Mental Disorders

Bank manager named to advisory boardBen C. Rogers has been appointed by the governor's office to the Springfield State Hospital Citizens Advisory Board.Rogers, manager of Carroll County Bank and Trust Co.'s Eldersburg branch, will work with the staff and patients at Springfield on primary-care needs.The advisory board is made up of citizens and business leaders who develop community understanding of the needs of those with mental disorders.Rogers also is president of the South Carroll Business Association.

An Associated Press story in The Baltimore Sun ("Gov't survey: 1 in 5 adults suffered mental illness last year, but most went untreated," Nov. 18) maintains that 20 percent of "American adults suffered from mental illness during the past year [and that] [m]ost didn't receive treatment. " This is one of those meaningless statistics that converts problematic Americans into "diseased" Americans and cites the "link" between "mental health problems" and alcoholism and drug abuse. Yes, it is true that irresponsible drinking and taking of drugs will make one's life miserable and may also be correlated with other anti-social behavior.

A Howard County Circuit Court judge denied yesterday a request to change the sentence of a former special-education teacher who was convicted in August of a third-degree sex offense involving a 15-year-old boy. Kirsten Ann Kinley is beset by several medical conditions - including kidney disease, depression and other mental disorders, and contact lens difficulties - that warrant her release from the Howard County Detention Center, her attorney, Thomas Morrow,...

Tidy rows of more than 900 small gravestones, each with a number but no name, line a steep hillside at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville, a state facility for the mentally ill. For decades the hospital buried patients who died indigent, without family or friends, in Sunny Side Cemetery. Expediency made the grassy knoll surrounded by trees the patients' graveyard. In 1899, it was the closest ground to the complex that housed the most aged or critically ill. For patients whose bodies went unclaimed, there were no last prayers, no gathering of mourners and no chiseled names and dates noting their years on earth.

A 42-year-old Cherry Hill man with a history of mental disorders was shot and killed by police yesterday after allegedly lunging at officers with a box-cutter, Baltimore police said.Officers had gone to the 2300 block of Terra Firma Road in Cherry Hill about 1:30 p.m. to investigate a domestic dispute in which the man's wife claimed he had beat her and refused to allow her to feed their baby girl, police said.Ronald Gilmore was shot once in the shoulder and died at the scene.Dennis S. Hill, a police spokesman, said Officer Denise Wilkes, 30, initially met the victim's wife, Donna Gilmore, near her apartment in the 3000 block of Southland Road.

ON ANY NIGHT, nearly 2,000 youths languish in juvenile detention facilities across the country because they cannot access mental health services. As a result, children are endangered and traumatized and corrections staff struggle to serve a population they are ill-equipped to handle, all at taxpayer expense. Until recently, policy-makers have ignored the issue. Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California and Republican Sen. Susan M. Collins of Maine commissioned the first national survey of children held in juvenile detention centers awaiting mental health services.

A bus tour aimed at matching people with free or discounted prescription drug programs stopped by Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis yesterday, making Maryland the 22nd state to be visited since spring. An initiative by the pharmaceutical industry, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance is a national clearinghouse that has information on hundreds of assistance programs, said Wes Metheny, a vice president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, based in Washington.

"The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim," by Richard Pollak. Simon &Schuster. 480 pages. $30.Walter Bagehot noted that self-taught men tend to be "dogmatic, decisive and detestable." Bruno Bettelheim, portrayed in this thoroughly researched biography by Richard Pollak, fits the mold. Bettelheim had no qualifications as a child psychiatrist or psychologist, having been a businessman with an art history doctorate in 1930s Vienna. And yet after escaping from Nazi Austria, he won - by means of glibness with Freudian theory and a set of influential friends - the office of director of the Orthogenic School for disturbed children at the University of Chicago, a post he held from 1944 to 1973.

I am writing to clarify a misunderstanding about social workers printed in the editorial "Tucson and mental health" (Jan. 16). Referring to the proposed Mental Health First Aid program, the editorial states that "social workers, college counselors, teachers and others can help until professional aid is available. " This statement suggests that social workers are not professionally trained to deal with mental health problems. This inaccuracy is troubling because clinical social workers have been providing mental health services for nearly a century and are licensed by the state of Maryland to diagnose and treat mental health disorders.

THIS IS suicide prevention week. According to the American Association of Suicidology, about every two hours a young person commits suicide. Adolescent suicide is not only one of this country's great tragedies, it is also a symptom of a larger problem. Mental disorders such as depression are not generally acknowledged or accepted as "real" illnesses. We still blame the victim with remarks like, "Why doesn't he just get off his backside," or "Doesn't she know how she is hurting her family?"