Psychiatrist

T he relationships between psychiatrists and the people who seek our help are necessarily one-sided. While we know many of the intimate details of our patients' lives, they typically know about us only what we choose to tell them - usually very little. In the absence of personal information, people make assumptions about what their doctors' lives are like. Seeking reassurance that the person treating them has some special expertise in the universal struggle to live a controlled and happy life, it is common for patients to assume that their psychiatrist is not plagued by the same difficulties that they are. These assumptions are frequently inaccurate.

Dr. Gerald D. Klee, a retired psychiatrist who was an LSD expert and participated in its experimentation on volunteer servicemen at several military installations in the 1950s, died Sunday of complications after surgery at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Timonium resident was 86. Dr. Klee made headlines in 1975 when he confirmed published reports that the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Psychiatric Institute had been involved in secret research between 1956 and 1959, when hundreds of Army soldiers were given LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide.

The Towson psychiatrist whose license was suspended early this month after he was accused of improper conduct with boys he was treating faced the state board that oversees doctors Wednesday in a hearing. The closed-door hearing was a chance for Miguel Frontera to provide information to the Maryland Board of Physicians, which will decide whether to permanently revoke or reinstate his license. Frontera arrived with his lawyer, Natalie Magdeburger, who declined to comment. The outcome of the hearing was unclear, though Frontera has the right to request another hearing.

In December, a young man in Newtown, Conn., killed 20 small children and seven adults, including his mother, and then committed suicide. This tragic massacre has prompted legislators to reexamine firearms laws and quickly propose legislation that might prevent future mass murders. Much of it focuses on people who have sought mental health care. The Maryland General Assembly is considering legislation that requires mental health clinicians to report patients who are potentially dangerous for the purpose of restricting their access to guns.

Services for Dr. Dennis Tyson Jones, a Baltimore psychiatrist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Mount View Cemetery in West Friendship, Howard County.Dr. Jones, who practiced psychiatry in Baltimore for 30 years and served as a consultant to hospitals, businesses and government agencies, died of cancer Friday at his Ruxton home. He was 62.Born in Wilson, N.C., he graduated from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem in 1950.

Dr. John M. Hamilton, a Columbia psychiatrist who admitted to having a sexual affair with a female patient, has resigned his position as deputy medical director of the American Psychiatric Association.His resignation yesterday came two days after a state disciplinary panel placed him on probation for five years and forbade him from treating patients for at least a year. The state Board of Physician Quality Assurance called his conduct "unethical" and a violation of state law.Under a consent decree with the state board, the psychiatrist waived his right to a hearing and admitted to having the affair.

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF CHILDREN. Robert Coles. Houghton Mifflin. 358 pages. $22.95. Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard, is renowned for his sensitive and compelling studies of children, as well as for his wide-ranging essays, memoirs, biographies and literary studies. In the five volumes of "Children of Crisis" and in "The Moral Life of Children" and "The Political Life of Children," he elicited children's beliefs and examined them, and in so doing also examined adult ways of perceiving and understanding childhood.

Dr. Riva L. Novey, a Baltimore-based psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who trained future colleagues in her field and had a passion for cooking and the arts, died after going into cardiac arrest Friday at the Wesley Home in Mount Washington. The longtime Baltimore resident was 90. Dr. Novey was known for her keen insight into even the most difficult cases, a likely result of her early years spent as a social worker, colleagues said. "Because of her vast experience and her status as a social worker, I think maybe she could see things that [others]

Dr. Kay Robinson Cutler, a World War II veteran and a psychiatrist, died of undetermined causes Thursday at his home in Phoenix, Baltimore County. He was 84 and had suffered a stroke four years ago. Born in Idaho, he spent his childhood in Salt Lake City before joining the Army Air Forces in 1942. He served as a pilot in World War II and spent nine months as a prisoner of war in Germany, according to his son Kimball Cutler of Freeville, N.Y. Mr. Cutler married Wyona Barney in 1947, and in 1950 he received a medical degree from the University of Utah.

A Columbia psychiatrist was negligent in the treatment of a patient who later committed suicide, according to a suit filed in Howard County Circuit Court by the psychiatrist who last treated the patient.Dr. Lawrence W. Adler, formerly a psychiatrist at Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville, charges that Columbia psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Robert Hyman failed to provide him with the psychiatric recordsof James Pescetto. Pescetto committed suicide on April 20, 1988. Thesuit did not identify where Pescetto lived.

Sitting around a broad table in a nondescript office in Reisterstown last week, more than a dozen mental health advocates, medical professionals and law enforcement officials stared tensely at one another. Nearly a month after the state-created task force issued a report outlining its findings on psychiatric patients' access to firearms, several members were questioning a key recommendation - that mental health professionals should be required to report to law enforcement all patients who threaten suicide.

Dr. Ellen G. McDaniel, whose distinguished career in psychiatry spanned more than 40 years and influenced patients, medical students and even juries, died of lung cancer Thursday at her home in Highland. She was 71. The former Ellen Garb was raised in Cleveland and went off to college with thoughts of becoming a nurse. But her father encouraged her to train as a doctor, and she did — graduating from the University of Michigan Medical School as one of only seven women in the class of 1966, said her husband, John P. McDaniel.

Though none of us yet knows much of Adam Lanza's backstory, it doesn't take a mental health professional to suspect that a man who killed his mother before killing so many children and adults was likely suffering from a severe mental disorder. Although mental illness very rarely results in violence, let alone such heinous behavior, the fact is that so many of those who could benefit from state-of-the-art treatment do not receive it, for a variety of reasons. For example, some fear the implications of facing a condition that might limit the power of will to control thoughts, feelings or behaviors.

The former commander of the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., told a military court on Tuesday that accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning was held in highly restrictive "prevention-of-injury" custody even though psychiatrists recommended the conditions be eased. Retired Marine Col. Daniel J. Choike told the court at Fort Meade that he agreed with the staff of the brig at Quantico that Manning should be kept on prevention-of-injury status based on his history, the seriousness of the charges against him and what he called his "erratic behavior.

Dr. Edward Lawrence Suarez-Murias, a retired psychiatrist and World War II veteran, died of pneumonia July 2 at his Roland Park home. He was 96. Named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he practiced in Baltimore for more than 40 years. A family biography said he was born in Havana, Cuba, to Marguerite Suarez-Murias y Vendel of Brussels, Belgium, and Eduardo Ramon Suarez-Murias, a Havana resident. He attended grade school in Waterloo, Belgium, and in the public school system of Los Angeles, where his father, a mining engineer, settled the family.

Dr. Michael Victor Edelstein, whose career at Sheppard Pratt Health System spanned nearly 30 years and whose hobbies were auto repair and listening to gospel music, died of a heart attack Monday at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Cockeysville resident was 66. Dr. Edelstein was on his way to work Monday morning when he was stricken. He was taken by medics to St. Joseph Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. "I've know Michael since I came to Sheppard Pratt in 1986, and he was one of the most remarkable doctors I've ever worked with," said Dr. Steve Sharfstein, Sheppard Pratt Health System president.

Dr. William M. Goldstein, a psychiatrist who taught and wrote about his field, died of cancer yesterday at his Rockville home. He was 63. Born in Baltimore and raised in the Howard Park neighborhood, he was a 1960 graduate of City College and earned a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in Ohio. He was a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Goldstein, who practiced in Chevy Chase for many years, joined the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1975 and taught its psychiatric residents the principles of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

The woman accusing real estate broker Gary Hart of rape was so overwhelmed by the thought of breaking up with a former Washington Redskins player that she became abusive and suicidal, an Annapolis psychiatrist testified yesterday.Dr. Richard Templeton said the football player, James W. Steffan, was trying to slow down the relationship he had with the woman three years ago, but she was unable to cope."(Steffan) led me to believe that they had a very intense relationship and he was feeling powerless and overwhelmed in how to deal with it," Templeton said.

Dementia and its evil twin, Alzheimer's, may have moved ahead of cancer on the list of most feared diseases, especially among baby boomers, who have begun to believe it is their inescapable fate if they have the bad luck to live too long. So we grasp at any news about aging, hoping that medical science has indeed found a way to preserve that most essential part of who we are — our memories. Do we protect our minds by doing The New York Times crossword puzzle or by doing aerobics?

Dr. Alejandro Rodriguez, former director of the division of child psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who also conducted pivotal studies on autism and other developmental disorders in children, died Friday of heart failure at his Palm City, Fla., home. The longtime Ruxton resident was 93. "He was my teacher many, many, many years ago at Hopkins. His teaching was patient-oriented and fundamentally bedside. He'd say, 'Let's go to the bedside and see the patient,'" said Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., who is director of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Hopkins School of Medicine.