Sheppard Pratt

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. -- The channel between Charm City and this small college community reopened wide several years ago, sending a wealth of football talent westward to a school nurturing hopes for an NCAA Division II championship.Nine Baltimore-area players who prepped in the city and Howard, Harford, Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties -- many of them overlooked or unwanted in recruiting -- are spotlighted members of a Shepherd College team that has national aspirations after a 10-2 season that included its first two games in the Division II playoffs.

In an effort to keep the historic institution up to date, Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital hopes to build a new in-patient hospital on its sprawling 100-acre campus in Towson.As part of that move, Sheppard Pratt is seeking to rezone 38 acres, which would allow it to lease two 1891 Victorian-style inpatient buildings to non-hospital companies or organizations.The proposal is the latest change for Sheppard Pratt, which in recent years has had to deal with the ever-evolving treatment of mental illness, cutbacks on insurance reimbursements and fewer residential patients.

The two most elegant and prestigious buildings in Towson are known simply as A and B.No fancy names were necessary for the identical twins perched atop a wooded ridge at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital. With their six-story towers, lattice-work balconies and majestic bay windows, they spoke for themselves. One was built for men, the other for women. Both were hailed as part of the movement toward more humane treatment of the mentally ill in 1891.Those days are long past.In the world of managed health care, the 14-foot ceilings, Tiffany stained-glass windows and cozy sun rooms no longer fit.Over the next few years, officials at Sheppard Pratt plan to build a more modern facility on the west side of the sprawling 100-acre campus -- closing two of the nation's oldest buildings still in use at a mental institution.

Sheppard Pratt Health System said it has reached a three-year agreement with Peninsula Regional Medical Center of Salisbury to manage the hospital's 17-bed inpatient adult mental health unit.Sheppard Pratt and the medical center would not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.As part of the deal, Sheppard Pratt, the largest provider of behavioral health care services in Maryland, will manage the 7-year-old unit's clinical and administrative operations.The unit's program director, social worker and two therapists will become Sheppard Pratt employees, but the nursing staff, technicians and other workers will remain with the hospital, said Bill Elliott, the unit's mental health services program director.

Sheppard Pratt Health System has tentatively agreed to sell 14 acres of its 100-acre campus to neighboring GBMC Healthcare Inc. in a deal that would tighten links between the two Towson institutions, hospital officials said.The deal would allow Sheppard Pratt to build an inpatient hospital on GBMC land, and the institutions would construct a bridge joining the two hospitals.Sheppard Pratt officials said they will decide whether to exercise that option in the next year. The sale of the 14 acres would help Sheppard Pratt finance its new hospital.

After backing down last summer on plans to house violent juvenile sex offenders on their campuses, Sheppard Pratt Health System, in Towson, and Taylor Health System, in Ellicott City, quietly opened residential treatment centers for teen-agers with severe behavioral problems this week.While many residents expressed cautious optimism that the youths, ages 12 to 17, would not disrupt their neighborhoods -- in contrast to fears about the sex-offender center -- several were upset they did not know about the facilities opening.

Worried that the use of historic Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson could change as mental health treatment shifts to more outpatient care, a preservation group plans to capture the renowned facility's history on film.Historic Towson Inc. received a $1,000 grant last week from Baltimore County Historical Trust Inc. for the project, which has drawn the interest of Emmy-winning cinematographer Richard Chisolm, who has agreed to work on the documentary.As the film's format is being developed, Historic Towson is seeking photos, home movies and anecdotes from neighbors, former staff and patients who stayed at the hospital, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s.

Sheppard Pratt Health System is providing mental health services at Carroll County General Hospital in Westminster.The Carroll hospital has contracted with the health system for it to provide psychiatric services and counseling to its adult day program for mental health outpatients and to the 20-bed behavioral health services unit, formerly called the psychiatric unit.Neither Towson-based Sheppard Pratt nor the hospital would disclose how much the Towson institution would be paid under the three-year contract, which became effective March 1.Sheppard Pratt, an outgrowth of the 106-year-old Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, replaces Glass Mental Health Centers, a Baltimore-based mental health services provider that has served Carroll hospital patients since it opened a psychiatric wing in 1991.

A man sought in the fatal shootings of two women in their East Baltimore home Tuesday was arrested early yesterday and is being held without bail at the Central Booking and Intake Center, police said.Homicide Detective John Thanner said Northeastern District police, acting on a tip, spotted Timothy Van Engram, 38, at 32nd Street and Hillen Road about 12: 05 a.m. and arrested him without incident.Thanner said Engram, of the 600 block of E. 36th St. was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his girlfriend, Tamara Chester, 38, and her daughter, Tiffany Skinner, 20, who were shot in their home in the 1500 block of N. Eden St. He said Engram was due to be tried Nov. 17 on charges of assaulting Chester.

With years of TV and movie-viewing under her belt, Erin Hilton thinks she has a pretty good idea why images of violence can deeply affect children."Violence is power, and everyone wants to be powerful," said the 17-year-old, a ninth-grader at Sheppard Pratt Health System's Forbush School in Towson.This is what organizers of the first high school Critical Viewing Workshop, held yesterday at the school, hoped to hear: a sophisticated understanding of the violence in television shows, and video games and other media.

When it comes to what the therapists call "body image," Marissa Massey doesn't seem to need much bucking up. Before the question was even asked, the inmate at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women had a ready answer: "I love my body. I do." If everyone had that much confidence, Saturday's event at the prison in Jessup might not have been considered necessary. Representatives of the Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt and the Girl Scouts set up shop at the prison yesterday to continue their campaign to resist what is considered a pervasive cultural obsession with an ideal body type, usually thin and thinner.

They were two elderly gentlemen living out their days at Harmony Hall, an assisted-living facility in Columbia. James W. Brown and Earl Lafayette Wilder didn't know each other, according to an official at the facility, and might not have had any contact until Aug. 14. Now, Brown, 91, is dead and Wilder, 87, has been charged with killing him that afternoon in an incident outside the home where both men lived. It was Howard County's first homicide of the year. Joseph LaVerghetta, the general counsel for Harmony Hall's owner, said that the details of what triggered the incident remain unclear.

Pedestrian is hit, killed on U.S. 29 2 A pedestrian was struck and killed early Saturday while attempting to cross U.S. 29 near U.S. 40 in Howard County, police said. The pedestrian, whose identity was not released pending family notification, was hit about 1:22 a.m. in the slow lane of southbound U.S. 29 by a Toyota 4-Runner driven by Roland Ronald Ward of Ellicott City. Ward was not injured. The victim was wearing dark clothing, police said. The investigation was continuing. Hanah Cho Man's body found near burning car in Howard 3 Howard County authorities are investigating the death of a man whose body was found near a burning car late Friday.

Michael Costa, executive chef at Baltimore's Pazo, knows a thing or two about flambeing. He knows if the flames shoot up way over his head, it's a bad sign. Even if the fire marshal is standing by, which he was. The HBO pilot The Washingtonienne shot scenes in the restaurant recently, and Costa was one of several staffers who were extras. He was filmed doing chef's work in the kitchen, which wouldn't have been much of a stretch if the special-effects folks hadn't fanned the flames on his faux flambe.

Sheppard Pratt seems to have found its target market: readers of The New Yorker. The Towson psychiatric hospital ran not one but two ads in the Nov. 3 issue. There's yet another in the Nov. 24 edition. Perhaps anyone who understands those one-panel cartoons should have his head examined. But is there something else that makes New Yorker readers likely consumers of psychiatric services? No one in the hospital's public affairs office responded to my calls, so no insight there. Jim Bready, the retired Evening Sun editorial writer who spotted the ads, thinks Sheppard Pratt might be fishing for newly despondent Wall Street types or the age-old reckless rich.

With all the news about the economic crisis, is it any wonder that some of us feel stressed out about our financial futures? Although experiencing some stress may be a reasonable reaction to the global financial situation, feeling deeply anxious during tough economic times doesn't have to be inevitable, says Jack Vaeth, staff psychiatrist at Sheppard Pratt Health System, who also is in private practice in Hunt Valley and Annapolis. Given the reports about the economy these days, is feeling more anxious than usual about our financial futures unavoidable?

Montgomery Rockville Israeli tech company to move to state Gov. Martin O'Malley announced yesterday that a Jerusalem-based identity-authentication company will establish its U.S. headquarters in Rockville, where it already has a small operation. The deal with ClassifEye comes at the end of the governor's weeklong trip to Israel. The state will give ClassifEye $250,000 through an Enterprise Investment Fund, which assists startup technology companies, and officials said Montgomery County will provide an additional $75,000.

Sheppard Pratt to buy campus in Glyndon for school site Sheppard Pratt Health System will buy the 44-acre Glyndon campus of Beth Tfiloh Congregation's lower school and preschool, as part of a $17 million deal announced yesterday. Sheppard Pratt intends to locate one of its Forbush Schools, which provide special education and therapeutic services for children, at the site. Beth Tfiloh, which opened its preschool and lower school in 2003, will continue to operate at the Glyndon campus through the 2008-2009 school year, according a statement by the institutions.

Scarlett Pomers couldn't stop moving. The actress stood instead of sitting, paced even when she was reading and fooled people into thinking she had already eaten. What had started as a way to lose a couple of Christmas pounds and eat healthier spiraled into a seemingly never-ending quest to be thinner. Her friends and co-workers on the set of the CW network's Reba, where she plays country-music singer Reba McEntire's daughter, noticed the usually teasing, cheerful Pomers seemed sad and withdrawn.

Preservation meshes with good medicine The Sun's article "Houses stripped of protection" (Nov. 26) stirred up memories of a similar situation in Towson. Baltimore County lost one of its few remaining pre-Revolutionary War farmhouses when the Greater Baltimore Medical Center decreed it to be in bad shape and to stand in the way of a future building ("County unlikely to grant historic status to house," April 30, 2003). Thankfully, also in Towson, Sheppard Pratt Hospital's historic buildings were saved by creative thinking by hospital administrators and architects ("Preserving Sheppard Pratt's legacy," Aug. 21, 2002)