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17 July 2007, 11:54 Young Muscovite’s passion for Satanism drives her mother to lethal stroke Moscow, July 17, Interfax - 14-year old Muscovite Tatiana’s passion for Satanism has ended in a tragedy in her family. Another family row in which Tatiana threatened to cut her veins if her parents did not let her go to meet her friends drove her mother Lyubov Ivanovna to a stroke. A few days later she died in hospital, the Komsolomolskaya Pravda daily writes on Tuesday. ‘Yes, I pushed my mom too far. I am sorry, of course, though we kept abusing each other. I...

Mental illness is the new normal According to a new government-sponsored survey, most Americans qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis at some point in their lives. Trying to explain how so many of us became mentally ill, The New York Times offered a history lesson that reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch. In the sketch Steve Martin plays Theodoric of York, a medieval barber with a patient whose condition has not improved despite a bloodletting, a sheep's-urine-and-staghorn poultice, and a night buried in the marsh up to her neck. "Medicine is not an exact science," Theodoric tells the...