BEIJING: The Chinese leadership has disregarded international opinion and allowed the execution of a British man with a reported history of mental illness.
Yesterday’s execution of Akmal Shaikh – the first death sentence carried out against a European in China in 50 years – follows the harsh sentence given to a democracy activist, Liu Xiaobo, on Christmas Day despite top-level advocacy from the United States and other Western nations.
”It’s one thing to turn your back on world opinion and put a man in prison, but another thing to execute somebody,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, head of research at the Dui Hua Foundation in Hong Kong.
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Akmal Shaikh, the British national executed in China, was so delusional before his arrest that he thought he would find fame as a pop star in the Asian nation, his lawyers and reports say.
Shaikh, a father of three, ran a mini-cab business in London until he started to show signs of mental illness in 2001 after his first marriage ended, according to the Guardian newspaper, quoting family members.
Suffering from bipolar disorder, his life began to unravel, leading him to turn his back on his family and embark on an international journey, before his arrest in China in 2007, with four kilograms (about nine pounds) of heroin.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Pretty soon, Dani Hartog won’t have to worry.
She won’t have to leave her car idling in the parking lot at Northridge High to drag her 15-year-old son, kicking and screaming, to his classroom. She won’t get a tight feeling in her chest whenever the phone rings, wondering if the principal is calling to say the boy, who has autism, is missing again. She won’t panic as she rushes from work to her home in South Weber, worried the teenager won’t be safe in his usual hideout under the back porch.
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It was a little more than a year ago that January Schofield, at age 6, began to drift from reality. Suicidal, violent and plagued by hallucinations of rats and cats who conversed and played with her, she began the first of seven psychiatric hospitalizations.
As of today, Jani, 7, has been out of the hospital for 56 days, the longest period in 15 months. Together with her parents, Michael and Susan, and brother, Bodhi, 2, Jani is living a fragile existence — haunted by delusions that sometimes tell her to hurt herself or others, even the people she loves.
But despite the family’s dire financial and emotional circumstances, that existence is not completely devoid of hope.
Reporting from Beijing – The Chinese government today executed a 53-year-old British citizen for drug smuggling, ignoring international pleas for clemency and claims by supporters that he was mentally ill, the British Foreign Office said.
Akmal Shaikh, a father of three with no criminal record, was the first European to be executed in China in half a century, activists say.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
There was a time when the public admission of mental illness could derail a candidate’s political career.
That could still happen to Mark Dayton, the Democratic candidate for governor who went public this week with his history of depression. But if so, experts say, it’s the stigma — not the disease itself — that would sabotage his run for office.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Labor representatives have sent a memo to top legislators accusing Kitsap Mental Health Services management of union-busting and misusing state-appropriated funds to do it.
KMHS Executive Director Joe Roszak calls the accusations from Jonathan Rosenblum and Ellie Menzies of the Service Employees International Union “without merit.”
The SEIU represents more than 200 people who w<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
My Health Experience : After a very long, painful battle, Julie McCarthy says she feels very well for the first time in 22 years
I LIKEN IT now to a silent scream. I was screaming inside, dying for people to understand the desperate sadness, anxiety, fear and pain that were overwhelming me. Everyone around me could see something was wrong, of course – I was disappearing in front of them, emotionally and physically, but they were as helpless as I was. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, depression wasn’t associated with young girls from happy, middle-class families in suburban Dublin. We were all clueless.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
People with mental health problems have been cited as a potential danger to public security after some recent crimes were allegedly committed by some who were suspected to be suffering from mental illnesses.
“We should get comprehensive information about people with high potential danger and keep a close eye on them to maintain social stability,” Yang Huanning, vice-minister of Public Security, said recently, according to a transcript posted on Xinhua.net yesterday.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2009) — Scientists have created what appears to be a schizophrenic mouse by reducing the inhibition of brain cells involved in complex reasoning and decisions about appropriate social behavior.
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A NEW study into psychiatric illness in Irish prisons has revealed three out of five prisoners were suffering from substance-use disorders.
Of the prisoners that were suffering mental illness brought on by substance abuse, 26pc were abusing heroin, 29pc cannabis and 37pc alcohol.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
A United Nations human rights expert today urged China to cancel the scheduled execution of a man convicted of drug trafficking, saying there are strong signs that he suffers from mental illness and that this was not taken into account during sentencing.
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As the year is winding down, a tumultuous and difficult decade is coming to a close. WHYY’s Behavioral Health reporter Maiken Scott spoke with psychologist Dan Gottlieb about America’s mental health during the past ten years – and what’s next for the field.
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Irish state health inspectors have warned that many of Ireland’s psychiatric wards may be closed as they are “unfit for human habitation.” Irish health inspectors have uncovered evidence of bad management and untrained medical staff administering electric shock therapy to patients in psychiatric wards around the country.
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His watch stopped just before he drank a quart of antifreeze mixed with root beer.
Then Mitchell Madorin sat in front of a broken window on an upper floor of an abandoned factory and stared at the Mississippi River below. “I knew I’d signed my death warrant,” he said.
He was half dead when UNITY caseworkers Mike Miller and Shamus Rohn toted him down three flights of stairs and into LSU Interim Hospital.
Five days later, when the hospital released Madorin, 52, he was frantic. He didn’t understand how he’d become suicidal, he said, and worried that he might make another attempt.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
“After the smoke cleared,” Ronald Sykes was saying, “after the smoke cleared …”
Now he had to stop. He stood up in his kitchen, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in his military uniform. He sighed. He walked to the bathroom. He splashed his face with water. He told himself it would be O.K. Then he came back out and sat down with a grimace on his chair.
“After the smoke cleared,” he went on, “we had to take pictures of the body parts. Some guy from the Q.R.F., the Quick Reaction Force, he ran off to the mess hall for some ice. He put the body parts on top of the ice. And that’s when I finally saw what a human heart looked like.”<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Less than a year after giving birth to twins, Amy Hornbeck realized she did not have a matching set.
Ava and Hanna both had a handful of words at about eight months old. “But then Ava just stopped and Hanna kept going,” said Hornbeck, who was doing graduate studies on early childhood education at Rutgers University in New Jersey when she became pregnant.
“I tried to teach the girls to sign when they were about 12 months old and Hanna picked them up and Ava didn’t,” Hornbeck said. “She just wasn’t learning language.”<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
PHOENIX — A judge has rejected as inadequate a plan by Gov. Jan Brewer to improve mental health services in Maricopa County.
In a ruling made public Wednesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Karen O’Connor said Brewer’s proposal “may be worthwhile to pursue” as one element toward finally ensuring that everyone who needs help gets what he or she needs. But the judge said it falls short.
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The failure to close outdated mental health institutions is just a symptom of the neglect of the health sector’s poor relation
THEY ARE relics of an era known as the “great confinement”. Yet, well over a century later, many of these Victorian-era institutions remain.
Despite well-meaning efforts by staff, these buildings are clearly inadequate for the purpose of providing treatment to vulnerable people with serious mental illness in accordance with internationally accepted human rights standards.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Though there is no proof that University of Florida football coach, Urban Meyer, is a man with ADHD; he is definitely a ‘workaholic.’ Meyer also seems to personify several of the more positive elements of ADHD, including drivenness, hyperactivity, and hyperfocus.
Meyer is driven to spend hour upon hour to make the Florida Gators a national gridiron powerhouse. His drive His hyperactivity can be seen in the resulting reward Meyer has garnered in his career. Between 2001 and 2004, Meyer won nine major football coaching awards. These awards, signifying his drive to win, point to his hyperfocus as well. Finally the pressure of his aggressive drive and hyperfocus caught up with him.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Some of the most impenetrable and harrowing mental illnesses known to man will, Watson believes, be understandable and maybe even curable.
Nothing much is going to happen in the next 10 years. Of course, that’s not counting the diesel-excreting bacteria, the sequencing of your entire genome for $1,000, massive banks of frozen human eggs, space tourism, the identification of dark matter, widespread sterilisation of young adults, telepathy, supercomputer models of our brains, the discovery of life’s origins, maybe the disappearance of Bangladesh and certainly the loss of 247m acres of tropical forest.
As I said, just another decade really.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
ormer U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton confirmed Sunday that he has long been medicated for depression. A recovering alcoholic, Dayton also said he relapsed before the end of his Senate term, leaving voters to decide whether the revelations will hobble the enigmatic millionaire’s bid for the state’s highest office.
“I am a candidate for governor and I think people have a right to know this about me,” Dayton said in a 10-minute interview Sunday.
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IMAGINE going home one day to find a friend has become an enemy and is holding a knife to your throat.
Or finding yourself with nowhere to go after losing your job, then your home, then your family.
These are some of the people Oxford Homeless Pathways (OxHop), formerly Oxford Night Shelter, helps get back on their feet, providing everything from a bed for the night to a new purpose in life.
O’Hanlon House, in Luther Street, is a modern facility with accommodation for 56 people complete with a laundry, a café, training and counselling rooms, and a ‘wet’ room and garden, the only place on the premises where people can drink alcohol.<strong Story continues here ➤<strong
Washington, DC: A new study of antipsychotics, including Seroquel, notes that the medications are reasonably effective and well-tolerated treatments for mood and psychotic disorders, but they do have a dark side—side effects that cause diabetes and hyperglycemia, among other adverse reactions.
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Stress from the economic downturn, trouble coping with the transition to college, and general depression and anxiety appear to be hitting college students at rates never seen before on campuses across the country.
College counseling centers are also seeing many more students with complex mental-health diseases, such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder, center directors say. Story continues here ➤
A new contractor for the state’s mental health department has come under fire for a host of technical glitches that some mental health providers say has resulted in lost revenue.
The snags with ValueOptions Inc. have resulted in a loss of anywhere between $800 and $50,000 a month for health care providers who want to get paid by the state for treating Medicaid and uninsured patients, said Herbert S. Cromwell, executive director of Community Behavioral Health Association of Maryland. Story continues here ➤
MENTALLY ill Victorians who should be in psychiatric care spend up to four days in emergency departments because of a shortage of beds.
Victorian Government figures released under freedom of information show that in 2008 at least one person, and as many as four, waited between three and four days in emergency departments before being admitted to a specialist care bed.
Another 114 people waited on emergency department trolleys for more than one day and 20 patients waited between two and three days. Story continues here ➤
ENFIELD — – A woman at Jessica Keller’s church — the wife of a Vietnam veteran and mother of their four children — told Keller that she spoke to her husband only once during his yearlong tour of duty.
Keller said that made her see how fortunate she has been.
While Maj. James “Jake” Keller served in Afghanistan last year, he and Jessica e-mailed each other every day. They also spoke every week by phone and even had a few video conversations over the Internet. Through regular mail, Jessica Keller sent her husband drawings from their two young daughters and sent pressed leaves in the fall to remind him of his Connecticut home. Story continues here ➤
Our state, like others, is broke and about to cut payments for health care for children and the poor. I think specific anti-stupidity legislation is urgently needed in at least one area.
An Iowa mother, 36-year-old Michelle Kehoe, became so mentally ill with depression that she killed her child and then slit her own throat. A jury was then compelled to make the stupid decision that this was premeditated, first-degree murder (equivalent to a contract killing, or a career criminal killing in a robbery, or a husband who chooses murder over divorce). Story continues here ➤
For years, Deaundre Rice waged war with himself — battling alcohol and drug problems as well as mental illness — until bottoming out four years ago.
“I lost my job. My wife divorced me,” the Berkeley resident said. “I was in a tailspin.”
In late 2007, homeless and abusing drugs again, he found a new program to help those in Alameda County who were homeless and living with psychiatric disorders. Rice, tired of bouncing from shelter to psychiatric hospital to shelter, applied for help. Story continues here ➤
Although it is very important to make good court cases, get good convictions and get long sentences for “bad guys with guns,” it does not solve the larger issue: kids growing up to be bad guys with guns. There aren’t enough prisons to incarcerate our way out of this predicament.
We must take a serious look at prevention. Yes, prevention. How can we better keep kids from becoming criminals? How can we instill hope into our youth? How can we create healthy communities?
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Descending into the hell of drug abuse and mental illness is no joke.
Although local statistics on the number of people suffering the double problem of mental illness and chemical dependence are sparse, some 140 sufferers (a number of whom are repeat patients), are said to benefit from services at Mount Carmel Hospital’s Dual Diagnosis Unit every year.
Patients are usually in a state of chaos, with reactive mental health problems and unable to participate in community life, despite the detox and rehabilitation services available. There is no such thing as recreational drug use or a social drink for someone with a severe psychiatric illness, and the chances of committing suicide multiply. Story continues here ➤
“Next to Normal” at number 10.
This was the decade of the Great Real Estate Rush, as virtually every major theater in these parts built itself a new place to put on plays. The construction dust finally settles next fall, with the scheduled reopening of Arena Stage’s waterfront campus after an astonishing $125 million facelift. In the aftermath of the building boom, the region has some lovely new playhouses.
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When Fran Brown was told by a friend Larry Emory had been busy working with “the people under the bridge,” it grabbed her attention.
The people Brown’s friend was talking about were the homeless individuals and families who hang out around the homeless shelters in Monroe. Intrigued, Brown contacted Longstraw Baptist Church pastor Emory, who leads a group to feed the homeless on the fifth Saturday of the month. Story continues here ➤
FOR Terri White, the math isn’t difficult or fuzzy. Oklahomans’ inability to receive the mental health and substance abuse treatment they need only increases the burden on the criminal justice system.
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In rocky budget times, that leaves lawmakers with an important choice. Will they consider mental health and substance abuse services — the agency White oversees — as an offshoot of public safety entitled to some measure of budget protection? Or will those services face the potential drastic cuts that are likely to hit other so-called nonessential services of state government? The answer, White believes, will say much about where the state is in its understanding of brain health. Story continues here ➤
Singer and songwriter Vic Chesnutt has died at age 45. He died on December 25, 2009 in Athens, GA. A family spokesperson has stated to the Los Angeles Times that Chesnutt intentionally tried to commit suicide by overdosing on prescription muscle relaxants, which put him in a coma for a week before he passed. Story continues here ➤
In 2001, The Telegraph published a widely applauded investigative series by staff writer Hattie Bernstein that was headlined “Vanishing Options: The demise of addiction treatment in New Hampshire.”
The series looked at the impact of the closing of the state’s private treatment centers and the push for legislation that would guarantee parity in the insurance coverage of alcohol and drug dependency and other mental illnesses. Story continues here ➤
Police, courts and prisons will test all adult offenders for attention deficit disorders in a bid to reduce reoffending rates and cut aggressive behaviour in prisons.
The scheme is being set up by the Department of Health after research revealed a disproportionately high number of undiagnosed and untreated sufferers in the criminal justice system.
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Administrators hope recent amendments to Texas Tech’s student handbook will save lives, but the changes may also have thrust the university into a complicated new legal arena.
Tech’s board of regents approved the changes Dec. 18, making it one of a growing number of schools trying to strike a delicate balance between mentally ill students’ civil rights and overall campus safety. Story continues here ➤
na and Julian Spero had always believed their son was a happy, well-adjusted kid.
They discovered otherwise in 1985 when he called home from college in Florida, panicked over flunking a math exam. He said he wanted to come home but was afraid to leave his dorm room.
He begged his parents to come get him. Story continues here ➤
