Free Republic

After supporting husband Michael Douglas through his battle with throat cancer, Catherine Zeta-Jones needed medical care for herself. After “the stress of the past year,” her representative said in a statement, the movie star “made the decision to check into a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her bipolar II disorder,” a condition similar to bipolar I disorder, characterized by mood swings from high to low. Zeta-Jones has been hit with a series of devastating events: In 2010, her stepson, Cameron Douglas, was sentenced to five years in prison on drug charges, and four months later, her...

It hardly seems necessary to catalog all of the current events that are fraying the nerves of the most sturdy among us. Unless, of course, you’re talking to the president, who is eerily unaffected by it all. The rate of joblessness and foreclosures in this country are enough to keep anyone up at night. That’s assuming you can remain entirely impervious to the massive disaster in Japan and the fact that the Middle East is in a state of dangerous upheaval. It’s not really possible to overstate the seriousness of the Mid East crisis, and not only because rising oil...

Oregon Rep. David Wu apologized Tuesday for sending photos of himself dressed in a tiger costume to aides, calling that and other behavior last fall “unprofessional” and “inappropriate” as his mental health suffered. “You shouldn’t ever send photographs of yourself in a Halloween costume, something you intend to wear to a private party a couple of nights later,” the Democrat said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It’s just not professional, even when you’re joshing around with your kids a couple of nights before Halloween. I did send those photographs. It was unprofessional, inappropriate.” Half a dozen Wu staffers have quit...

....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...

New Study Denying Abortion-Mental Health Link Contains Flaws by Priscilla Coleman Danish researchers Munk-Olsen, Laursen, Pedersen, and colleagues will publish a study tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine, addressing the risk of mental health disorders in women who have a first trimester abortion and those who experience a first childbirth. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/26/new-study-denying-abortion-mental-health-link-contains-flaws

Day two in a three-day series Once or twice a semester, Dr. Chris Gunn comes across a student so unstable that he and his colleagues at Northern Arizona University get together and decide: Call the parents? Suspend? Have committed involuntarily for psychiatric care? Speculation has strongly leaned toward alleged Tucson mass shooter Jared Loughner as having untreated paranoid schizophrenia, and his behavior was erratic enough that his school, Pima Community College, suspended him until he could provide a mental health clearance. The propensity for people with serious mental illness to commit extreme violence like the kind seen in Tucson is...

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...

(NewsCore) - Severe mental illness is more common among US college students than it was a decade ago, National Public Radio reported Monday. Citing statistics collected by the American Psychological Association, NPR reported that the number of students on psychiatric medicines has increased by more than 10 percentage points over the last 10 years. College counselors have reported a notable rise not only in the number of students seeking help for mental disorders, but also a rise in the severity of their illnesses. The author of the research added that in 1998, nearly all of the students seeking help at...

suntimes Don’t let shooter kill our rights Jacob Sullum jsullum@reason.com Jan 12, 2011 02:35AM Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of shooting 20 people outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store on Saturday, probably will never get a chance to create the “new money system” he discusses in one of his rambling YouTube videos. But he can still have an important effect on public policy — if we let him. After the shocking attack — which killed six people, including 9-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) — there was no shortage of knee-jerk proposals for preventing...

Google cache has website alemhn.com domain which has apparently just expired.

Yesterday, we talked about the Violence Policy Center's bizarre attempt to link concealed carry and suicide. That attempt continues not only the VPC's longstanding campaign to discredit defensive handgun carry, but also their efforts to portray restrictive gun laws as an important tool to reduce suicide (works great in Japan!). Suicide is, of course, a mental health issue, so perhaps now would be a good time to discuss the intersection of health care and "gun control." National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea recently noted a study claiming that one in five Americans suffers from mental illness--in many cases, supposedly, undiagnosed...

<p>YOUR **** RELIGION IS B****T AND YOUR GOD IS *%*&*% MAKE BELIEVE! I have exactly ZERO FEAR of what exists only in your rasist narrow simpleton mind. Your god is NOT AN OBJECTIVE REALITY and yet you keep pushing him on us. You are nothing but a bunch of stupid retarded bigots and hypicrites, PLEASE **$# OFF AND DIE. I am sick you your STUPID JEEEEEEESUS *%*&%* hijacking the legacy of the founding fathers to promote your controlling agenda. $&*^* YOUR STUPID &$&$* OF A GOD [long screed of swearing and curing and liberal slogans] ON YOUR IDIOT BI-BULL, IT BELONGETH IN DA TOILET! Are you so STUPID that you think quoting from theidiot BI-BULL will do anythimng besides make me LAUGH HYSTERICoLLY. The bi-BULL is a [more screaming and gibberish] that is good for nothing except wiping %&*^#. It is fiulled with STUPID, RIDICULOS errors and silly moronic fairy tales. It is the product of hateful rasist people. Its god is exclusive, racist, genocidal cunt of a monster whop loves only those who willingly ignore rational thought and become his sheeple. HE DOESN'T EXIST!</p>

Two days ago, An elderly woman was murdered in front of her sister and onlookers on LA's metro gold line station in Little Tokyo. The station, recently opened a year ago under the new gold line extension into east LA now has its first big incident. An insane drug addicted and mentally ill homeless woman is now in custody for committing the murder. The killer, a woman named Jackkqueline Pogue committed the offense has a long history of mental illness not to mention an even longer criminal history. She had been thrown out of just about every shelter and welfare...

“More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year,” a CNBC-hosted Reuters story informs us, citing a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA."Too many Americans are not getting the help they need and opportunities to prevent and intervene early are being missed," SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde, J.D. declares in a press release announcing the national survey. "The consequences for individuals, families and communities can be devastating. If left untreated mental illnesses can result in disability, substance abuse, suicides, lost productivity, and family discord....

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 16) -- Betty Sugiyama was rushing to catch a train for a shopping trip when authorities say the unthinkable happened: A homeless woman leapt from a bench and shoved her onto the tracks. Witnesses said the woman then calmly returned to her seat as Sugiyama writhed in pain on the tracks with a cracked skull. The 84-year-old Little Tokyo resident died soon after, and the suspect was arrested on murder charges. A sister of Sugiyama who witnessed the attack remained stunned Tuesday that anyone would want to kill her friendly younger sibling, a Japanese-American who had grown...

Second incident at Old Saybrook store in 2 days A man is under arrest after police say he stood outside the Old Saybrook Walmart on Thursday and said he was "getting ready to start killing people." John Carlo, 28, of Pawcatuck, has been charged with breach of peace and threatening. Before police arrived, Carlo fled on foot. The area was cordoned off and a K-9 was called in to assist with the search. Carlo was finally found in a walk-in cooler at a nearby gas station. This is the second incident in as many days at this Walmart store. On...

In a comprehensive new study of mental health status and the use of mental health services by Californians, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that nearly one in five adults in the state -- about 4.9 million people -- said they needed help for a mental or emotional health problem. In addition, approximately one in 25, or more than 1 million, reported symptoms associated with serious psychological distress (SPD), which includes the most serious kinds of diagnosable mental health disorders

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2010 – Twenty-eight Medal of Honor recipients recently launched the “Medal of Honor – Speak Out” campaign to encourage troops struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and other health problems to take advantage of services to help them. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients dating back to World War II echo a common theme in video messages for today’s returning combat veterans: Take advantage of the resources now available to treat the unseen scars of war. “Make use of them,” they encourage today’s troops. “Stay strong, and don’t let...

Milwaukee County's top mental health administrator intentionally houses female patients with men known to be dangerous "because the presence of women reduces the likelihood of the men being violent," according to a county supervisor's letter obtained by the Journal Sentinel. John Chianelli, administrator of the county's Behavioral Health Division, told county supervisors during a closed-door session last month that segregating men and women would result in more violence. "It's a trade-off," he said. "Putting 24 aggressive male patients into a male-only unit would increase the level of violence in the unit." Chianelli's remarks came during a County Board committee called...

An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington’s wars of aggression. The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department. The department estimates that there are 950 suicide attempts every month by veterans who are receiving treatment from the department. Of these, 7 percent succeed in taking their own lives, while 11 percent try to kill themselves again within nine months. The greatest growth in suicides has...