Depression

The Duncans of Rockville were a "nice Irish-Catholic family" with 13 kids, one of whom grew up to be mayor, Montgomery County executive and a candidate for Maryland governor. They're also a family so stricken by mental illness that the National Institutes of Health used them, in the 1960s, in a case study of depression. Doug Duncan's paternal grandfather was hospitalized for manic depression in the 1930s, and he remained hospitalized until his death 20 years later. Duncan's father suffered from the same illness and was forced to take a medical retirement from his job at the National Security Agency.

Pedestrian is hit, killed on U.S. 29 2 A pedestrian was struck and killed early Saturday while attempting to cross U.S. 29 near U.S. 40 in Howard County, police said. The pedestrian, whose identity was not released pending family notification, was hit about 1:22 a.m. in the slow lane of southbound U.S. 29 by a Toyota 4-Runner driven by Roland Ronald Ward of Ellicott City. Ward was not injured. The victim was wearing dark clothing, police said. The investigation was continuing. Hanah Cho Man's body found near burning car in Howard 3 Howard County authorities are investigating the death of a man whose body was found near a burning car late Friday.

Fire Chief James Clack aims to keep us out of blazes - in Baltimore and in the hereafter. The city fire chief just became a deacon in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, so he can save people in more ways than one. He'll be introduced during Mass at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown on Saturday. What sounds like an odd resume combo is old hat to Clack, who was ordained as a deacon in St. Cloud, Minn., in 2003, when he was with the Minneapolis Fire Department. "They are different, but ... both are vocations where your main focus is helping others," Clack said.

American rail travelers couldn't have been more heartened last week by the announcement that President Barack Obama's budget included in the stimulus program $8 billion for the development of a high-speed rail network as well as a $5 billion rail grant program for the states. This is welcome news to Amtrak riders who have hoped for and deserved something better since the agency assumed operation of the nation's passenger trains nearly 40 years ago. It also represents a sort of deliverance for Amtrak, which for decades has had to crawl on its knees across a field of broken glass for whatever pitiful alms six presidents and Congress saw fit to bestow.

Baltimore money manager Legg Mason Inc. has suffered its largest quarterly loss as a public company after taking $2.3 billion in charges and seeing investors pull billions of dollars out of its funds amid a deepening recession. The company reported yesterday a higher-than-expected net loss of $1.49 billion, or $10.55 per diluted share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended Dec. 31. That's compared with a net income of $154.6 million, or $1.07 a share, during the corresponding period a year ago. Ten analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News expected an average loss of $4.01 a share.

Trips off the tongue, doesn't it? "The worst recession since the Great Depression." Special interests seeking bailouts, politicians pushing legislation and even some news organizations assure us it's true. Except it's not. Not yet. From what we know so far, this recession isn't even close to being as painful as the terrible slump of the early 1980s. Not the deepest. Not the longest. By some gauges, it's not even as bad as several less severe downturns. The economy is on an alarming course, and it may well break post-Depression records before we're done.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recently said the city is entering into a period "worse than the Depression." This week, Jim Press, vice chairman of Chrysler, told the Associated Press, "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a depression." These leaders are far from alone in their apocalyptic thinking. In an unscientific, online survey in The Baltimore Sun, 46 percent of respondents agreed that "the U.S. is heading for an economic downturn on a par with the Great Depression."

Sheppard Pratt seems to have found its target market: readers of The New Yorker. The Towson psychiatric hospital ran not one but two ads in the Nov. 3 issue. There's yet another in the Nov. 24 edition. Perhaps anyone who understands those one-panel cartoons should have his head examined. But is there something else that makes New Yorker readers likely consumers of psychiatric services? No one in the hospital's public affairs office responded to my calls, so no insight there. Jim Bready, the retired Evening Sun editorial writer who spotted the ads, thinks Sheppard Pratt might be fishing for newly despondent Wall Street types or the age-old reckless rich.

With all the news about the economic crisis, is it any wonder that some of us feel stressed out about our financial futures? Although experiencing some stress may be a reasonable reaction to the global financial situation, feeling deeply anxious during tough economic times doesn't have to be inevitable, says Jack Vaeth, staff psychiatrist at Sheppard Pratt Health System, who also is in private practice in Hunt Valley and Annapolis. Given the reports about the economy these days, is feeling more anxious than usual about our financial futures unavoidable?

Louis Galambos is scared about the economy and cautiously optimistic at the same time, which sounds about right. "Am I nervous?" says the professor of economic history at the Johns Hopkins University. "Yes, I'm nervous. You are, too. We're all nervous. Anybody who looks at this and thinks about it should be nervous. This could be another big one. And it could have really major implications for the society." But as one with a better perspective on U.S. business trends than almost anybody else, Galambos, 77, knows more than most of the people who speak blithely about another "depression."