Mental Disorders

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.

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.

SIDESTEPPING a months-long impasse by agreeing to allow a limited test of tax-exempt medical savings accounts, Congress recently passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance reform legislation, ensuring that most employees will be able to carry their health coverage from job to job, without losing protection because of pre-existing medical conditions. Eager for any progress on health care, President Clinton has promised to sign the measure. For the millions of Americans who change or lose jobs every year, that's good news.

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...

LAST week several hundred people gathered in a smal church in Cold Spring, Ky., to await the appearance of the Virgin Mary.While no appearance took place, other persons have in recent years reported sightings of Mary, Jesus and various angels in places as disparate as Arizona, Queens, New York, Mexico and Croatia. Many Americans, including a former presidential candidate, say they have received messages directly from God.There is a fair amount of snickering and derision in some quarters whenever people announce that they have just concluded a chat with God or have seen Mary in the doorway to heaven.

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.

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.

Almost 50 percent of Americans will develop a mental illness at some point in their lives, a new study has found, and most will not receive the proper treatment. Researchers led by Harvard epidemiologist Ronald C. Kessler fanned out across the country to assess the rates of mental illness in dozens of U.S. communities in a survey conducted from 2001 to 2003. Thousands answered questions about their thoughts and behavior, in a detailed assessment called the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth revision)

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.

The killing of a 9-year-old Frederick boy has prompted a renewed push for a state law that would keep sexual predators locked up after they have completed their prison terms. Supporters of the measure, which has failed three times in the Maryland General Assembly, say such a law would have saved the life of Christoper Lee Ausherman, who was sexually assaulted and killed in November. Authorities have charged Elmer Spencer Jr., 46, a man with a history of convictions for sex crimes, in Christopher's death.