for practice in decision-making and relationship building and is inappropriate as a means to manage behavior within the treatment milieu."

"And while smoking can be framed as the one 'choice' consumers get to make while inpatients, and a personal 'choice' for staff, it is critical to realize that addiction is not a choice. But quitting smoking is."

Glover also said that while it has been feared that banning smoking would lead to more instances of troubling behavior among patients who might have to be restrained, the opposite has actually been true. The use of restraints and seclusion has gone down in hospitals where smoking has been banned, Glover said, because often the conflict was related to cigarettes and smoking breaks.

A Matter Of Rights

The other major complicating factor in banning smoking at a psychiatric hospital is the patient-rights issue. There are many mental health professionals who, while supporting all efforts to help patients voluntarily quit smoking, oppose a smoking ban on the grounds that for some hospital patients in this case those who have lived at CVH for many years the hospital is effectively their home.

"For me it's not about smoking," said Kangas, who has worked at CVH part-time. "It's about self-determination."

Kangas believes that if people in the community can choose to smoke in their homes, patients should be allowed to do so in theirs, as long as they can find a place to smoke probably outdoors without exposing nonsmokers to secondhand smoke.

At the Institute of Living, Dr. Hank Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief, drew the distinction between a hospital like the institute, where patients stay only an average of six days, and a place like Connecticut Valley Hospital, where patients may stay for years.

Schwartz said the institute is moving toward the elimination of smoking. However, at CVH, he said, "This essentially is their home. What's more, they often live there involuntarily under civil commitment."

Schwartz said he understands the desire not to "collude with a behavior that takes such a terrific toll on our patients."

"But at the same time, there is the whole notion behind the recovery movement … that individuals are in the process of recovery for which they bear a responsibility and they must be enabled to exercise that autonomy. … Why do they have a lesser right to choose than the rest of us?"

Of course, he said, there are also the issues of secondhand smoke to be considered. Even outside the building, it can be a problem, he said.

Susan McKinley, who works at CVH and is a delegate for the union representing employees New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199 said many employees are very concerned about being exposed to secondhand smoke, even though the smoking is outdoors. She said the designated outside areas for smoking at the hospital are small and somewhat confined.

"We certainly have broad support for patients' rights," said McKinley, "but we're not being bashful about pushing for a healthy lifestyle."

James McGaughey, executive director of the state Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities, said that while no one is in favor of smoking, it is very different to encourage patients to quit than to institute a ban. "It sort of speaks more to the power dynamics than it does to what we want to do," said McGaughey. He said there must be "a more respectful way" than to "pass an across-the-board bar on it."

At the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Ron Honberg, legal director, said the alliance strongly favors helping people to stop smoking, but opposes a ban, explaining that it's unreasonable to "ask someone in the throes of a psychiatric episode when they are experiencing delusions and other horrifying symptoms to stop doing something that may give them some release."

He said smoking cessation must be done slowly and carefully, because smoking affects the concentration of medication in the blood.

"Frankly," he said, the alliance has "a lack of confidence that hospitals will do this right ... It must be done very carefully and humanely." Connecticut officials have said, however, that they do have smoking-cessation services in place, offering the patch and other nicotine replacement strategies.

Even within the alliance, there are many shades of opinions. At Connecticut's chapter of the alliance, Kate Mattias, executive director, sees a ban on smoking as more "of a right to a healthy environment" than as a patients' rights issue.

"I think the tactic on the part of CVH is to really begin to instill a picture of a health facility as opposed to a facility that sort of warehouses chronically ill individuals and sort of leaves them to their own devices, often including smoking."

She believes that if implemented, recreational and social programs would provide a much more healthful alternative to smoking.

Glover said his organization is aware of the need to proceed carefully and slowly with smoking bans. "It's not a sprint; it's a marathon," said Glover. "It will take cultural change."

Kathleen Megan can be reached at kathy.megan@courant.com.

Copyright © 2007, The Hartford Courant Read more!

Mental scars of war still fresh 2 years later -Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune

Guest Columnist: Two incidents with IEDs while vet was in Iraq, have taken a toll on her life, her dreams and her psyche.

By Elizabeth Ricci

When people talk about the war in Iraq, discussion almost always focuses on topics related to the physical survival of soldiers. As a veteran of this war, I believe more attention needs to be paid to the mental scars soldiers are suffering.

Homemade bombs called IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- are what have claimed the most lives in Iraq, by far. These devices can range in force from causing mild annoyance to instantaneous death. Early in my deployment, I had my first of several personal encounters with an IED.

I was in a Humvee with four other soldiers traveling down a nondescript dirt road in Iraq. Within a matter of seconds, the truck was tipping over, shrapnel was flying everywhere, and the air became a suffocating wall of black dust and smoke. Somewhere during that chaos, the detonation of the IED was heard, pounding noise into our ears so loud and so fast that nothing was heard for the next several minutes. All five passengers were injured and eventually three soldiers, myself included, had to be flown to the nearest hospital for more extensive care. It took seven seconds for the IED to explode, injure everyone, flip an Army Humvee over, and destroy it.

Physically, it took about two weeks for me to heal well enough to return to duty, but mentally there is no end to that kind of experience. Every single time I was in a truck out on Iraqi roads after that, I was waiting for another explosion. Driving becomes a completely different experience when you are expecting to be attacked. Every pothole, every piece of trash, and every dead animal on the side of the road transform into deadly obstacles to swerve around because these are some of the places that IEDs are commonly concealed.

That fear didn't stop when I left Iraq. It still grips me on Interstate Hwy. 35E and on the quiet streets near my home. I have found myself veering dangerously into other lanes of traffic to avoid a small pothole that I subconsciously believe to have a bomb in it. My heart will pound, my adrenaline will rush, my vision will narrow, and my hands will shake, all anticipating action. I have had to pull over to the side of the road just to calm myself down. That actual experience took seven seconds of my life. Almost two years later, I still live it over and over in my mind, irrationally expecting to endure it again.

The day that changed my life forever also involved an IED, but this time I wasn't in the truck; I was sent to clean it up. I was in charge of a group of soldiers called the Human Remains Recovery Team. When U.S. soldiers in our area died in combat we were sent to bring back as much of their bodies and equipment as we could. On one such occasion we were called out to an IED blast that had killed all five soldiers in the truck. Pulling up to that site, the first thing that I noticed was the group of soldiers guarding the area. They were friends of mine, infantry soldiers that I worked with every day, sobbing uncontrollably. I soon discovered that the casualties we were sent to recover were soldiers from my unit. They were my friends. The next thing that I saw was devastation like I have never seen before. The entire truck had been reduced to pieces small enough to be picked up by hand. Human remains were scattered throughout the vehicle's wreckage. Over the next six hours, my soldiers and I picked up the pieces of our friends' bodies as best we could through tears and breakdowns. During that time the two people responsible for making and detonating the IED were caught. We found ourselves listening to them both proudly admit to the bombing that killed five soldiers. Their only regret was that they didn't kill more. Those voices belonged to an Iraqi man and his 12-year-old son.

To say that day was emotionally charged is a gross understatement. There were several very tense minutes where this man and his son were facing the barrels of a dozen rifles held by men and women who had been pushed too far. None of us actually pulled the trigger in the end, but every soldier there desperately wanted to, including me. Can you imagine the rage that would pour through your body in a situation like that? I can only describe that feeling as being completely raw, and once it has touched your life, it will never be forgotten. There is not a single detail of that day that has faded from my memory. I relive every moment of it every day, and it haunts my dreams at night. I know that day will never leave me.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is no longer a rare diagnosis for combat veterans, but it is almost never discussed publicly. Why is that? Amputees are commonly seen in the media, as are family members and friends of soldiers who have died. It is hard to imagine that mental scars can be as difficult to deal with as physical ones, but they can be. The biggest difference between the two is that physical injuries are more noticeable, often even obvious. PTSD leaves no marks, nothing that signifies trauma to the naked eye. Mental scars are also not displayed proudly like a battle wound. They are generally hidden, not talked about, and feel like something to be ashamed of. In the case of Vietnam veterans, it has taken 30 years for society to grasp the mental effects of war and the consequences they have on human life. Hopefully, with the realization that stemmed from their difficulties, it won't take another 30 years to understand the invisible scars of today's troops.

Elizabeth Ricci, 22, of Roseville, served in the United States Army for almost four years. She was stationed in Missouri, Korea, New York, Kuwait and Iraq. She left the Army this year after attaining the rank of sergeant. She graduated from Roseville Area High School in 2003 and was the student body president. Read more!

100-plus connect to services -Chapel Hill (NC) News

By SAMUEL SPIES, Staff Writer
October 27, 2007

CHAPEL HILL — Glenton Horton needed a new winter coat and backpack.

Phyllis Fontes helped him find them.

In just one of hundreds of acts of kindness Thursday, the volunteer at Project Homeless Connect Orange County helped someone on hard times meet a serious need.

“We encourage them to take whatever they want,” said Fontes.

Dozens of people gathered at Hargraves Community Center for the Orange County section of Project Homeless Connect, a Triangle-wide event held by groups working to end chronic homelessness in 10 years.

After an intake procedure where volunteers helped people identify their priorities, clients met with service providers in the bustling gym. Organizers said 129 people were served, and many left with follow-up appointments for additional help. The goal had been to attract 150 people.

Guests could take showers, apply for housing assistance, get tested for HIV, speak with mental health professionals and even get haircuts.

Foot and dental care provided by area podiatrists, a dental student and dental hygienists was very popular.

“Everything’s been really helpful,” said Preston Brooks of Carrboro, after a stint in dental student Ben Barkley’s chair. Barkley was screening people to determine who needed to see dentists later in the day. Brooks got an appointment.

“I graduated college, and lost a job with a big company which I can’t really name, and became homeless in three months,” Brooks said.

That happened earlier this year. Since then, he’s been staying with friends in Carrboro. “It’s hard to get around if you can’t drive. This is a really good thing to have.”

He came to Project Homeless Connect for help getting back on his feet. “They gave me some ideas around the area to look for jobs,” he said.

At another booth, homeless veterans could speak with Terry McMillan from the state’s Division of Veterans Affairs.

“I’m a vet that gets disability compensation too, so I understand,” said McMillan. “A lot of the older veterans, they don’t like to talk, so it helps break the ice a little bit.”

At an intake desk, Mike Atherton was going over his needs with volunteer Antonia Hartley.

“I already know about the shelters. I stayed there six weeks,” Atherton told her.

Atherton told Hartley he was especially interested in the dental and foot care, so she put that high on his checklist.

Atherton isn’t homeless, but said he’s about to be. He was renting a house in Chatham County, he said, but the property was sold to a developer. He was supposed to be out a while ago. “It won’t be long before I have the sheriff or whatever knocking on my door,” he said.

After that, he’s not sure where he’ll go.

“Live in my truck. Find a place to put a tent up somewhere,” said Atherton, who works for a tree service. “I don’t have a whole lot of choice.”

After intake, Atherton stopped by the dental booth, where he told hygienist Martha Taylor he hadn’t had dental care since high school. He’s had problems eating, he said.

All of the appointments with dentists were taken, but Taylor gave him information on clinics staffed by UNC dental students.

After that it was a visit with podiatrist Jane Andersen, who treated Atherton for foot pain. Atherton thanked Andersen as he pulled on his socks to leave.

“I feel better already.”

Volunteer Alice McCall Smith said she was heartened to see so many service providers in one place, “people willing to make things happen.”

“I’ve seen something that should be every day.”
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner. Read more!

Former model guilty in crash that killed 3 musicians - Association Press

By John Garcia
October 26, 2007

There has been a verdict in the trial of a young suburban woman accused of murder.

Jeannette Sliwinski said she was trying to commit suicide when she crashed her car into another car, killing three. She was found guilty, but mentally ill, of reckless homicide.

Sliwinski was sobbing during the final arguments and as the verdict was read by the judge. This was a case that caused a tremendous amount of anguish and heartache for the families of the three victims as well as the defendant, who was accused of first-degree murder.

The verdict of guilty, but mentally ill, of reckless homicide is unsatisfying to both sides, families say.

Prosecutors argued that she knew exactly what she was doing when she plowed her car, at 87 miles an hour, into the back of a car carrying the three young men in july 2005. All three of the men were killed.

She survived. She told paramedics after the crash that she was trying to kill herself. Defense attorneys argued she was insane at the time of the crash. She had been seeking psychological treatment in the weeks and months before. The judge determined in this bench trial that she did not, however, intend to harm anyone else so it is not first-degree murder, but instead, reckless homicide.

"Obviously, they are disappointed that she was not found guilty of first-degree murder, but they are very happy with the way the case was presented. They were happy with the judge and they just were very happy that the judge took this case as seriously as we did," said Michele Gemskie, Assistant State's Attorney.

"We knew that before this incident she was not well. So to have been found otherwise would have been to have found worse than the situation presented would have been tragic in itself," said Toni Randle, Sliwinski family spokesman.

Sentencing is set for November 26. She could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison. She will also receive psychological treatment as part of that sentence. If she had been found guilty of first-degree murder, she could have been sentenced to life in prison.

"She's crying, and I don't think she fully understands what happened today," said defense attorney Todd Pugh.

Ron and Gail Meis lost their son, Douglas, 29.

"There will never be closure on something like this. It's so bizarre," said Ron Meis.

"Our family was so close that everything, every holiday, every weekend is something we all were involved in, and now there's a great big hole," said Gail Meis.

Michael Dahlquist, 39, John Glick, 35, and Douglas Meis were sitting in a stoplight in July of 2005 when Sliwinski plowed her car into theirs.

"What she did was just unexcusable. And I used the term narcissistic, and I maintain that. She's just a woman who was focusing on herself, and unfortunately she caused three innocent people to die,' said Michele Gemskie, assistant state's attorney. Read more!

State sued over care of mentally ill -Providence (RI) Journal

Friday, October 26, 2007
By Felice J. Freyer
Journal Medical Writer

The state’s mental health advocate yesterday filed suit against the state, seeking to stop the practice of holding psychiatric patients in hospital emergency rooms “for days on end” without treatment.

H. Reed Cosper, the mental health advocate, is asking Superior Court, Providence, to prohibit the detaining of mentally ill people against their will in any place other than a licensed psychiatric facility, or to require that such patients be placed in one within 24 hours.

Cosper’s lawsuit strikes at a problem that has bedeviled the health-care system for many years — and was also the subject of a suit by Cosper six years ago. Patients in psychiatric crisis arrive at emergency departments of community hospitals. When doctors determine that a patient is a danger to himself or others, the person can be held against his or her will. But frequently there are no psychiatric beds available, so the patient stays in the emergency room until a placement is found. The patient is kept safe but does not receive treatment for the psychiatric illness.

“These involuntary detainees are held for days on end without the privacy, dignity, individualized treatments plans and access to inpatient care in a licensed psychiatric facility guaranteed by the Mental Health Law,” Cosper’s suit states. It calls such detentions “an arbitrary and capricious exercise of state power” and notes that those who are detained are most frequently those without health insurance.

Hospital emergency rooms are “not medically appropriate” for psychiatric patients; detention there delays recovery and “can reasonably be expected to aggravate some patients’ mental illness,” the suit alleges.

Although it is private hospitals that keep such patients in the emergency room, Cosper is suing the state Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals because the department is responsible for mentally disabled people. He faults the department for not providing enough beds for them in psychiatric hospitals.

Cosper also alleges that since March, the state has illegally refused treatment to out-of-state residents. Mentally ill people passing through the state cannot get a state-financed bed, and instead wait in the emergency room until someone comes to get them, he said, a practice he called “inhumane.”

Ellen R. Nelson, director of the state Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, had not yet seen a copy of the lawsuit late yesterday, and declined to address its specifics. She agreed that the system is in trouble, but said she has a plan to fix it, by opening a psychiatric stabilization unit at Eleanor Slater Hospital next year and increasing the capacity of the hospital’s forensic unit. Her focus, however, is on enhancing services in the community rather than increasing inpatient beds.

Asked whether Cosper’s suit might be a catalyst for faster change, Nelson said, “I don’t think so.” She said she would prefer to deal with individual cases as they occur, tailoring a treatment plan to each patient. “Any time there’s an individual patient we’ll do whatever we need to do,” she said. “I would pledge to work with anybody in the private sector or anybody in the hospitals. … If a patient gets stuck in an emergency room, my question would be, ‘Why didn’t the hospital admit them?’ ”

Before 2001, Cosper said, emergency psychiatric patients who could not find a hospital bed in the community were held at the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital. After that policy ended and emergency rooms filled up psychiatric patients, Cosper filed suit against MHRH. The department agreed to contract with Butler Hospital to take patients in “holding status.”

But that plan was never part of a court-enforced consent decree and, in Cosper’s view, the state never fully addressed the issue. “Now it’s six years later and the problem is worse,” he said.

In March, according to Cosper, the state moved the contract for emergency psychiatric patients from Butler Hospital to SSTAR of Rhode Island, paying 30-percent less than the previous contract. “MHRH knew at the time it contracted with SSTAR RI that demand for state beds would consistently exceed the supply available,” the suit alleges.

Recently, Cosper said, emergency room doctors and social workers from around the state have urged him to take action. “The emergency room doctors came to me and said, ‘Please, pull the trigger. We’ll help you’ ”

Elizabeth V. Earls, president of the Rhode Island Council of Community Mental Health Organizations, said she welcomed the suit. “More and more people are being held against their will in an emergency room,” she said. “What does it take to expedite a solution?”

U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy also applauded Cosper for filing the suit. In a statement, Kennedy said he had visited emergency rooms and was “alarmed” at the number of mental-health patients being held there. “Not only were they taking beds away from other patients, they were not being given proper treatment …. The State of Rhode Island is failing its responsibility to provide health care services to patients with a mental illness or substance abuse problem….”

Jeff Neal, spokesman for Governor Carcieri, said that MHRH is designing “a system of care” focused on community-based treatment. But, he said, “This new community-based system of care can’t be implemented immediately. Until it can be implemented it is up to everyone, including the hospitals and others in the system, to make the current system work.” Read more!

Plan to merge state’s advocacy offices is met with fear - Providence (RI) Journal

October 26, 2007
By Steve Peoples
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE — They fear it’s a case of government efficiency gone too far.

It its final days last June, the General Assembly inserted language into the state budget that requires the governor to propose merging the state’s five advocacy offices — including the offices of the child advocate and mental health advocate — into a new Department of Advocacy.

The motivation, according to the House leadership, was simply to cut costs by streamlining services as the state struggles to close multimillion-dollar budget deficits.

But the advocates fear the plan would essentially kill their ability to protect Rhode Island’s most vulnerable citizens — children, the disabled and mentally ill — by stripping their offices of their most powerful weapon: autonomy.

“We have to really fight and tell people what’s happening,” state child advocate Jametta O. Alston said. “I think this is on a train that’s pulled into the station and I’m afraid it’s going to take off and destroy our advocacy.”

Alston was among representatives from six state departments yesterday invited to the basement of the Department of Health building by the governor’s Budget Office, as it begins to shape the reorganization. The agencies, which currently stand as independent departments, have a combined budget of $2.6 million and 20 employees — a sliver of the state’s $6.99 billion budget.

While small, they argue they are charged with the key task of protecting Rhode Island citizens who would otherwise have little voice in state affairs. Most of the advocates have the power to sue state leaders if they believe people are at risk.

Alston, for example, filed a sweeping class-action lawsuit against the governor and other state leaders in June, alleging widespread abuse. And just yesterday, state mental health advocate H. Reed Cosper filed a separate lawsuit over the state’s handling of emergency psychiatric patients.

Alston and Cosper were joined yesterday by the Developmental Disabilities Council, the Governor’s Commission on Disabilities and the Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Department of Elderly Affairs.

Cosper had issued an alert last week urging supporters to attend the meeting to defend what he described as a direct threat to his office’s independence. Between 40 and 50 people showed up.

Merging administrative functions at his office is unnecessary, could create legal conflicts and would weaken his ability to protect the state’s mentally ill, he said.

“Most of the agencies don’t have a secretary, never mind a personnel office,” Cosper said, noting that his office employs the equivalent of 3.7 full-time workers.

The Budget Office, as instructed by the Assembly in the budget approved in June, will use information garnered at yesterday’s meeting to introduce legislation aimed at creating a Department of Advocacy that would consolidate “communications and overhead expenditures” at the state’s advocacy agencies.

The ultimate plan will be presented in the governor’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal set to be released in February.

“I think there are opportunities [for savings],” state budget officer Rosemary Booth Gallogly told the crowd of advocates and their supporters at yesterday’s meeting. “I understand there’s some anxiety about the creation of this department.”

The issue was discussed briefly in a public hearing during the final weeks of the previous legislative session. The advocates complained yesterday that they didn’t have the opportunity to speak at the hearing. And they complained there was no proof of actual savings from the proposed consolidation.

“The Carcieri administration is still examining the potential advantages and disadvantages of the General Assembly’s plan,” the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal said after the meeting. “Regardless of whether or not this was a worthwhile idea, the administration is obligated to implement this new law. In doing so, we have asked the advocates themselves to propose to us how this new structure should work.”

House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, acknowledged that the reorganization “is not something, quite frankly, you immediately see savings, but in the long-term you see savings… Are they able to combine some of the purchasing or the use of space? That would be the hope.”

“We cannot afford at this point in time, these separate turfs that people have,” he said. “In no way did we interfere with the function of each advocacy piece. There are good people who do good work and we would hope that continues.”

Costantino said he believes departments could overcome potential conflicts in which the child advocate may represent a child whose parents are represented by the mental health advocate.

Alston, however, fears it won’t be that simple.

The new Department of Advocacy would presumably include an administrator that would handle the budget requests of each advocate. She said the measure would make it extremely difficult to file lawsuits against the same government leaders who would ultimately create her budgets.

“It’s scary to think someone could dictate who you can sue,” she said. “If I’m reporting to someone, they can say, ‘If you do that I’m going to cut your budget.’ ”

Once the reorganization is proposed in the governor’s budget, the Assembly will spend the subsequent months debating the proposal, which likely won’t be decided until June.

speoples@projo.com Read more!

When Insight Is Better Than Handcuffs -Portland (ME) Press-Herald

October 26, 2007

Sgt. Robin Gauvin was frustrated. The mentally ill woman wasn't violent or a danger to anyone. But she was in crisis and needed someone to help calm her down.

Gauvin had no idea how to intervene, so he called for a mental health outreach worker. And waited.

"We just stood there in this woman's living room, and it was an unbelievably long 20 to 30 minutes," said the burly street cop, recalling that awkward feeling of helplessness.

A short time after that incident, Gauvin heard about an opportunity to travel to Memphis to learn techniques for handling such situations. He signed up, thinking it might help him be a better officer.

Gauvin returned with a new awareness of mental illness and how techniques to defuse crises lead to better police work - fewer injuries to officers and less trauma for the people in crisis. He started Portland's Crisis Intervention Team in 2002, and trained officers how to recognize various mental illnesses and how to respond.

Officers on the team are called to talk to people in crisis, to coax them out of a highway median or off the roof of a parking garage, to get them to the hospital if needed - with the least possible amount of force and restraint.

Advocates for the mentally ill and users of mental health services and their families embraced the program. Gauvin traveled around the state to help other departments create crisis intervention teams, and in 2003 the Androscoggin County Jail became the first county jail in the country to incorporate the training.

Now, more than 400 officers in almost 50 agencies in Maine have been trained in crisis intervention, including 60 Portland officers. Gauvin gets much of the credit for making it happen.

"We wouldn't be in there had it not been for him," said Karen Twomey, criminal justice manager with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Maine. She says that law enforcement agencies were more receptive to Gauvin than they would have been to social workers.

"Here's a guy that has 24 years on (the force). He's been with the rough and tumble and he's seen the progression throughout the years, and he was willing to sacrifice a lot to sustain the program and continue to expand it" to 12 of the state's 16 counties. Gauvin's efforts recently earned him a "6 Who Care" award from WCSH- TV.

A stern lawman with a reputation of being somewhat standoffish, he's respected as a no-nonsense leader among the patrol officers.

He is a 19-year veteran of the special reaction team, not known for his soft side, and was an ideal person to spread the word.

"Robin's always had this innate leadership quality," said Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, a former Portland deputy chief. "I think he demonstrates what mainstream policing probably looks like in terms of ethics and values. Once he adopts this type of initiative, it does help shape the opinion of the officers he's working with."

The Cumberland County Jail, which dispenses more psychotropic medication than some hospitals, has trained many of its corrections officers in the crisis-intervention techniques.

"If you can get beyond the bias that this is some sort of touchy- feely psychological strategy, it makes really good street sense. It seeks not to provoke but mediate," Dion said. "I think good street cops like Robin appreciate from experience it's a better way to get a solution to a problem."

Gauvin traces his dedication to the training to an epiphany in Memphis, where biases about mental illness that he shared with the general public were laid bare.

The instructor prompted the trainees for the words they associated with mental illness: crazy, dangerous, psycho, scary. Then she asked for words associated with people who have cancer: courageous, fighter, survivor.

"They're both diseases," Gauvin explained. "People certainly don't choose to get the disease. And people die from both." Six times as many people die in Maine from suicide as from murder, and most youths who commit suicide have mental illness, he said.

"Can you imagine calling people with cancer the names you call people with mental illness?"

Identifying various types of mental illness and the best way to deal with them reduces use of force, use of restraint and injuries to officers, Gauvin said.

In more than 2,000 crisis intervention calls over five years, about a dozen have been resolved with force - mostly pepper spray - with injuries to officers.

The techniques are not necessarily complex, Gauvin said.

A person who is in crisis may have trouble absorbing what an officer is saying, so using a sharp voice of authority may make things worse.

Instead, officers need to use small words - no more than five letters - and short sentences - no more than five words - and soothing, reassuring tones, as if talking to a child who has been hurt skateboarding.

"I want to help you. I want to make you safe. I want to hear you," Gauvin demonstrates.

Gauvin knows one person who was hearing seven voices before he got treatment.

"Now I'm voice number eight. Maybe he just didn't hear me?" he said. "Maybe I have to do the broken record," repeating himself several times to get compliance.

It's not the kind of job he envisioned when he joined the department in 1983.

"We didn't get into police work to do social work. We got into police work to stop crime and take criminals to jail," he said. But understanding the disease has helped him to be a better officer.

"I never thought of it as doing my 40 hours and leaving. I always thought of doing it in a way to better myself," he said.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com

(C) 2007 Portland Press Herald. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved Read more!

Jenny McCarthy's divisive stance on autism treatment - Chicago Tribune

By Julie Deardorff
October 25, 2007

Actress and comedian Jenny McCarthy was working on her latest book one Sunday when her 4-year-old son wanted to talk. He was so chatty -- and distracting -- that McCarthy finally said, "Evan, can you please just stop talking for a whole five minutes today?"

Then she covered her mouth with her hand. "Wow. Flash back in time and think about how I had wished and prayed to say that to my kid," she wrote in her best-selling memoir, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism. "I got down on my knees and said, 'No, Evan, Mamma made a mistake. You can talk and talk and talk and talk as much as you want, OK?'"

It's a moment most parents of children with autism only dream about. But McCarthy's current mission in life is to use her famously big mouth to spread an unusual message: There is hope. Autistic children can recover.

"It's kind of like trying to shift the planet without causing a frenzy," said McCarthy, who is a national spokeswoman for Talk About Curing Autism. "I'm really coming out on my own and saying things that no one has been able to say: Autism is treatable."

Not everyone agrees, which is part of what makes McCarthy's media blitz so controversial. But Evan, who was diagnosed with autism after a series of seizures at age 3, is now a typical and communicative 5-year-old.

Though he's not completely "cured," McCarthy credits much of his turnaround to alternative "biomedical" interventions that include nutritional changes, detoxification therapies, gastrointestinal treatments and dietary supplements on top of intense behavioral and speech therapy.

When McCarthy removed wheat gluten and casein (found in dairy) from Evan's diet, she said he doubled his language and regained eye contact within two weeks. After treating his yeast overgrowth using anti-fungal medication, "his social development was back on," she said.

Although these treatments don't produce changes in every child, they're considered normal protocol by the Defeat Autism Now! project, which brings together researchers and parents for biannual conferences.

But biological interventions aren't recommended by mainstream pediatricians.

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes the use of nutritional approaches to treat autism-spectrum disorders in a new clinical report to be released next week, it won't support or refute them until more scientific evidence is available.

After writing her book, McCarthy was floored by the number of parents who shared her experience.

"Jenny's story is my story, almost word for word," said Jill Konczak of Aurora, Ill., whose 6-year-old son, Kurt, is on the autistic spectrum, yet doctors never suggested removing milk from his diet. "[My] poor little boy literally went through the same withdrawal a crack addict would go through," she said. But "we reached huge milestones with that simple change."

McCarthy's impact on the autism community, meanwhile, has been so dramatic that some are referring to this period as "After Jenny."

"I want to be these women's voices," she said. "When I was 20, I had a feeling I'd be an activist, but I always thought, 'Please, God, don't let it be breast cancer.' Now I can't tell you how much I wish it was breast cancer."

Julie Deardorff writes for the Chicago Tribune.
Read more!

Stress Mess In U.S. - NY Post

October 25, 2007

We're stressed out, we can't sleep, we're drinking too much - and it's getting worse.

Forty-eight percent of Americans say they're more stressed now than they were five years ago, and the same percent report regularly lying awake at night because of stress, according to a new study by the American Psychological Association.

"Stress continues to escalate, and it's affecting every area of people's lives," said Russ Newman, a psychologist and executive director of the APA.

So what is it we're worrying about while we stare at the ceiling all night? Primarily two things: money and work, the main woes for nearly 75 percent of Americans. That's way up from 59 percent of us stressed out over those two things a year ago.

We're also worrying about making the rent. More than half of people polled say paying the landlord or making the monthly mortgage causes great stress.

The APA study was conducted online and involved interviews with 1,848 Americans nationwide.

According to the report, all that stress and worry is taking a big toll on our lives, leading us to fight with family members, drink, smoke and give up on working out.

"The high stress levels that many Americans report experiencing can have long-term health consequences, ranging from fatigue to obesity and heart disease," Newman said.

The study found that as a result of stress, 54 percent of people have fought with loved ones, and 8 percent say stress has led to separation or divorce.

More than three-quarters of respondents say stress is making them sick, from headaches (44 percent) to upset stomach (34 percent) and grinding their teeth (17 percent).

And then there's the not-so-healthy ways people try to handle all that stress, from eating junk food to tipping the bottle. Forty-three percent claim they eat - or overeat - unhealthy food to deal with stress, while a third say they lose their appetite and start skipping meals.

Drinkers and smokers report downing more booze and lighting up more often when feeling the effects of stress.

"Some people feel overwhelmed and out of control," said Beverly Thorn, a University of Alabama psychologist who was one of the researchers involved in the study.

Thorn explains that people turn to bad habits when under stress - and that often makes them feel even worse. "It's a vicious cycle," she said.

But it's not all bad news.

More than half of Americans listen to music, read, or exercise as a way to alleviate stress. Others spend time with family and friends. More than a third say they pray when stressed out.

Copyright 2007 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

Back to PsycPORT Homepage Read more!

U.S. moves toward equal treatment for mentally ill - Reuters

Oct 25, 2007
By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some days, Mrs. J can't travel further than her bed to her chair, her chair to her bed. Her arms and legs work just fine, but she is too depressed to move.

Depression runs in her family. Her mother committed suicide. So did one of her sisters. Her only child took his life five years ago at age 35. (She asked that her name be withheld because her grandchildren have not yet been told how their father died.)

At age 59, the college-educated Alabama resident has not been able to work for years, and the health insurance she gets through her husband's factory job no longer covers the therapy sessions she says she needs.

Congress is addressing situations like Mrs. J's with a bill to require health insurance plans to treat mental illness the way they treat any other disease.

Known as mental health parity, the idea is making progress in Congress after a decade-long campaign by advocates for the mentally ill, a sign that U.S. society is slowly breaking down the stigma of mental illness.

"There's a palpable, huge change in the attitudes of people," said Sen. Pete Domenici, a conservative New Mexico Republican whose frankness about his daughter's schizophrenia helped fellow lawmakers understand the struggles that even families with good insurance endure.

Across the globe, in rich countries and poor with all kinds of insurance systems, mental health is undertreated and its prevalence is often underestimated.

A bill passed the Senate unanimously last month that would require insurance companies to have the same fees and co-pays as for other diseases, give the same access to medicine, and have the same annual and lifetime caps and limits.

The U.S. House of Representatives is working on companion legislation with more expansive mental health coverage requirements. But requirements, or insurance mandates, are more controversial and conservatives generally oppose them.

Patient advocacy groups say the odds are good of a final deal this year, although there is no guarantee that the legislation won't derail again. Still Domenici and a lead House sponsor Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad of Minnesota have both expressed their determination to see the bill signed into law before their retirements next year.

For people like Mrs. J, parity rules would make a huge difference. For years she had to pay half the cost of each therapy visit, instead of the $15 fee for any other doctor. Some years she exhausted her annual limit on therapy sessions -- which would not apply to other medical conditions -- and had to interrupt treatment or scrape together money to pay for it herself until the start of a new year.

"Can you imagine a diabetic who needs to see a doctor frequently, who may need hospitalization, who has all sorts of problems, being told he can only have one more visit this year and then we won't see you again -- and it's only July," said Dr. Carolyn Robinowitz,(cq) president of the American Psychiatric Association. "Or if we told a patient, you had one heart attack this year. We won't treat you if you have another."

A little over a year ago, the Alabama woman reached her policy's lifetime limit on therapy, a limit that is far more stringent than for other medical and surgical health problems.

"I was told that they weren't going to cover me anymore," she said in a telephone interview arranged through Mental Health America, an advocacy and education group.

Her husband of 41 years, a 60-year-old laborer, puts in hours of overtime to pay for even limited ongoing care

Advocacy groups know that the legislation, if enacted, won't solve all problems of access to mental health care. It exempts businesses with 50 or fewer workers, does not affect the Medicare health program for the elderly, and doesn't increase access for the 47 million uninsured.

"This is a practical solution. It's not a perfect solution," said Domenici. But it will help millions of families.

Andrew Sperling, legislative director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a lobbying and support group, said, "We'll still have gaps in the system -- adequacy of networks, insurance, patients rights. But that's part of comprehensive health care reform. Now we'll be having the same fights as everybody else."

For Mrs. J, it can't come too soon. She switched therapists recently, and said she is taking "baby steps" toward recovery.

Ironically, the plan would pay if she were hospitalized, although it would cost more than outpatient therapy. "I've had three hospitalizations," she said. "I don't want anymore. I want to stay home. A mental hospital -- well, it's not a nice place to be." Read more!

Woman guilty of letting babies starve to death - Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By TRACY JOHNSON
P-I REPORTER

A mother who was once too mentally ill for a murder trial but not ill enough to be committed to a state hospital resolved the question of what would happen to her Thursday, when she pleaded guilty to letting her babies starve to death.

Marie Robinson could face 34 years in prison under an agreement with King County prosecutors when she is sentenced Nov. 16.

The recommended term is roughly double the typical 13 to 17 years for two manslaughter charges because the children were so vulnerable.

"It's hard to imagine a circumstance worse than two little boys starving to death," Deputy Prosecutor Rich Anderson said. "This is a very good result for a very tragic case."

Police found two of Robinson's children -- 6-week-old Raiden and 16-month-old Justice -- dead in her Kent apartment nearly three years ago. A third son, then 2, had apparently survived by eating dry rice and noodles.

Robinson, a binge-drinking alcoholic who has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, was passed out near more than 300 beer cans.

Christopher Bone, the father of the three boys, said Thursday that he hoped Robinson would be able to forgive herself.

He is still working on doing just that.

"Marie has her own demons to deal with," said Bone, who was in jail for drunken driving when his sons died and is now behind bars in Kitsap County for a new driving violation. "Alcohol is a disease, not a moral issue. Left untreated, it has the ability to destroy lives."

The babies' deaths revealed failings in how child-welfare workers handled the situation, prompting the state to strengthen training and requirements for social workers.

The case also brought reform to child-neglect laws in a bill named after the two boys and left the state to pay more than $2 million for failing to protect them.

In court on Thursday, Robinson -- who originally faced second-degree murder charges -- spoke softly, shaking visibly as she confirmed that she understood the manslaughter charges and answered "guilty" to each.

Her wavy hair now graying, the 39-year-old woman also pleaded guilty to a reckless-endangerment charge for creating a "substantial risk of death" for the 2-year-old boy who survived.

Now 5, he lives with a relative of his father, who said the child is "doing remarkably well."

Robinson's attorneys, Lisa Mulligan and Scott Schmidt, declined to comment on the plea agreement or Robinson's current mental condition.

The woman apparently first started drinking when she was 14 to numb the pain of sexual abuse and was on a waiting list for treatment when her sons died.

Since her November 2004 arrest, Robinson has spent much of her time at Western State Hospital, where she told staff that her children weren't really dead but had been kidnapped by secret police who were trying to stop her from doing some sort of scientific research.

She complained about being brainwashed and watched by a camera, as well as hearing up to 10 different voices and having a "crazed monkey" in her head, according to one psychological report.

A judge dismissed the murder charges in January, finding that Robinson didn't have a rational understanding of the court proceedings despite two years of treatment aimed at helping her become competent to stand trial.

Prosecutors believed she would be civilly committed to Western State Hospital, but within weeks, they learned state psychiatrists didn't believe she met the legal criteria of someone who was dangerously mentally ill.

Faced with the prospect of Robinson going free, they refiled the charges in March. That touched off another round of mental health evaluations for the woman.

The case had been in limbo ever since.

Western State Hospital recently concluded that Robinson was finally mentally fit to face the charges, and on Thursday, Superior Court Judge Michael Hayden found her competent and accepted her guilty pleas.

The boys' grandmother, Sheri Bone, said she believes the laws aren't severe enough for people who end such young lives, but she is glad to see the case finally reaching an end.

"It's time that justice was served," she said. "It's been a long time."

Infants' Deaths Spur DSHS Reforms

The state Department of Social and Health Services fielded numerous calls about Marie Robinson and the welfare of her children in the months before two of her sons were found starved to death in her home. The public outcry over her case prompted policy changes within the agency, as well as a new law:

# The Justice and Raiden Act gives state workers more power to remove children from their homes in cases of parental neglect. In particular, the law gives greater weight to substance abuse as a contributing factor. It took effect in January.

# Chemical dependency counselors are now stationed in most DSHS offices to assist Child Protective Services workers with assessment and case management.

# Substance-abuse training for social workers now includes a section on binge drinking. And the department screens parents and caretakers for substance abuse and/or mental health issues.

In addition, for children who are reunited with their parents after removal from the home:

# CPS workers are required to make monthly visits at least every 40 days after reunification.

# An additional checklist, required before reunification, assesses the likelihood of future risk to the children within the home.

# Workers must complete a "Transition and Safety Plan" for the child that involves their parent.

Later this month, DSHS plans to release a workload study of all case-carrying social workers, spokeswoman Karen Lee said.

The Robinson case review has been incorporated into "lessons learned" training given to staff several times a year across the state, she said.

-- P-I staff

P-I reporter Tracy Johnson can be reached at 206-467-5942 or tracyjohnson@seattlepi.com. Read more!