Free Republic

Several prominent medical associations have voiced opposition to a proposed gun control rule to increase the number of mental health records shared with the national background check system, saying it would only contribute to the stigma against mental illness. . . , a key proposition to add mental health records to a national background check database has been vociferously opposed by medical groups. Many voice concern that adding people deemed "mentally unfit" to the national database would increase the stigma of mental illness and dissuade many from seeking help. . . . . . . Unlike the Manchin-Toomey Bill to...

Anthony Weiner stepped down from Congress two years ago with a promise to “heal from the damage” of his sexual Twitter scandal. But sex therapy and addiction experts say the program he enrolled in shortly after his resignation wouldn’t have done much to address the root causes behind the scandal. Shortly after announcing his comeback bid for mayor of New York City, Weiner told reporters he had spent three days in July 2011 at the Gabbard Center, a psychiatric evaluation center in Houston, Texas. The program “wasn’t an addiction thing,” Weiner told the Daily News last month. “I mean, it...

In a cutting new article for the Wall Street Journal, two professors criticize the American Psychiatric Association for loosening the standards by which Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed. This, they argue, will make such diagnoses more likely and increase the amphetamine usage of the general public. “Symptoms of ADHD remain the same in the new edition” of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but with some changes: “The difference is that in the previous version of the manual, the first symptoms of ADHD needed to be evident by age 7 for a diagnosis to be made....

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention says that at any given moment about a quarter of American adults are mentally ill and that over the course of their lifetimes about half of all Americans will develop at least one mental illness. In addition, says the agency, "mental illness is associated with increased occurrence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, asthma, epilepsy, and cancer."

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm. More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday’s issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides. Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly, and...

Last spring, Frank Turkaly tried to kill himself. A retiree in a Pittsburgh suburb living on disability checks, he was estranged from friends and family, mired in credit card debt and taking medication for depression, cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Vice President Joe Biden closed out a mental health conference at the White House Monday afternoon with a message of support to those affected by mental illness. "Let's use this moment to send a message to tens of millions of Americans, especially the young people and parents of young people all over this country," Biden said during remarks delivered in the White House's South Court Auditorium. "There's nothing, nothing to be ashamed of if you're struggling with mental issues. ... It's OK to talk about it, it's OK to ask for help, it's OK to acknowledge that it's frightening."

President Barack Obama said Monday that he wants to end the stigma of mental illness and enrolled the star power of actors Bradley Cooper and Glenn Close at a White House conference organized in response to the December shootings at a Connecticut elementary school. The event was designed to encourage those struggling with mental illness to seek treatment, although some attendees noted the government needs to provide more resources to meet that goal. Despite its origins, there was a notable lack of discussion of gun violence at the conference. The president never mentioned the matter as he opened the gathering...

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...

In a bizarre op-ed in The Charleston Gazette last week, journalism professor Christopher Swindell argued that the National Rifle Association “advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America.” Stirring words, to be sure, but Swindell was hardly done — not even close. He also said that the NRA is guilty of “treason” “worthy of the firing squad.” “To support the new NRA president’s agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason,” Swindell charged in his wacky essay. After briefly playing the race card and alluding to the Civil War,...

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Americans are over medicated. In 2011 doctors across the nation wrote an astounding four billion medical prescriptions, amounting to an average of 13 prescriptions for every man, woman and child in the United States. In the next few weeks the American Psychiatric Associations is releasing their updated fifth version their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); the so-called ‘bible’ of psychiatric diagnoses. The new manual promises to take mental illness and the use of prescription drugs to a whole new level. You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today,...

There is a gender gap for mental illness, with females being up to 40 percent more likely to develop some type of mental health condition than their male counterparts.

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As...

“In the days of the Malleus, if the physician could find no evidence of natural illness, he was expected to find evidence of witchcraft: today, if he cannot diagnose organic illness, he is expected to diagnose mental illness.” (1) The Malleus Maleficarum was a 15th century text which instructed Inquisitors on the proper method of identifying, trying and burning witches. Though it was many years ago that renowned psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) used the example of the Malleus to comment on the diagnostic practices of his fellow physicians, it seems he might have been on to something as today psychiatrists...

“It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses.” But according to prominent psychiatrist and academic Thomas Szasz MD (1920-2012) “…this is a worthless and misleading definition.” “Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social, and ethical problems in living.” (1) Szasz write that “…the notion of a person ‘having a mental illness’ is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization—namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of...

The past 2 decades have witnessed an alarming increase in the number of Americans diagnosed with mental illness. Is modern psychiatry reaping an immense profit by impulsively—perhaps even deliberately–conflating mental illness with a growing, public aversion to the demands of personal responsibility? In the summer of 2011, The New York Review of Books published two lengthy articles by Marcia Angell, MD—Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. In these articles, Angell reviewed three books which take a critical look at psychiatry and its relationship with the...

Suicide. It remains a topic few health professionals want to discuss openly with their patients. It remains a topic avoided even by many mental health professionals. Policy makers see it as a black hole without an obvious solution. And now grim new statistics confirm a disturbing trend — more people are taking their own lives than ever before in the U.S. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released statistics yesterday showing that 33,687 people died in motor vehicle accidents, while nearly 5,000 more — 38,364 — died by suicide. Middle-aged Americans are making up the biggest leap in...

A proposed law introduced in the California State legislature would allow public school children to use bathrooms designated for members of the opposite sex, if that students' "gender identity" differed from the students biological sex. Assembly Bill 1266, introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who represents a section of the city of San Francisco would: "...require that a pupil be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil's record." While the bill does not specifically mention...

Patients who believe in God may experience better short-term treatment outcomes for psychiatric illness, according to a new study. Individuals who described themselves as having strong faith reported having a better overall response to treatment, said David Rosmarin, a clinician and instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We found that patients who had higher levels of belief in God had better treatment outcomes — better well-being, less depression and less anxiety," Rosmarin told LiveScience.

Although fewer than 6 percent of American adults will have a severe mental illness in a given year, according to a 2005 study, many more—more than a quarter each year—will have some diagnosable mental disorder. That’s a lot of people. Almost 50 percent of Americans (46.4 percent to be exact) will have a diagnosable mental illness in their lifetimes, based on the previous edition, the DSM-IV. And the new manual will likely make it even "easier" to get a diagnosis. If we think of having a diagnosable mental illness as being under a tent, the tent seems pretty big. Huge,...

An off-duty officer opened fire this morning, killing her husband and 1-year-old son in an apparent murder-suicide in Brooklyn this morning, sources said. Police and EMS responded to a 911 call of a man shot inside of a building at East 56th Street and Farragut Road about 8:30 a.m., the FDNY said.

Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Email Comments More . Susan Stewart collects fresh human placentas, takes them home and steams them with lemon, ginger and cayenne pepper. Once cooked, she puts the organs in a dehydrator overnight then grinds them and measures the powder out into gel capsules. The service – the Calgary single mother makes a living at this – costs about $200. Within a day, she presents new moms with their placentas in pill form – an average human placenta yields about 150 capsules – with promises of renewed energy, better lactation and no post-partum depression. They keep indefinitely. Placenta-eating...

Excerpts of some of the emails Nancy Lanza sent to a friend, touching on her family's history and her feelings on kids and weapons. It ran in the family.

ick Warren’s son has taken his own life. Matthew Warren, 27, had struggled with mental illness before his death. Evangelist Greg Laurie posted an e-mail the Saddleback Church pastor sent to this staff: “Only those closest knew that he (Matthew) struggled from birth with mental illness, dark holes of depression, and even suicidal thoughts. In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided. Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life.” Click here to read...

'She is remembered as a profligate shrew who drove her husband to drink before going insane, but according to a new book, that is not an accurate portrait of Zelda Fitzgerald. In fact, it's a 'persistent, damning mischaracterisation that needs undoing' says author, Therese Anne Fowler, who argues that not only was the spoiled wife of Great Gatsby author, F. Scott Fitzgerald sane, she was also devoted to her husband. Fowler, who began Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald wondering whether she really wanted to spend a year in the company of a 'hyperactive madwoman', says she soon discovered that...

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Sometimes, a First Family remains a first family -- a mirror of our times -- even after the president leaves office. So it is with the Clintons. This week, the United States Supreme Court will hear two landmark cases about marriage equality. One is a challenge to California's Proposition 8, a law passed in 2008 that bans same-sex marriage in the country's most populous state. The other is about a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents all legally married gay and lesbian couples from receiving the more than 1,000 federal rights, benefits and obligations that come from...

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued some words of advice for fellow GOPers: Get in the 21st century with same-sex-marriage issues. “We do have a platform, and we adhere to that platform,” Mr. Priebus said in a USA Today video. “But it doesn’t mean that we divide and subtract people from our party” who favor gay marriage. “I don’t believe we need to act like Old Testament heretics,” he said in the USA Today video. Rather, Republicans “have to strike a balance between principle and grace and respect.” His statements come as the U.S. Supreme Court is...

Jenna Wolfe, NBC's "Today" weekend anchor, came out as a lesbian on the air this morning. She also announced she is pregnant: Today" weekend anchor Jenna Wolfe revealed some major news on Wednesday's program. "I'm actually pregnant," she said. "I'm quite pregnant, actually." Wolfe is expecting a baby with her longtime partner Stephanie Gosk, an NBC News correspondent. … The Wednesday announcement coincides with a People magazine spread with more details. "I don’t want to bring my daughter into a world where I’m not comfortable telling everyone who I am and who her mother is," Wolfe told People. Wolfe will...

The term “gender identity disorder” has been eliminated from the new edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s official guide to classifying mental illnesses, known as the DSM-5. Whereas previously a man who “self-identified” as a woman (or vice versa) could have been classified as mentally ill, now the DSM-5 uses the term “gender dysphoria,” which means it is only a mental illness if you’re troubled by this self-identification. Elated activists in the “LGBT” community had lobbied the APA for the change for years. And this month in Massachusetts, students, parents and teachers are reacting with concern to a recent policy...

As Senate Democrats push ahead with a proposed ban on assault weapons and other gun-control legislation, Republicans are still trying to draw attention to what they see as the bigger issue -- keeping the mentally ill from owning firearms. A proposal on the issue was introduced this month by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who on Thursday again expressed his interest in getting the measure passed. “I believe that the best way to interrupt the shooter is to have a mental health system that actually records and enters into the database people...

With the Christopher Dorner case, the role of prescription psychotropic drugs in mass killings has again come to the forefront. Numerous articles have approached the role of so-called "psych meds" in causing depraved and indifferent violent behavior, but one in particular deserves attention because it highlights the fact that among psychiatric professionals there is no coherent understanding of what needs to be done after we take people off of drugs that are prescribed for their psychiatric illnesses. The article -- Jon Rappoport's "Is Christopher Dorner Another Psychiatric Killer?" -- makes a number of important points about the former Los Angeles...

THE grieving process is in danger of being branded a medical condition if a mourner feels sad for more than two weeks and consults a GP, according to an international authority on death and dying. At present, mourners can feel sad for two months before being told they have a mental disorder, says Professor Dale Larson. Decades ago, a diagnosis could be made after a year.In a keynote address at an Australian Psychological Society conference in Melbourne on Saturday, Prof Larson will express his anger about the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual, DSM 5, which is used in many...

Shortly after her move from New Hampshire to Newtown in 1998, Nancy Lanza had good news about her troubled son. "Adam is doing well here, and seems to be enjoying the new school," Lanza wrote to a friend back in Kingston, N.H., in a Feb. 9, 1999, email. But Adam, 6, then diagnosed with a condition that made it difficult for him to manage and respond to sights, touch and smell, eventually struggled in the first grade at his new school — Sandy Hook Elementary. His mother would respond, touching off a 10-year educational shuffle with moves in and out...

Toxoplasma is a common 'cat parasite', and has previously been in the spotlight owing to its observed effect on risk-taking and other human behaviours. To some extent, it has also been associated with mental illness. A study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrates for the first time how the parasite enters the brain to influence its host. "We believe that this knowledge may be important for the further understanding of complex interactions in some major public health issues, that modern science still hasn't been able to explain fully," says Antonio Barragan, researcher at the Center for...

There's been a gulf between the Christopher Dorner that friends called "friendly" and "positive," and the Christopher Dorner who this week became a real-life Rambo who went on a rampage targeting law enforcement. But now information emerging in court documents and interviews paints a more complex picture of Dorner and his emotional struggles. Ex-girlfriend Ariana Williams told ABC 7 that she was initially attracted to Dorner, who was outgoing and friendly. But she became troubled by his paranoia. Williams told he had guns all over her house: "He'd be in the bed and there'd be one by the bed. There'd...

One afternoon in May, 1990, Robert Kosilek murdered his wife, Cheryl. Brutally. He strangled her with piano wire, virtually decapitating her, and left her body in a mall parking lot in a suburb of Boston. Since his conviction, Kosilek, now 64, has been serving a life sentence at Norfolk, a high-security prison for men. For years Kosilek has been a member of the "sisters," a particularly violent, sexually deviant subset of the prison population. But in 1993, Kosilek decided to do a complete makeover, changing his name to Michelle, letting his hair grow long, and dressing as a woman in...

Young Republicans in Iowa are still split on the institution of marriage being extended to gay people. But there is a growing consensus among college-aged GOPers that in order to win elections, the party's focus should be elsewhere. Gay and lesbian campus groups and College Republicans haven't exactly been friendly to one another over the years, in Iowa or the rest of the country. But there are signs that with this coming generation the trend could be changing, and for the Republican Party that could be critical. "As a young Republican, I see where the party’s coming from with the...

I’ve been living the life of a married man for 20 years. I have a successful career and three children. All this time, however, I have battled gender dysphoria and the deep sadness that comes from living a lie. From the earliest age, I’ve been unhappy being male. I believed I would find happiness only once I was true to myself. I recently had my self-diagnosis confirmed, and I’m initiating a transition to living as the real me. There is a cost involved: pain to my family and stress on my career. Ethically, is it right to be “true to...

We know you're out there, cat lovers, but how much do you REALLY love your cat? Have you ever actually tasted your feline? Meet Lisa, who loves her kitty so much that she eats the fur. The 43-year-old Michigan woman, featured in the upcoming season of TLC's "My Strange Addiction," snacks on a smidge of cat hair every two hours and has downed more than 3,200 hairballs over the past 15 years. She doesn't cough them up cat-style, either: She swallows them. The fur gourmand explains that she eats fur off the floor and furniture, but that "the best ones...

A Parker County 17-year-old wrote in a confession released Thursday that the horror movie remake of "Halloween" gave him the idea to kill his mother and sister. Jake Evans is on trial for the Oct. 3 slayings of his 15-year-old sister, Mallory, and mother, Jami in their upscale Aledo home. The confession was introduced as evidence. In a four-page written confession to police hours after his arrest, Evans said he had watched the remake of "Halloween" three times earlier that week. The 2007 Rob Zombie film is about a 10-year-old boy who murders several people and kills a number of...

Anyone else feel like it really is a tide that is turning these days? The American College of Nurse Midwives issued a statement in support of working towards quality, competent care for trans and gender non-conforming people. Woo-hoo! ~ Radical Doula Miriam Zoila Pérez, January 17, excited over a recent statement issued by ACNM that “addresses the need for education about transgender issues in midwifery education.” The statement explains: HIV infection within the gender variant community is 4 times the rate of the general population; rates of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, and depression and suicide attempts are also higher....

A FEW years ago, I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to more than a “rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” It was a full-force pounding of a body trying to break into my little house in Washington, D.C. It was the sound and scenario that, as a single woman living alone, I feared more than spiders in the house. ....I considered buying a gun. The threat of violence rattles you like that. What rolled round my head after that dark morning was: what if I hadn’t heard the noise, what if it’s different next time? While I held that chair with...

<p>THE widow of a victim of the US theatre massacre is suing a psychiatrist for neglect, for failing to have the alleged shooter arrested despite him having "fantasised about killing a lot of people."</p> <p>The lawsuit, also citing the University of Colorado, alleges that Dr Lynne Fenton advised campus police about her concern regarding James Holmes, after he told her about the fantasy in June last year.</p>

The United States houses more human beings in prisons than any other country, both in terms of actual numbers and in relation to population size. The U.S. prison population began to grow dramatically in the 1970s. Professor Daniel D’Amico examines the data behind the alarming increase in the number of prisoners in the United States and finds that much of the growth in the last 40 years has been driven by the war on drugs. From 1980 to 1990, the total U.S. prison population more than doubled. In that same time, the proportion of people in prison for nonviolent drug...

Since I first began working as a medical expert in product liability cases way back in the early 1990s, I’ve spent innumerable hours culling the sealed data contained within the files of companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly. Among other things, I long ago found evidence that Paxil and Prozac cause suicidality in adults. These discoveries then led to settlements in product liability suits brought against the two companies brought by surviving family members. I’ve also communicated my conclusions in books like Talking Back to Prozac and the Antidepressant Fact Book and in scientific articles but the primary data until...

[snip] (Standard Gravure shooting) First known shooting with ties to Prozac. Joseph Wesbecker kills 12, injures 9. Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public. Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself....

A high school teacher in South Carolina is under investigation and has been placed on long-term administrative leave after he allegedly threw an American flag on the floor and stomped on it in front of his students. Scott Compton, an English teacher at Chapin High School in Chapin, S.C., reprised the unpatriotic deed in three classes over the course of one day, reports local NBC affiliate WIS. One parent, Michael Copeland, said he heard his teenage daughter discussing the incident and asked her to tell him the whole story. “He drew a couple of symbols, like one of them was...

The Cuomo administration is preparing to shove thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers out of supervised settings — where they can be forced to take their medication — into far less restrictive, far more dangerous “community housing.” Albany, under pressure from the Obama administration, recently ordered psychiatric facilities not to place any discharged patients in adult homes, where staff can ensure they take their meds. Instead, they’ll be placed in “community housing,” without full-time supervision. This is part of the state’s plan to essentially empty adult homes into community-based “supportive” apartments, leaving up to 6,000 people — including those with...

CBS) Advocates of medical marijuana say pot has all sorts of health benefits. Maybe so, but a new study from Australia suggests that smoking pot can drive some people crazy - or at least make them go crazy sooner than they would have if they had never picked up the pipe. The study, published online in "Archives of General Psychiatry," shows that potheads develop severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia about 2.7 years earlier than people who don't use marijuana.