Free Republic

A MALE primary school teacher stunned parents today after revealing he would return to classes after the Christmas holidays as a woman. Transsexual Nathan Upton, 32, will become Miss Lucy Meadows in the New Year following his sex change. Pupils at St Mary Magdalen’s Church of England school – motto: Reaching our potential together in Christ – have been informed about the schoolmaster’s “transition”. Parents said Nathan told children he had been “born with a girl’s brain in a boy’s body”.

THE loner responsible for the sickening massacre was mentally ill, aggressive and had an unhealthy obsession for violent computer games, it emerged last night. Cowardly Adam Lanza, 20, was driven to carry out the bloody killings after his parents split up and his friends alienated him, reports emerging from America revealed. Chillingly, his favourite video game was said to be a shockingly violent fantasy war game called Dynasty Warriors which is thought to have given him inspiration to act on his darkest thoughts. His easy access to a deadly arsenal – he learned how to shoot after his mother took...

The aunt of Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza said the shooter's mother pulled him out of Newtown's public school system because she was unhappy with the school district's plans for her son. Adam Lanza's mother Nancy, 52, was the first victim of his Friday shooting spree. Lanza shot Nancy in the face and then drove her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he killed 20 students and six adults before taking his own life. Marsha Lanza, who is Adam's aunt and Nancy's ex-sister-in-law, called her former sister-in-law an "awesome ... giving person." She also told Evelyn Holmes of ABC-owned-and-operated station...

Ms Conte called the ordeal 'sad' for Lanza and his family, and suggested that the violence is a portion of a much larger situation. 'Guns are easy to point to, but it's really a mental health issue.'

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The women’s basketball team at Mission College expected the bleachers to be full and the hecklers ready when its newest player made her home court debut. In the days leading up to the game, people had plenty to say about 6-foot-6-inch, 220-pound Gabrielle Ludwig, who joined the Lady Saints as a mid-season walk-on and became, according to advocates, the first transsexual to play college hoops as both a man and a woman.

As we reported last night, buried inside the NYT biopic of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was arguably one of the most important missing pieces in the story, at least so far, which could provide clues into partially explaining yesterday's tragic loss of young life, namely that the 20 year old man suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism (two conditions which are being merged in the upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) manual of mental disorders), which has been traditionally associated with social communication difficulties, including flat affect, and one which in some clinical studies...

There may actually be some good news coming out of academia. “This really is a profession that has run amok,” Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic said of psychiatrists in a recent interview with Celeste McGovern which appeared in Citizen magazine. “People are beginning to question its legitimacy and they are beginning to mistrust its values, its diagnoses and its treatments.” McGovern writes that, “Even medical students are avoiding it, he adds, as the average age of psychiatrists is now 57.” Citizen is published by Focus on the Family. McGovern is based in the United Kingdom. “Every day...

Do you bite your nails? For 30 years, I did. We nail biters can be "pathological groomers" — people for whom normal grooming behaviors, like skin picking or hair pulling, have become virtually uncontrollable. But psychiatry is changing the way it thinks about pathological grooming, and these changes will be reflected in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM, short for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A new version is coming out early next year, and it puts pathological grooming in the same category as another disorder you've probably heard of: obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. This rethinking gives pathological...

A bill prohibiting the use of controversial therapy aimed at 'curing' homosexuality on gay teenagers has been approved by California's Assembly, bringing the state a step closer to becoming the first in the U.S. to outlaw the practice. The vote in the Democratic-controlled Assembly on Tuesday represented a major victory for gay rights advocates who insist that so-called conversion therapy has no medical basis because homosexuality is not a disorder. Democrat Richardo Lara, one of several openly gay legislators to champion the bill during the debate, urged Assembly members to stand with 'sissy boys'.

A first-of-its-kind state law that would restrict parents from trying to "cure" their minor children's same-sex attractions seems headed to the governor's desk.

CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is in a "deep" depression and has "a lot of work" ahead of him on the road to recovery, former Rhode Island U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy said Thursday after visiting the hospitalized Chicago Democrat. Jackson has been on a secretive medical leave since June 10, when family members said he collapsed at their home in Washington. He is currently being treated for bipolar disorder at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. But neither his office nor family members have said much about his medical condition. The visit from Kennedy — who has...

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.is undergoing treatment for bipolar II depression at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the facility said today. Mayo Clinic said the diagnosis came after extensive evaluation. “Congressman Jackson is responding well to the treatment and regaining his strength,” it said in the statement. The statement added: “Many Americans have bipolar disorder. Bipolar II disorder is a treatable condition that affects parts of the brain controlling emotion, thought and drive and is most likely caused by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors. Congressman Jackson underwent bariatric surgery in 2004, specifically a duodenal switch. This type...

CHICAGO — U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Chicago Democrat who took a hushed medical leave two months ago, is being treated for bipolar disorder, the Mayo Clinic announced Monday. The Rochester, Minn.-based clinic specified his condition as Bipolar II, which is defined as periodic episodes of depression and hypomania. Hypomania is a less serious form of mania. "Congressman Jackson is responding well to the treatment and regaining his strength," the clinic said in a statement...

Director Larry Wachowski has publicly revealed that she is transgender and now goes by the name Lana in a new promo for her upcoming Tom Hanks film “Cloud Atlas.” The 47-year-old moviemaker has undergone a sex change operation and now goes by the name Lana. With her hair in pink dreadlocks, Wachowski introduced herself for the first time as a woman in a behind-the-scenes trailer for the new drama, saying, “Hi, I’m Lana.”

t used to be we thought that people who went around correcting other people’s grammar were just plain annoying. Now there’s evidence they are actually ill, suffering from a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder/oppositional defiant disorder (OCD/ODD). Researchers are calling it Grammatical Pedantry Syndrome, or GPS. Maybe you’ve heard of the grammar gene—its technical name is the FOXP2 gene—which may be responsible for a variety of grammatical ills, such as the inability to construct compound/complex sentences or to effectively deploy the passive voice. Now there’s evidence that a variant of that gene, FOXP2.1, may actually cause us to obsessively correct other...

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...

THE Rev. JESSE JACKSON is devastated over the headline-making mystery illness that’s struck his son, U.S. Congressman Jesse Jr. – and The ENQUIRER has learned the shocking cause of the tragedy. “At first we thought he was sim­ply exhausted,” said a source close to the family. “But after five weeks of extensive evaluation, doctors diagnosed Jesse Jr. with bipolar disorder.” The serious mental condition is triggered by chemical imbalances in the brain, which propels sufferers from manic highs to depressive lows. Some insiders point the finger of blame squarely at a gastric bypass operation the 47-year-old poli­tician underwent in 2004...

BREAKING: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: Rep Jesse Jackson Jr is in a rehab facility in AZ suffering from alcoholism and addiction -@JesseRodriguez — HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) July 11, 2012

Kathryn wanted pants. And short hair. Then trucks and swords. Her parents, Jean and Stephen, were fine with their toddler’s embrace of all things boy. They’ve both been schoolteachers and coaches in Maryland and are pretty immune to the quirky stuff that kids do. But it kept getting more intense, all this boyishness from their younger daughter. She began to argue vehemently — as only a tantrum-prone toddler can — that she was not a girl. “I am a boy,” the child insisted, at just 2 years old. And that made Jean uneasy. It was weird. “I am a boy”...

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Monday that youth violence is a “chronic health issue” that can lead to asthma, obesity, or depression for "the youth who are involved," although she did not make clear whether she was speaking solely about the victims of youth violence or the perpetrators or both. “But it's important to remember--you just heard from the law enforcement side of this--it’s important to remember that the costs of violence go beyond deaths or injuries or tolls on families and communities,” Sebelius said at a Department of Justice conference Monday on youth...