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In the hour before he was killed, on Sunday, Sept. 3, Dr. Wayne S. Fenton, a prominent schizophrenia specialist, was helping his wife clear the gutters of their suburban Washington house. He was steadying the ladder, asking her to please stop showering debris on his clean shirt; he had just made an appointment to see a patient and wanted to look presentable. She said she would be happy to go along, to help control the patient. It was a running joke between them. For in this part of the country, Dr. Fenton was the therapist of last resort, the one...

Minnesota doctors say health plan rules keep them from talking to patients. Others say the moves add to a shortage in care. Dr. Eric Larson calls himself a "conscientious objector." Six months ago, the Edina psychiatrist announced that he would no longer accept insurance payments. If his patients wanted to keep seeing him, they would have to pay his fee, in full, at the door. Cash and credit cards accepted. The change meant giving up a steady source of income. But for Larson, 48, it was a gamble worth taking. He's one of a small cadre of psychiatrists in Minnesota...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Troubled by news accounts of medical participation in coercive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay and the resulting unease in the professional medical community, the Pentagon led an intense one-day tour of the detention camp last month, several participants said in recent days. The purpose of the trip, some of the participants said, was for the military leadership to convince the ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others who visited the detention camp at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that what was occurring there did not violate medical ethics and was necessary to strengthen the nation's...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lawyers for 12 sex criminals who are being held in mental hospitals after their prison sentences ended complained to a judge Wednesday that the state is holding them illegally, a charge the state's lawyer denied. The sex offenders were ordered held by Gov. George Pataki, who had sought for years to get a law passed that would allow civil confinement of sex offenders when their sentences end. Pataki's plan extends the state's involuntary commitment law, normally used for the mentally ill, to sexual predators. It requires offenders nearing the end of their sentences to undergo an...

A college student becomes so compulsive about cleaning his dorm room that his grades begin to slip. An executive living in New York has a mortal fear of snakes but lives in Manhattan and rarely goes outside the city where he might encounter one. A computer technician, deeply anxious around strangers, avoids social and company gatherings and is passed over for promotion. Are these people mentally ill? In a report released last week, researchers estimated that more than half of Americans would develop mental disorders in their lives, raising questions about where mental health ends and illness begins. In fact,...

ATLANTA - Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group approved a statement Sunday urging legal recognition of gay marriage. If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance. The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health." It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on the first day of...

Christine Stanley will never forget the call. Two weeks after her daughter Emily started kindergarten, the teacher phoned in a panic. Emily would not color, sing or participate in any classroom activities; in fact, she would not say a word to anyone. It was not the first time Christine had received such a call. Emily had not talked at preschool, either. She did not make eye contact with store clerks or talk to nurses at the pediatrician's office. She ran off the playground if another child approached. Mrs. Stanley asked her sister, a special education teacher, what she thought. Mrs....

Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into homemade chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason. Among themselves, a few forensic scientists have taken to thinking of these people as not merely disturbed but evil. Evil in that their deliberate, habitual savagery defies any psychological explanation or attempt at treatment. Most psychiatrists assiduously avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment that...

LONDON, December 2, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study published in the current issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry has revealed that 43% of gays, lesbians and bisexuals have a mental disorder. The study carried out by the Imperial College in London surveyed 1285 respondents from these groups. Mental problems included anxiety, sleep disturbance, panic attacks, depressive moods or thoughts, problems with memory or concentration and compulsive behaviour or obsessive thoughts. The researchers noted that there is a dearth of research into the mental health of gay men, lesbians and bisexual men and women in the UK. The study found...

Police in Burlington charge that psychiatrist Ronald Preston McPike used feces-smeared dollar bills to pay a parking ticket. According to authorities, the money was in an envelope labeled, "Foreign brown substance on bills." Lab test showed the stains were from excrement smeared on the bills. Police said the doctor claimed the money fell into a toilet. He's been charged with harassment of a public official. McPike has pleaded not guilty. He faces 30 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted.

An amendment offered by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, in the House of Representatives yesterday that would have remove from an appropriations bill a new mandatory mental-health screening program for America's children failed by a vote of 95-315. Paul's amendment would have removed the program from the Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005. Ninety-four Republicans and one Democrat sided with Paul, while 118 Republicans, 196 Democrats and one Independent voted against the amendment. As WorldNetDaily reported, the New Freedom Initiative recommends screening not only for children but eventually for every American. The initiative came out of the...

VATICAN CITY (AP)--The Vatican issued a report Monday by non-Catholic sex abuse experts who criticized the policy adopted by U.S. bishops of removing abusive priests from the ministry, saying it was overly harsh and would not protect the young. The report was released days before U.S. bishops issue their own national survey on sex abuse by clergy, which is expected to find more than 4,000 American priests have been accused of molesting minors since 1950--far more than previously estimated. Still, the U.S. study may also show the number of cases has declined dramatically since the 1990s, and victims fear it...

Reports are circulating that psychiatrists have cleared for unsupervised home visits the moron who shot Reagan to impress Jody Foster. We’ll set aside the fact that Hinckley tried to assassinate the president of the United States. Let’s just say that his attempt was on the life of another human being, and in particular one who had done him no harm. That sort of thing happens every day in America. If you recall, just a few weeks back some fellow got a pistol and tried to kill an attorney involved in a case related to financial matters. You must have seen...

Antidepressants are widely believed to be exceptionally effective medications. The data, however, tell a different story. Kirsch et al. (2002a) analyzed the data sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the manufacturers of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants (fluoxetine [Prozac], paroxetine [Paxil], sertraline [Zoloft], venlafaxine [Effexor], nefazodone [Serzone] and citalopram [Celexa]). Their research showed that although the response to antidepressants was substantial, the response to inert placebo was almost as great. The mean difference was about two points on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). Although statistically significant, this difference is not clinically significant (Jacobson et...