Mental Disorders

Yamile Garcia was helping a friend pack up her Essex apartment last week when she spotted something that made her skin go cold: the blood-red eyes of a 17-year cicada. She can't really account for what happened next. She only knows that she yanked her shirt up over her face, burst into tears and had what felt like a panic attack. "I couldn't catch my breath," recalls Garcia, 24, a Spanish language translator at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "My friend had to calm me and say, `Yami, breathe.

Having trouble concentrating? Can't sit still? Are you disorganized and always late? If so, and if you've always been that way, it might not be a flaw in your personality but a genuine clinical disorder known as adult ADHD. Everyone's heard of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, but left undiagnosed and untreated, it can carry over into adulthood, says Dr. David W. Goodman, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland in Lutherville.

Governor names Rogers to hospital citizens boardGov. Parris N. Glendening has appointed Ben. C. Rogers of Westminster to the Springfield Hospital Center citizens advisory board.The panel is an appointed board of local residents and business leaders whose responsibility is to develop community understanding of the needs of those who have mental disorders.As an adviser, Rogers will work with staff members and patients about their primary caregiving needs.Rogers is manager of the Eldersburg branch of Carroll County Bank and Trust Co.Pub Date: 10/20/96

Rogers appointed to Springfield boardGov. Parris Glendening has appointed Ben C. Rogers of Westminster assistant vice president and business development officer of the citizens advisory board of Springfield State Hospital in Sykesville.The board is made up of appointed business leaders and others whose responsibility is to assume leadership in developing community understanding of the needs of those who have mental disorders.Rogers, who joined Carroll County Bank and Trust Co. in 1993, will work directly with the staff and patients of the hospital.

There is much we don't know about Dr. Ben Carson's decision to withdraw as a commencement speaker for the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and education. His recent comments in opposition to gay marriage, in which he compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, prompted a petition from some Hopkins students for him to be removed as a speaker. The dean of the Hopkins med school wrote a letter condemning the remarks, and Dr. Carson apologized. What happened between that series of events and his decision to step down - whether he faced additional pressure, by whom and how - will likely remain a mystery.

Dr. Ernest M. Gruenberg, an expert on the epidemiology of mental disorders and a former chairman of the Department of Mental Hygiene at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, died Tuesday of multiple organ failure at Washington Hospital Center in Washington. He was 75 and lived in Bethesda.A proponent of community care for the mentally ill, Dr. Gruenberg retired in 1981 after heading the department at Hopkins since 1975. He also served as a professor of psychiatry in the medical school.

WASHINGTON -- The White House drug czar said in a warning to parents yesterday that depressed teens are medicating themselves with marijuana, running risks of even deeper depression. A new report by the Office of National Drug Control Policy said that frequent marijuana ingestion doubles a teen's risk of depression and anxiety, based on data compiled from published studies. The report, timed to be released during Mental Health Awareness Month, cited a study that marijuana use increases the risk of developing mental disorders later in life by 40 percent.

Tipper Gore said in Baltimore yesterday that states are not ready to run programs that serve people with mental disorders, although impending federal Medicaid reform would give them control over those programs.In an interview with reporters at the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy's national conference, Mrs. Gore, the wife of Vice President Al Gore, said she has been meeting with panels of state health officials to discuss how states would administer block grant programs for health care.

Motions in the murder case of Ryan T. Furlough, the Centennial High School senior accused of fatally poisoning a classmate by spiking his soda with cyanide, were postponed yesterday after his lawyers said they are waiting for a psychological evaluation of their client. The evaluation will help attorneys decide whether an insanity plea is warranted, but it has been held up because the psychiatrist retained for the case has been in poor health, said Joseph Murtha, one of two attorneys representing Furlough.

WE print the following with no editorial comment other than an admonition to let sleeping spirits sleep.KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuter) -- Malaysia has approved a new national research center to study the supernatural, the New Straits Times reported, amid complaints that agitated spirits are increasingly wrecking people's lives."