Free Republic

A federal agency tasked with mental-health treatment makes the system worse.‘My son was only able to get treatment by killing his mother.” This was the testimony of Joe Bruce at congressional hearings on May 22. In 2006, Will Bruce, then 24 and suffering from schizophrenia, killed his mother, Amy, with a hatchet. “But an unbearable aspect of Amy’s death,” Bruce told members, “is that my own tax dollars helped make it possible.” Bruce was referring to the federally funded Disability Rights Center of Maine, whose employees coached Will on how to get out of the psychiatric hospital and avoid being...

Schizophrenia is no less schizophrenia if one of the voices happens to be talking sense. Hard schizophrenia is no less difficult if murderous insanity is linked up tight with weird, pathetic, and arbitary scruples. In fact, if such an arbitary pattern is applied long enough, one may detect a method in the madness. I am talking about our erratic public policy when it comes to protecting human life. Gosnell is a disgrace because he killed babies in this spot instead of the officially-approved that spot. As one observer noted, he is apparently being charged with murder because he enjoyed himself...

Full title - "'You deserve to rot in hell for what you have done to me': Daughter's twitter outburst about mom who has resurfaced after being missing for ELEVEN years" The teenage daughter of a woman who secretly left her family 11 years ago says she's angry and doesn't want to have a relationship with her. Morgan Heist said Thursday that she's still trying to sort out why Brenda Heist would have decided to abandon her and her brother in Pennsylvania in 2002 and hitchhike with strangers to Florida. Morgan Heist is now a 19-year-old freshman at a community college...

Five disorders from depression to autism share a genetic link, which could pave the way for new treatments Autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia overlap at a genetic level Two gene markers common to all of the disorders govern the balance of calcium in brain cells New understanding could help develop treatments The five most common mental health and developmental disorders share a common genetic root, a study has found. Scientists found a link between autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia. The findings, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, could revolutionise how doctors think...

Rand Paul – the only one left? Glenn Beck Nov 29, 2012 Glenn interviewed seemingly the only politician with a spine on radio today, Senator Rand Paul. While many Republicans are displaying a readiness to just throw out everything they said they believed in and cave to Obama, Sen. Paul is trying to hold the line. Check out the interview today in the clip above and find out how to get involved.

Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis. In 1965, health authorities in Camberwell, a bustling quarter of London's southward sprawl, began an unusual tally. They started to keep case records for every person in the area who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder or any other psychiatric condition. Decades later, when psychiatrists looked... --snip-- Yet the results of his study, published last year in Nature (F. Lederbogen et al. Nature 474, 498–501; 2011), clearly showed that people who grow up in cities process negative emotions such as stress...

You will never guess what the fifth and sixth best-selling prescription drugs are in the United States, so I’ll just tell you: Abilify and Seroquel, two powerful antipsychotics. In 2011 alone, they and other antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to 3.1 million Americans at a cost of $18.2 billion, a 13 percent increase over the previous year, according to the market research firm IMS Health. Those drugs are used to treat such serious psychiatric disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe major depression. But the rates of these disorders have been stable in the adult population for years. So how did...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty Tuesday to going on a shooting rampage at a political gathering, killing six people and wounding his intended target, then-Congresswoman Gabriele Giffords, and 12 others. Loughner's plea spares him the death penalty and came soon after a federal judge found that months of forcibly medicating him to treat his schizophrenia had made the 23-year-old college dropout competent to understand the gravity of the charges and assist in his defense.

<p>AURORA, Colo. -- Dr. Lynne Fenton, the University of Colorado psychiatrist who was treating James E. Holmes, according to a court filing by his attorneys, was disciplined by the Colorado Medical Board in 2005.</p> <p>Fenton was also reprimanded for failing to maintain a medical chart or to enter appropriate entries for the charts relating to herself, her husband or the employee, 7News reported.</p>

The suspected Batman massacre gunman was seeing a psychiatrist specialising in schizophrenia before the attack that killed 12 in Colorado, court documents show. The motion named Dr Lynn Fenton as defence lawyers sought to gain access to a package James Holmes had mailed to her prior the July 20 mass shooting, which also wounded 58 people. Reports surfaced on Wednesday that Holmes - who recently dropped out of the University of Colorado - had sent a notebook to a university psychiatrist that included details and drawing of his plans to kill people. There were conflicting reports about whether the package...

As a classic case of national hysteria slowly peaks, still within 24 hours after the massacre of theater-patrons attending a premier of the latest "Batman" thriller in Aurora, Colorado, it's become increasingly difficult to maintain a rational perspective.Apparently without any shame whatsoever, an embattled White House still cannot hesitate to push itself out in front of the trickle of information coming out in the wake of these multiple murders.That as many or more people will die in "random" shootings on the streets of major U.S. cities, Chicago in particular, on an average weekend, this July, still escapes the notice of...

"God wants Ron Paul to be President. Paul is the only Christian still running who beat Obama in polls, but will Christians and pastors obey God?" says Pastor Steven Andrew, president of USA Christian Ministries. "We must obey God and vote for Christians. Noah Webster used Exodus 18:21 for American voting. John Jay said "select and prefer Christians for [our] leaders" (Mark 12:30, Psalm 1, Psalm 33:12). "Comparing Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, we see Paul will cut the deficit $1 trillion in year one, but Obama and Romney would increase the deficit. Americans will have more jobs...

Women who own cats are more likely to have mental health problems and commit suicide because they can be infected by a common parasite that can be caught from cat litter, a study has found.

There IS a link between creative genius and madness - with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder frequent in highly creative and intelligent people. The idea was investigated by a panel of scientists who had all suffered some form of mental disorder. Kay Redfield Jamison of John Hopkins school of Medicine, who suffers from bipolar disorder, said that intelligence tests on Swedish 16-year-olds had shown that highly intelligent children were most likely to go on to develop the disorder.

"In fact, he says, schizophrenia did not rise in prevalence until the latter half of the 18th century, when for the first time people in Paris and London started keeping cats as pets. The so-called cat craze began among “poets and left-wing avant-garde Greenwich Village types,” says Torrey, but the trend spread rapidly—and coinciding with that development, the incidence of schizophrenia soared. " *** “If I had to guess,” says Torrey, “I’d say 75 percent of cases of schizophrenia are associated with infectious agents, and Toxo would be involved in a significant subset of those.” *** "Closer inspection of Flegr’s...

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites.

Fullerton's acting police chief acknowledged Thursday that the department had allowed police officers involved in a deadly encounter with a homeless man to watch a video that captures the incident before writing their reports about it. Acting Chief Kevin Hamilton said supervisors allowed the review so that the officers would have a chance to refresh their memory and write an accurate account of the incident involving Kelly Thomas. But the practice is at odds with the way many other police departments deal with serious use-of-force cases. The LAPD's former inspector general, Jeffrey Eglash, said that allowing police to look at...

Government Senator Marc Bean recently called for a debate on the merits of decriminalising drugs in the wake of a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. A distinguished panel that wrote the report said the war on drugs had failed and recommended partial legalization as a solution to the blight of the illegal drugs trade on communities around the world. Not so fast, warn medics. Side effects of marijuana can include a heightened risk of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, damage to memory and judgement and heart problems. Neurologist Dr Keith Chiappa said: “The use of marijuana, especially...

Epidemiologists showed decades ago that people raised in cities are more prone to mental disorders than those raised in the countryside. But neuroscientists have avoided studying the connection, preferring to leave the disorderly realm of the social environment to social scientists. A paper in this issue of Nature represents a pioneering foray across that divide. Using functional brain imaging, a group led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg's Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, showed that specific brain structures in people from the city and the countryside respond differently to social stress (see pages 452 and...

BOSTON — Last November, Yvette Chappell found herself increasingly anxious that her 27-year-old son, Deshawn James Chappell, was spiraling downward into deep psychosis. He was exhibiting intense paranoia and calling late at night to complain about deafening voices in his head.

[A brief introduction. This article, published in Maclean's, was the first popular treatment of LSD. Those who associate LSD with the 1960s will be surprised at the way the drug was categorized and presented in the early 1950s. At the time, people thought LSD induced a temporary psychosis: synthetic schizophrenia. Some psychiatrists were recommending other psychiatrists take the drug so as to get an "inside-out" experience of schizophrenia. I've put the beignning and the end just below, while snipping Katz's blow-by-blow depiction of his experience itself: it can be found in the original article, starting on page two.] Here is...

....But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”... It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked...

The only competent analysis of the Tucson murderer I am aware of was done by Charles Krauthammer. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize recipient for commentary, he is also a board-certified psychiatrist who was chief resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He states that the murderer is clearly a paranoid schizophrenic, with typical delusions of mind control by the government. Dr. Krauthammer went on to note that the murderer lived in his own self-created world and was not motivated by politics. To this I would add only that throughout history, psychotic individuals modified their delusions and hallucinations to suit...

Like most of you, I have been defending Sarah Palin against baseless accusations since the shootings a week ago in Tucson. I have struggled to come to grips with how this guy could reach the point that he would commit such a horrific act, and how people that I considered to be friends could defend those who were so quick to attribute blame to Sarah for what the guy did. In the course of offering up a defense on my Facebook page, where I have almost 700 friends, I made this posting on Wednesday evening: If you want to see...

In his Tucson speech, Presi dent Obama rightly said that "terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding." Why that morning? Why Gabby Giffords? These and other questions can't be answered, but at a more pedestrian level, the massacre isn't so mysterious: Someone displaying all the symptoms of untreated schizophrenia killed people. This is not an extraordinarily rare or inexplicable occurrence. According to the psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, 4 million people in the United States have serious mental illnesses, and 1.8 million of them go untreated. Two hundred thousand are homeless, and 300,000 are in jail or prison. Tormented...

Fox News was able to interview a former girlfriend of Jared Loughner, the man awaiting trial for the weekend’s shooting outside a Tuscon, Arizona Safeway which left six people dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with a gunshot wound to the head. She shed some light on the background of one of the most talked about men in the country, and offered some information that seemed to be at odds with other things we’re learning and speculating about the 22-year-old shooter. Ashley Figueroa spoke briefly about Loughner’s (Former? Current? Is it even a factor in his crime?) drug use, sharing that...

"I know how to cut a body open and eat you for more then a week. ;-)" "Does anyone have aggression 24/7?" "Being alone for a very long time will inevitably lead you to rape." These postings to an online gaming forum, and others like them, shed further light on the troubled mental state of Jared Loughner, the suspect in Saturday's deadly Tucson shootings.

Did our angry political culture help motivate Jared Lee Loughner on what authorities say was his mad shooting spree? Maybe, but a more troubling question for me is why nobody stopped this often incoherent, irrational young man on his long path to the rampage in Tucson. I don't just mean the people who sold Loughner his Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol last November, or the people at a Wal-Mart who allegedly sold him ammunition a few hours before the assault. I mean the community in which he lived. This was a young man who showed signs of mental illness, yet in...

It wasn't long after news of the Tucson, Ariz., tragedy broke that the words "paranoid schizophrenic" entered the conversation. Armchair psychiatrists across the country looked at Jared Loughner -- 22, history of antisocial behavior, with a cache of rambling YouTube videos on government mind control -- and diagnosed him. But is there any truth to this? And if so, how does it help make sense of his horrific actions? To try and untangle the influences that might lead one lone gunman to fire his Glock at a political rally, we turned to Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, respected psychiatrist and one...

Why Wasn't Loughner's Mental Health Evaluated?Despite many red flags, he was never evaluated Updated: Tuesday, 11 Jan 2011, 6:50 PM MST TUCSON - As the legal case against Jared Loughner makes its way through the court system, the question is: could anything have been done to prevent the attack? Does anyone bear responsibility for failing to stop him? Pima Community College asked Jared Loughner to leave and not come back until his parents could show he was getting help with his mental health needs. That did not happen. An expert on mental health law in Arizona wishes the school had...

One or two commentators got it right, characterizing the shootings in Arizona of a congresswoman, judge, and four other bystanders -- including a 79-year-old woman and a nine-year-old girl, who attended the fateful event due to her interest in government and politics -- as an act committed by a deranged gunman. But the spin is on by the usual MSM suspects that the shootings were due to "hostility" and "polarization" caused by (guess who?) right-wingers who have ratcheted up the rhetoric about health care and immigration. Even the sheriff on the scene went to great lengths to politicize the tragedy,...

A neighbor says the parents of the suspect in Saturday's shooting spree in Tucson are devastated and guilt-ridden. Jared Loughnerappeared in court Monday on federal charges that he tried to assassinate U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed a federal judge. He is also accused of killing five others and wounding or injuring 13 others. Wayne Smith, who lives across the street from the family, said Randy and Amy Loughner blame themselves.

Reporting from Tucson — The parents of Jared Lee Loughner, accused of shooting Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people, were huddled in seclusion in their Tucson home Monday night, his father crying and his mother so shaken she could not get out of bed, a neighbor told The Times. As the sun was beginning to set Monday, Randy Loughner called his neighbor, retired gasoline truck driver Wayne Smith, 70, to ask him to get their mail. Smith, who is not particularly close to the Loughners, grabbed the mail and was invited inside. "They're in there now," Smith said...

The news that Blue-Dog Democrat Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a deeply disturbed young man was certainly enough to shock. Add to that the death of a Republican-appointed chief judge. Further add the heart-rending death of a nine-year-old girl who was born on September 11th, 2001. Four others died along with those two. Eleven others were wounded along with Rep. Giffords. The young man who killed and wounded them is all-but certainly a schizophrenic. He's of the age when male schizophrenics first undergo a break from reality. In Jared Lee Loughner's case, his break was both psychotic...

ROARING BROOK TWP. - A young man claiming to be a Shiite Muslim stabbed his stepfather Wednesday night with a butcher's knife, township police said. Alex Williams, 21, of 204 Forrest Drive, stabbed his sleeping stepfather, James Williams, with a 13-inch butcher's knife and ran from his bedroom yelling to his mother, "I had to do it ... I'm a terrorist ... I'm a Shiite," according to an affidavit. When police responded at 10:40 p.m. Wednesday they found Alex Williams lying at the top of the staircase and James Williams bleeding in his bed from a stab wound to the...

Shockingly, this thirst for foreign nature worship is often described in graphic sexual language to heighten the shameful offensiveness of their actions. In Jeremiah, the kingdom of Judah is compared to “a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness that sniffs the wind in her passion. In the time of heat who can turn her away? All who seek her will not become weary; in her month they will find her (Jeremiah 2:24).” In the same context just a few verses back, the text reads “for long ago I broke your yoke and tore off your bonds; but you said ‘I...

Cindy McCain announced that she is against the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" one day after she appeared in a video where she lends her support to end the ban on gays openly serving in the military. Earlier this week, the former Presidential candidate's wife appeared in a video campaign for the group NOH8 railing on the United States' controversial military policy – a policy that her husband supports. "Our political and religious leaders tell LGBT youth that they have no future ... They can't serve our country openly," she said on the video. (snip) But on Friday night,...

Jackson County prosecutors today charged a student wearing a bullet-resistant vest with slashing the throat of a dean at the Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley just 20 minutes before Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak there. Prosecutors charged Casey Brezik, of Raytown, with two counts of first-degree assault and two counts or armed criminal action in connection with the 9:35 a.m. attack on the second floor of the Humanities Building on the campus at 3210 Southwest Trafficway. ....> About an hour before the stabbing, Brezik posted an update that said: “Pharaoh let my people go! We have but two...

They are messengers from God, heavenly beings without material bodies, spiritual envoys carrying out God's will. They are angels. And according to Lorna Byrne, everyone has one -- a guardian angel who’s always with you and will never leave you. She says they are “the gatekeepers of your soul.” She knows this, she says, because all her life she's been surrounded by them and has talked to them. Her book, Angels in My Hair, recounts her lifelong experiences with angels directing her and teaching her. Byrne's story begins with the telling of her toddler years, when the angels told her...

Note: Video included. "Bin Laden's Son Is Hospitalized After He Hears His Father's Voice Omar Bin Laden Is Treated for Schizophrenia, Wife Asks for Divorce" July 9, 2010 SNIPPET: ""It's true that he was put on medication but released himself early," said a spokesman for Zeina Al Sabah, Omar's wife. The spokesman confirmed that Omar had bipolar disorder and was on anti-depressants." SNIPPET: ""Omar loves and hates Osama at the same time," she said." SNIPPET: "Omar, 29, has denounced his father's terrorist tactics and ideology. But he still maintains an emotional bond..." SNIPPET: "Much of Osama Bin Laden's family, comprising...

The baby she’s carrying will face a lifetime of hate, and the woman who is pregnant with Osama bin Laden’s British grandchild is terrified. Louise Pollard, 24, agreed to be a surrogate mom for Omar bin Laden, 29, one of bin Laden’s many children, and his wife, Zaina, 54. The couple hired the young blonde personal assistant — and she became pregnant on her third attempt at in-vitro fertilization, a British newspaper reported yesterday. But the anxious Pollard has been the target of vitriol from people who blast her her for agreeing to bring into the world a British grandchild...

New study led by University of Montreal scientists identifies genetic association This release is available in French. Montreal, April 12, 2010 – An international study led by Université de Montréal scientists suggests that gene mutations may predispose some individuals to schizophrenia and provides new clues about the causes of this ambiguous disorder. Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings demonstrate that new mutations in the SHANK3 gene are found in schizophrenic patients. "That these de novo or new mutations occur in schizophrenia is rather unexpected and may explain why the identification of the genes...

A WOMAN has been found guilty of stalking, in a bizarre case in which she tried to organise acts of violence against herself. The Mercury reports Ellen Hazel Triffett, 53, of the Tasmanian Central Highlands, was given a suspended jail sentence yesterday for stalking her local store owner. The Hobart Magistrates Court heard Bronte Park general store owner Wayne Turale started receiving a series of disturbing letters in October 2006. Over 18 months, he received 10 of the poorly written letters, instructing him to perform or organise acts of violence against Mrs Triffett, who was one of his customers. Each...

Autism and schizophrenia may be two sides of the same coin, suggests a review of genetic data associated with the conditions. The finding could help design complementary treatments for the two disorders. Though autism was originally described as a form of schizophrenia a century ago, evidence for a link has remained equivocal. One theory puts the conditions at opposite ends of a developmental spectrum. To investigate, Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues gathered data on all known genetic variants associated with each condition, then looked for patterns of co-occurrence. The researchers found...

Demonstrators call for firing of officer videotaped striking mentally disabled man   More than 100 people gathered today outside Passaic City Hall to demand that the Police Department fire an officer who was videotaped striking a mentally disabled man repeatedly with a baton and his fists. Ronnie Holloway, the man beaten in the May 29 incident, and his mother, Betty, attended the peaceful demonstration, which was organized by various community leaders.  “This man should never have gone through what he did,” said Zachary McDaniel, pastor of the Second Timothy Baptist Church in Passaic. “Cops are here to protect us. How can...

Scientists study affect of gluten on mental health Scottish scientists believe that gluten-rich foods could help trigger schizophrenia in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition. Scottish scientists believe that gluten-rich foods could help trigger schizophrenia in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition. The researchers at the prospective University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) are looking at the links between schizophrenia and diabetes. The two studies undertaken by geneticist Dr Jun Wei and his team in Inverness are to be funded by £300,000 from the Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain. The first project is to explore...

Schizophrenia and autism probably share a common origin, hypothesises Dutch researcher Annemie Ploeger following an extensive literature study. The developmental psychologist demonstrated that both mental diseases have similar physical abnormalities which are formed during the first month of pregnancy.

Obama is Hiding Mental History in His Medical Records. Sounds like a diagnosis for Adolf Hitler Obama Medical Records: Obama Refuses Release. What is He Hiding? 71 year old Sen. McCain has released his medical records but not the young and seemingly healthy Sen. Obama. Lets clear this up first. Barack Obama's name was "Barry Hussein Obama" but in college during his identity crisis he changed it to "Barack Hussein Obama" because Barry wasn't a black sounding name. He went with the traditional and formal African name Barack. Don't believe? Here is a high school yearbook picture of him with...

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the study’s authors said. The results, being published online by The American Journal of Psychiatry, are likely to alter treatment for an estimated one million children and teenagers with schizophrenia and to intensify a broader controversy in child psychiatry over the...

On June 20, 2006, William Bruce approached his mother as she worked at her desk at home and struck killing blows to her head with a hatchet. Two months earlier, William, a 24-year-old schizophrenic, had been released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Maine, against the recommendations of his doctors. "Very dangerous indeed for release to the community," wrote one in William's record. But the doctor's notes also show that William's release was backed by government-funded patient advocates. According to medical records, the advocates -- none of them physicians -- appear to have fought for his right to refuse treatment,...