Ill People

Justin Fenton 's account of Dr. Lawrence Egbert confirms disability advocates' worst fears about "assisted suicide" ("City doctor at center of assisted-suicide debate", May 22). This practice is not limited to terminally-ill people on the verge of horrible death with irremediable pain. Dr. Egbert and his associates have been prosecuted for their role in the suicide of an Arizona woman with mental illness who was not terminally ill. Regardless of his intent, Dr. Egbert's actions sent the message that the life of a person with a disability does not have enough value to be preserved.

The lack of mental health resources in the United States has contributed to a significant increase in visits to the emergency department ("How to care for mentally ill people?" Jan. 8). Psychiatric emergencies grew by 131 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to a recent study. Psychiatric patients often "board" in the hallways of emergency department for several days, waiting for inpatient psychiatric services. This contributes to overcrowding which harms everyone. Emergency physicians are dedicated to providing a medical home for any patient who can't access medical care including people with health insurance who are unable to get timely appointments with their primary care physicians.

The centerpiece of Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun control bill survived the Maryland Senate intact Wednesday, though opponents vowed to keep fighting the proposal to give the state some of the nation's strictest gun laws. A new licensing provision at the heart of O'Malley's bill would require handgun buyers to give their fingerprints to the state police and to complete a training course. The law also would ban the sale of assault weapons and further limit access to guns by people with some mental illnesses.

Two weeks ago, a 26-year-old mental patient from a Glen Burnie rehabilitation program walked into a local bank and held 11 people hostage at knifepoint for four hours.Four weeks earlier, a patient from Omni House who had once been charged with child sexual assault was forced by police to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after allegedly offering neighborhood boys money to accompany him into nearby woods.Omni House is now being investigated by the state and could lose its license to operate, but some mental health activists and professionals say the blame may lie with the state and courts, which release unfit patients to community-based programs.

Tonight's Frontline paints a portrait of the tragic frustration that is called schizophrenia."Broken Minds," which will be on Maryland Public Television, channels 22 and 67, at 9 o'clock, is not a clinical examination of the disease, a dispassionate chronicling of the variety of its manifestations with a look at the latest research in the area.Indeed, this PBS documentary is a bit skimpy with the basic facts. It never provides even a basic definition of schizophrenia, or, alternatively, an admission that the disease is fundamentally beyond definition.

After backing down last summer on plans to house violent juvenile sex offenders on their campuses, Sheppard Pratt Health System, in Towson, and Taylor Health System, in Ellicott City, quietly opened residential treatment centers for teen-agers with severe behavioral problems this week.While many residents expressed cautious optimism that the youths, ages 12 to 17, would not disrupt their neighborhoods -- in contrast to fears about the sex-offender center -- several were upset they did not know about the facilities opening.

For more than a century, world-renowned Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital has sheltered famous and not-so-famous mentally ill patients at its bucolic Towson campus -- sometimes for years.But now, payment restrictions imposed by insurance companies and new drug treatments have emptied scores of its hospital beds, trends changing the shape of Sheppard Pratt and other psychiatric institutions around the country.Many hospitals -- from Sheppard Pratt to Menninger in Topeka, Kan., and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

Dr. Herbert S. Gross, the county's director of the Division of Mental Health and Addictions, retired Thursday, but he won't be severing his ties to the area medical community.Dr. Gross, 58, will expand his private psychiatry practice in Rockville and continue teaching part time at the University of Maryland. But he also will provide training to staff members at Crownsville State Hospital.Dr. Gross held the county mental health job for six years. Before that, he was a full-time professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine for 21 years.

Omni House and one of its mentally disabled clients charged a Glen Burnie developer yesterday with housing discrimination.Cromwell Fountain Associates canceled the sale of 12 apartments to the mental-health care provider earlier this month, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.In their suit, Omni House and James G., who would have lived in one of the apartments, said the cancellation violated federal fair housing law.They have asked the court to prevent Cromwell Fountain Associates from selling the 12 units to anyone else until the Glen Burnie-based, non-profit rehabilitation organization for the mentally ill can plead its case.

Among the 61 calls the Arbutus Volunteer Fire Department received for medical and fire-rescue service Feb. 19-26 were the following: Wilkens Avenue at Interstate 695, 4:47 p.m. Feb. 22. Crews from the Arbutus and Lansdowne volunteer stations responded to the report of a motor vehicle accident with injuries in Arbutus. Two people with non-life-threatening injuries taken to a local hospital. Wilkens Avenue, 5000 block, 6:50 a.m. Feb. 22. Crews from the Arbutus volunteer station and Halethorpe career station responded to a report of a person injured after falling in Arbutus.