Free Republic

LINCOLN — An Omaha man who once expressed homicidal and suicidal thoughts was wrongly denied a state handgun buyer’s permit by the Douglas County sheriff, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday. Joseph D. Gallegos had never been "committed" to a mental institution under the definition of the 1968 federal gun law, according to the court’s unanimous opinion. He should not, therefore, have been denied a handgun permit in 2007, the court said. In 2001, Gallegos, a veteran, sought voluntary treatment at the VA hospital in Omaha for post-traumatic stress syndrome and depression. A doctor there asked the Douglas County Board...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Feb. 23, 2009 – Servicemembers in Afghanistan now have a place to turn to cope with the toughest aspects of deployment when they need it most. Army Capt. Don Hawkins, left, works on a project while Army Staff Sgt. Reginald Jones, right, talks with a servicemember during occupational therapy activities at the Bagram Freedom Restoration Center at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, Feb. 23, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Boris Shiloff  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Bagram Freedom Restoration Center here is the first mental health clinic for troops in Afghanistan. The center’s main goal...

What more can I say about the mental disorder of loving cats that hasn’t already been said? Not much, but I will share with you the following story showing you just how far the problem can go. How far? All the way to the psych ward. (After being locked in a loony bin for trying to save the feline when it got stuck in a building wall, cat lover Chris Muth has lost his home, his job and even his girlfriend. The trouble started last week, when

The House and Senate reached agreement on a policy framework for legislation that would require employers and health insurers to put mental-health coverage on par with that for physical maladies. Details of the agreement are expected to be set this week, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking funding for the measure, which would cost the government an estimated $1.3 billion over five years and $3.4 billion over 10 years, mainly because of lost tax revenue. Leading lawmakers such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) hope to push the bill through Congress and send it to the White House...

Sen. Barack Obama clarified his position today on mental-health exceptions to late-term abortions, saying he supports such exceptions and that comments he made during a recent magazine interview shouldn't be interpreted as opposing them.

WASHINGTON, June 17, 2008 – Mental Health practitioners nationwide are donating their time and services to provide free, confidential counseling to military people and their families. “Combat affects everyone in one way or another,” explained Dr. Barbara Romberg in an “ASY Live” interview on BlogTalkRadio. “Most people react when exposed to a situation where there are extreme or horrific events; it is a human reaction to abnormal situations.” ASY Live is part of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, which connects citizens and companies with servicemembers and their families serving at home and abroad. Romberg, founder and president...

We've all goofed up and flubbed up things we've previously done time and again. It turns out the root of these brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens. The solution to such screw-ups could be a kind of mind-reading hat, a device to predict and even prevent mindless errors that can threaten lives. When people blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists had suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. Still, little was known about what the brain...

WASHINGTON, April 17, 2008 – A study released today shows that nearly 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, findings that military health officials called “very consistent” with their own. Army Col. Loree K. Sutton, director of the Defense Center of Excellence for Traumatic Brain Injury/Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, addresses the findings and recommendations of a new RAND study on brain injury and stress disorders in our troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, during a media roundtable in the Pentagon, April 17, 2008. Defense Dept. photo by R. D. Ward...

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2008 – Help for servicemembers coping with the effects of wartime service is just a phone call or a mouse click away, thanks to a nationwide network of mental health professionals. “Give an Hour” is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has created a national network of mental health professionals providing free counseling services to returning veterans and their loved ones, according to Barbara Romberg, the group’s founder and president. “The participating mental health professionals will offer a wide range of services including individual, marital and family therapy, substance abuse counseling, and treatment for post traumatic stress...

When the Gallup pollsters asked Americans what they thought about their own mental health, they were intrigued by the difference between Democrats and Republicans. While 58 percent of Republicans reported having excellent mental health, only 38 percent of Democrats described themselves that way. The study was no surprise to D. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., a noted psychiatrist and author of a controversial book that makes the clinical case liberalism is a mental illness. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of...

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28, 2008 – Army Col. (Dr.) Loree Sutton is a woman on a mission. Army Col. (Dr.) Loree Sutton, chief of the newly created Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, sits in her temporary Rosslyn, Va., office suite. The Defense Department created the center in its effort to step up the quality of care for wounded warriors and their families. Photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The military psychiatrist has, for the last month, ricocheted across the Capital Beltway landscape and beyond, setting up a Defense...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16, 2008 – Servicemembers returning from deployment and their families can find help readjusting to their lives at home through traditional and holistic therapies offered by a long-established Colorado group. For more than 30 years, Lost and Found Inc. has specialized in providing intervention and rehabilitation treatment for families that have run out of options, said Linda Olson, the organization’s development manager. Recently, however, the organization developed a program geared toward military families. “(We) launched a holistic mental health outreach to active military (personnel) and their families in fall 2007,” she said. The program focuses primarily on...

Before President Bush left Washington for the Mideast, he signed into law the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years. If the new law had been in effect last April, it might have prevented the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, from buying a weapon at a gun store.

Academics, musicians, even poker champs use pills to sharpen their minds, legally. Labs race to develop even more. Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping. As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance-enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life. Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions. "There isn't any question about it -- they...

Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls,” Frank Newport of Gallup informs us: "...Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education."

Since so many blogs deal with hygiene of the mind, body and spirit it's difficult to get through even a few without being brought to the brink of self destruction by tales of obsession, compulsion, emotional angst and exasperation. As the father of a fourteen-year-old daughter I often sink into self reflection about the meaning of life; whether life has any meaning and the most important existential question facing fathers of adolescent young ladies: Is life too short, or is life too long?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2007 – The departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs have teamed up to improve access to mental health care services to better assist servicemembers, veterans and families, a senior U.S. military officer said here today. The two departments are addressing concerns surfaced by some servicemembers about lengthy waiting times for mental health care appointments, said Air Force Col. Joyce Adkins, a psychologist with the Force Health Protection and Readiness directorate at the Defense Department’s Health Affairs office. “We are clarifying the access time or the wait time that people have for appointments, and this is something...

Ms Owl-the alter ego of a good friend who works with the developmentally disabled-shared this parable today.

Didn't see one up, but Matthews has been giving me too many straight lines to pass up on!!!