Mental Disorders

Several serious mental health disorders traditionally viewed as illnesses of adulthood are more likely to begin during adolescence rather than any other time of life, a study by the National Institute of Mental Health has found.The study supports the belief of many experts that a greater emphasis should be placed on diagnosing and treating mental disorders among individuals under age 20."These findings underscore the importance of detecting and treating mental illnesses and substance abuse early, before they ruin a person's life," said the institute's director, Lewis L. Judd.

I applaud the efforts of the University of Maryland in obtaining the funding needed to increase their mental health services ("UM adds funding for mental health," April 3). While money is important, it isn't everything. National statistics tell us there is a very high prevalence (50-to-75 percent) of co-occurring substance use and mental disorders, otherwise known as co-occurring disorders. It is the expectation, not the exception. So designing their treatment system to accommodate these individuals will assure better outcomes.

Jason Aaron DeLong suffers from three mental disorders and a neurological defect that would have made planning his mother's murder impossible, a psychiatrist for the defense said yesterday.Rather, the killing was a release of the lifelong rage Mr. DeLong felt toward Cathryn Brace Farrar because she neglected him and abused him physically and sexually, said Ellen McDaniel, a psychiatrist who practices in Towson."There was this outpouring of tremendous fear and rage beyond his control," Dr. McDaniel said.

I read the article about the Oliver neighborhood with great hope and jubilation ("Blitz of help set in Oliver," March 13). I applaud Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her team for their efforts in trying to resuscitate this community by using a holistic approach. I particularly like the integration of law enforcement and drug treatment but with some words of caution. National statistics tell us there is very high prevalence of co-occurring substance use and mental disorders specifically among minorities.

THE ATTACK by Richard E. Vats on the rigor of Surgeon General David Satcher's report is long on rhetoric and short on science. The report reflects the best evidence on the epidemiology of mental disorders from the world's leading experts, who were contributors and reviewers for the document. As underscored by the Surgeon General, the worldwide magnitude of the problem of disability attributable to mental disorder is reflected in a recent study of the global burden of disease conducted by the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Harvard School of Public Health.

After the unfortunate murder suicide at the University of Maryland College Park by a graduate student who used a handgun to commit his crimes, The Sun wrote an editorial urging college campuses to educate their students about the signs of mental illness in their fellow students ("Campus nightmare," Feb. 14). In fact, you wanted this type of education to be a part of college orientation programs. Well intentioned though this editorial was, it didn't offer one sure and certain method to prevent the kind of disaster that occurred at College Park.

Parents who have a mental illness are at a higher risk of abusing or neglecting their children, a Johns Hopkins University study has found.In a study of nearly 10,000 parents, 58.5 percent of those who abused their children suffered from a mental illness, as did 69.3 percent of parents who neglected their children, Dr. Yuriko Egami reported in a recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry."

disease: n. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. — American Heritage Dictionary I have been teaching and writing for decades on the topic of "rhetoric and mental illness," arguing that "mental illness" has been a catch-all term of behavioral explanation that elucidates nothing and is often false; there is usually no "disease" in mental illness.

Medical ethicists meeting in Baltimore yesterday unveiled a 20-point national proposal aimed at better protecting people with mental disorders who take part in medical research.The draft report, which will be formally considered Tuesday by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission at a meeting in Miami, calls for a raft of new regulations as well as a standing federal panel to weigh in on research involving individuals with impaired decision-making skills.Although the plan may undergo some last-minute revisions this week, it is expected to be approved.

Hoping to demonstrate the need for Howard County's services for children with serious emotional and mental disorders, local advocacy groups last week took a group of state and county politicians on a tour of area programs."

After the unfortunate murder suicide at the University of Maryland College Park by a graduate student who used a handgun to commit his crimes, The Sun wrote an editorial urging college campuses to educate their students about the signs of mental illness in their fellow students ("Campus nightmare," Feb. 14). In fact, you wanted this type of education to be a part of college orientation programs. Well intentioned though this editorial was, it didn't offer one sure and certain method to prevent the kind of disaster that occurred at College Park.

Bryan Johnson didn't know he had bipolar disorder until he ended up at the emergency room, where he assaulted a police officer. His family had taken him to the University of Maryland Medical Center because he was acting strangely, staring into the distance and constantly pacing as he struggled with the death of his brother and the loss of his job. He was sent to Central Booking as soon as he was released from the hospital, and wound up with a...

Thomas Stephen Szasz, arguably the world's foremost psychiatrist, died Sept. 8. 2012. Former psychiatrist and current columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that "Szasz is the kind of author no one reads but everyone knows about. " That's unfortunate. Too many mental health professionals haven't the foggiest idea who Thomas Szasz was and why he will remain important to fields of science, medicine, ethics, law — and particularly mental health — for centuries to come. Dr. Szasz, who received an honorary doctorate from Towson University in 1999, adopted the premises of Rudolf Virchow, the Austrian pathologist who defined disease consistent with all serious pathologists.

The arrest last month of a Maryland man for allegedly threatening to commit a mass murder at his former workplace inevitably drew comparisons to the shooting at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater that had occurred a few days earlier, leaving 12 people dead and 58 wounded. Both incidents raised questions about how people apparently suffering from mental illnesses managed to obtain firearms and whether tougher state and federal gun laws might have prevented them from doing so. That should be one of the first orders of business for the state task force that convened this week to consider changes to Maryland's laws governing gun access by the mentally ill. But the issue may not lend itself to an easy or quick resolution.

John Elder Robison taught himself electronics while growing up and was so skilled that despite dropping out of high school in ninth grade, he designed pyrotechnic guitars for the rock group Kiss and sound effects for electronic games. Yet to hear him tell it, some of Robison's greatest work comes while he's standing on stage speaking to crowds about how he's lived with Asperger syndrome and conveying to young people with the disorder a message that no one told him when he was a child.

disease: n. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. — American Heritage Dictionary I have been teaching and writing for decades on the topic of "rhetoric and mental illness," arguing that "mental illness" has been a catch-all term of behavioral explanation that elucidates nothing and is often false; there is usually no "disease" in mental illness.

If Your Adolescent Has an Eating Disorder: An Essential Resource for Parents By Timothy Walsh, M.D., and V.L. Cameron Oxford University Press/$9.95 It is heartbreaking to have a child with an eating disorder. But it's worse if you don't feel you have support, good information or a roadmap to recovery. This book, If Your Adolescent Has an Eating Disorder, is an excellent way to get grounded. It contains some of the best information you will find on the subject. In 2003, the nonprofit Annenberg Foundation Trust launched an Adolescent Mental Health Initiative, setting up seven commissions on mental disorders that begin between ages 10 and 22. The result: a mammoth treatise called Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders (2005)

Bryan Johnson didn't know he had bipolar disorder until he ended up at the emergency room, where he assaulted a police officer. His family had taken him to the University of Maryland Medical Center because he was acting strangely, staring into the distance and constantly pacing as he struggled with the death of his brother and the loss of his job. He was sent to Central Booking as soon as he was released from the hospital, and wound up with a...

When researchers announced that 16 million Americans who fly into occasional fits of unwarranted rage may suffer from a mental illness called "intermittent explosive disorder," the diagnosis drew its share of hoots and howls. "Your grandmother would say these are bad folks who can't control their temper, and she would be right," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, an outspoken schizophrenia expert alarmed by the ever-expanding list of behaviors and attitudes branded as illnesses. Torrey and other critics point to the volume that doctors use to determine mental illness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as evidence that the world is out of control.

CHICAGO -- One in 20 Americans might be susceptible to uncontrollable anger attacks in which they lash out in road rage, spousal abuse or other severe transgressions that are totally unjustified, researchers from Harvard and the University of Chicago have found. Their nationwide study found that the condition called intermittent explosive disorder, or IED, is not the rare occurrence that psychiatrists had thought. Four to five percent of people in the study were found to have physically assaulted someone, threatened bodily harm or destroyed property in a rage an average of five times a year.