Free Republic

The rich array of microbiota in our intestines can tell us more than you might think.Eighteen vials were rocking back and forth on a squeaky mechanical device the shape of a butcher scale, and Mark Lyte was beside himself with excitement. ‘‘We actually got some fresh yesterday — freshly frozen,’’ Lyte said to a lab technician. Each vial contained a tiny nugget of monkey feces that were collected at the Harlow primate lab near Madison, Wis., the day before and shipped to Lyte’s lab on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Tex. Lyte’s interest was not...

This is a disturbing, or perhaps better described as heartbreaking story which popped up this weekend and set off all sorts of alarm bells for me. NBC News is featuring the tale of a child named Lia (until recently, Liam) who is being fully encouraged and supported by his parents on a “journey” to become a girl. The child is ten years old and began this “trip” at the age of five. We moved from Indiana to New Hampshire when Lia was 4. She was still wearing boys’ clothes and playing with trucks through preschool, but she really wanted girl...

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery. For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways. A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they...

A legal team investigating the Obama administration’s order that certain American military veterans deemed “incompetent” give up their weapons says the problem is worse than expected. People who live with veterans now are being ordered not to possess a gun, and some veterans are told they can “buy back” their Second Amendment rights by giving up their veterans’ benefits. “This is simply unbelievable, On the one hand the [Veterans Administration] and the FBI have found veterans to be mentally ill and too dangerous to be allowed to own firearms, while on the other hand allowing these allegedly dangerous people to...

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Coming into close contact with cats can spread a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) – also dubbed the “cat poop parasite” – which are linked to schizophrenia and other mental disorders that affect humans. The cat-carried parasite is the most common in developed countries and can infect any warm-blooded species, according to the Schizophrenia Bulletin. Although most humans don’t suffer any symptoms from the widespread parasite, it can cause the illness T. gondii, which is linked to weeks of flu-like symptoms, blindness and even death, CBS News reports. Two new studies have now linked the...

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as the most common mental-health diagnosis among college students, according to The New York Times. A recent study of more than 100,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State found that more than half of students seeking help at campus clinics report anxiety as an issue, and nearly one in six college students has been treated for anxiety in the past year, according to the American College Health Association. Mental-health counselors on campus attribute numerous factors to this rise, namely academic pressure from a much earlier age and compulsive social-media interaction....

A scene stands out to me from my graduate program in social work. A lesbian professor visited our class to tell about her experience of being same-sex attracted in a small, Midwestern, devoutly Protestant town in the latter twentieth century. As expected, her story was heart-rending. Afterward, during the Q&A, a black woman in her 40s raised her hand. “I’ve noticed that the high school girls today go through phases where they say that they like girls, and then change their minds and say they like boys again, like it just goes back and forth. And I don’t know if...

Responding to people with mental health issues is the number one drain on police resources in Berkeley, a police officer who specializes in the topic said this week. Nationally, 10% of police calls are for people having a mental health crisis, according to Berkeley Police Officer Jeff Shannon. In Berkeley, that number is 35% or more. Over the past five years, police have seen a 43% increase in calls for “5150s,” or people who are a danger to themselves or others, he said. “Not only in Berkeley, but across the nation, we are experiencing a mental health crisis,” Shannon told...

Veterans, Dependents Account for Disproportionate Share of ‘Mental Defective’ Category on Gun Ban List Apr 15, 2015 WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is requesting an explanation for why nearly all of the names on the Justice Department’s gun ban list in the “mental defective” category belong to veterans or their dependents. “It’s disturbing to think that the men and women who dedicated themselves to defending our freedom and values face undue threats to their fundamental Second Amendment rights from the very agency established to serve them. A veteran or dependent shouldn’t lose...

Andreas Lubitz: Germanwings flight's last minutes revealed in chilling black box transcript 29 March 2015 By Alex Wellman Patrick Sondheimer is heard screaming to his co-pilot "Open the goddam door" as passengers scream in the background The dramatic last moments of the doomed Germanwings flight have been revealed in a chilling transcript of the black box recording that shows the captain screaming at Andreas Lubitz “Open the goddam door”. Patrick Sondheimer, pilot of the traffic plane, is heard frantically pleading with the killer to let him into the cockpit, just seconds before crashing into the Alps. BEA Germanwings CVR Evidence:...

Killer co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was signed off by two different doctors for the day of the Germanwings disaster but failed to tell his employers, it has been reported. The claims from German newspaper The Rheinische Post come after it emerged Lubitz may have crashed his plane due to fears he was about to lose his licence on medical grounds. snip

Share2.3K Tweet91 Share2.6K 145 Email8 Michelle Obama has come out swinging in support of her husband's views on seeking treatment for mental health issues. The woman, who has decimated our children's school lunches, reducing them to unattractive mush in the name of "promoting healthy eating habits," relayed to Newseum on Wednesday that Barack Obama strongly believed that receiving treatment for mental health disorders was a "sign of strength," not weakness. Of course, it was just another way to promote Obamacare and its benefits in light of the upcoming Supreme Court challenge. According to CNSnews.com: "It's time to tell everyone who's...

(CNSNews.com) - First lady Michelle Obama said Wednesday at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., that her husband, President Barack Obama “believes strongly” that getting support and treatment for a mental health issue “isn’t a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength.” “It’s time to tell everyone who’s dealing with a mental health issue that they’re not alone, and that getting support and treatment isn’t a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength,” said Mrs. Obama. “That’s something that my husband believes strongly as president, because in this country when you're fighting an illness whether that’s mental or physical...

(snip) Pseudo-idealism is a term coined by the Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith to describe apparently charitable behavior that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him- or herself. It is a characteristic commonly found among the left, and it constitutes what the author Geoffrey Wheatcroft recognized as the left's inherent dishonesty. (snip)

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com. Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does...

On December 18, a three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a ban on gun purchases for anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution” violated the Second Amendment rights of a Michigan man who was denied a gun purchase because of a mental institution commitment in 1986. According to The Wall Street Journal, 73-year-old Clifford Charles Taylor “recently attempted to buy a gun but was denied on the grounds that he had been committed by a court to a mental institution in 1986 after emotional...

An Oregon woman who called in fake bomb threats to elementary schools asked for a higher prison sentence so she could take advantage of programs behind bars Tuesday. Jenelle Robyn Pinkston, 47, persuaded a Eugene judge to tack an extra year onto the two-year sentence prosecutors had recommended, according to the Register-Guard. She said she wanted more time for treatment in prison medical and mental health programs. "My biggest concern is that I get better," she said, referring to her post-traumatic stress disorder from childhood incidents. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken complied with Pinkston's request, calling her "unheard of" demand...

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Anxiety, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, marital strife, drug and alcohol abuse — two years after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the scope of the psychological damage to children, parents and others is becoming clear, and the need for treatment is likely to persist a long time. "Here it is two years later, and it's still hard to deal with. But, God, you didn't want to know me two years ago," said Beth Hegarty, a Sandy Hook mother who happened to be inside the school that day with her three daughters, all of whom survived.

"...In interviews with the Tampa Bay Times on Friday, May's friends described their frustrations over the past three months with the area's mental health care system, one that couldn't save May despite desperate pleas from loved ones who watched him dissolve into paranoia before their eyes...... Six months into his job as a prosecutor in the Dona Ana County District Attorney's Office in New Mexico, May couldn't concentrate. The 31-year-old had become so distractible, he told his friends, that he had decided to see a psychologist. He emerged from the appointment with prescriptions for an antidepressant and an attention deficit...

Using “gun violence” as its cover, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a cache of federal dollars that will be used for testing students for signs of mental health issues in K-12 schools. Critics say personal information scooped up in the screenings will be logged into databases that will follow the child throughout his or her academic career and beyond. Public schools, which have increasingly taken on aspects of psychiatric clinics in recent years, will get infused with more than $150 million in federal grants to further this agenda under the auspices of Obama’s 2013 executive action titled “Now is...