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Ten Years After Traumatic Brain Injury
2008-04-24 16:16:00
A research study published in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society presents the results of a 10-year study examining the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Previous research investigating long-term has yielded mixed results linking severity of injury, demographic factors, and psychiatric problems. In the present study, a sample of 60 participants who had sustained TBI 10 years previously was used. Participants were tested with the Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOSE) as well as neuropsychological measures of attention, speed of processing, memory and executive function and a measure of anxious affect. Outcome on the GOSE ranged from upper good recovery (32%) to lower severe disability (2%). Factors associated with poorer outcome on the GOSE included duration of posttraumatic amnesia, level of education, poor performance on cognitive measures of information processing speed, attention, memory, and executive function as w...
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"Devout Christians" Kill Children as Part of Exorcism
2008-04-22 14:00:00
It was on March 29 of this year when residents of Bangwe township in Blantyre, Malawi learned that two local women had allegedly burned two children to death to exorcise them of witchcraft demons. Agnes Kamanga Gadama, and her sister Catherine Kamanga reportedly suspected that Gadama's two children had been possessed by demons because "some neighbors were teaching them witchcraft" After a week of continuous prayers and fasting with the two children in an enclosed room, 9 year old Yankho and 6 year old Martin Gadama were found dead by police investigating the ritual. The two children had been locked inside the family home along with two other children while Gadama and her sister lit a fire that engulfed the building in smoke to drive away demons. Both suspects were devoted members of the Namiyango Assemblies of God and had reported the suspected witchcraft incident to the congregation. Representatives of the church group have expressed disbelief that the two women could have ...
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The Case Against Wilhelm Reich, Part 2
2008-04-20 14:00:00
It was on May 26, 1947 when an article by freelance writer Mildred Brady was published in The New Republic. Titled "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich ", Brady's somewhat shrill article was subtitled "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal." The article was filled with innuendoes relating to Reich's sexual theories and the "orgiastic potency" that patients received from his orgone accumulators. She concluded the article by stating that Reich's "cult" was growing and needed to be "dealt with". The Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation that same year to look into Reich's health claims which, in turn, drew in the FBI due to their previous investigation. The rest of the FBI file covers the results of the investigation and Reich's increasingly irrational denunciations of the FDA and Mildred Brady. He denounced her as a "C...
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The Children of War
2008-04-17 14:00:00
A study focusing on the psychosocial effects chronic warfare among refugee children in Southern Darfur is presented in a recent issue of Omega. A sample of 331 children (aged 6-17) from three refugee camps were selected to be part of the study. Of those in the sample, 43 percent were girls and 57 per cent were boys with an average age of twelve years. All of the children in the study were interviewed and tested with measures of traumatic stress, depression, and grief.The study results indicate that there were no significant differences between genders in terms of exposure to traumatic experiences, including rape, but older children (13-17 years) experienced a larger number of traumatic exposures than younger children (6-12 years). Seventy-five percent of the children met the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, and 38 per cent exhibited clinical symptoms of depression. Twenty per cent of the children sampled also reported significant levels of grief symptoms. The authors found that increas...
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"Supernatural Hybrid" Arrested In Sexual Assault Case
2008-04-15 14:00:00
A 19-year old Pennsylvania man who convinced a 15-year old girl that he was a vampire/werewolf hybrid has been arrested for corruption of a minor. Kristian Allen Carl turned himself in to Schuylkill County authorities after admitting to having consensual sex with an underage female. He had originally been charged with statutory sexual assault but pled guilty to the lesser charge to avoid a jail sentence. The girl's family reportedly agreed to the plea bargain. Asked by a reporter if he had believed that he was a hybrid, Carl lowered his head and whispered, ''Yes. I watched a lot of movies" but has since retracted the claim. Police reported that Carl had previously shown them his canine teeth as proof of his lineage and also told them that he had a guardian dragon that protected him from evildoers. He denied knowing that the victim, whom he had been seeing for a year, was underage and believed that she was over 16. A bench warrant had been issued for him after he missed a ...
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The Case Against Wilhelm Reich, Part 1
2008-04-13 14:00:00
Wilhelm Reich always had a problem with authority figures as the lengthy FBI file on him tends to demonstrate. It was in 2000 when the FBI released 789 pages of the extensive file that had been built up on Reich over the years. The file covers the period from 1940 to a year following his death in 1957 and makes for fascinating (albeit long) reading. Driven out of Nazi Germany in 1933, he fled to Scandinavia and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1939. Reich settled in New York City and began teaching courses at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Despite his early prominence as part of Sigmund Freud's Vienna Circle, it was Reich's prior involvement in European Communist movements that drew the FBI's attention. After concerns were raised by the State Department over Reich being linked with the Medical Advisory board of the American Communist Part y, a formal investigation was launched. Details of his past that were highlighted in the reports prepared on...
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How Families of Organ Donors Deal with Grief
2008-04-10 14:00:00
A study published in the February 2008 issue of Clinical Transplantation examines the effect of the organ donation process on families dealing with grief. Using the British Columbia Transplant Society (BCTS) database, the authors mailed test packages to families of deceased organ donors. Each package contained three standardized, validated questionnaires (including scales of depression, post-traumatic stress, and bereavement). Seventy-three completed packages were received (an overall response rate of 46%) and the responses were analyzed. The results of the study showed that grief varied in terms of age of the deceased and length of time since donation. Donor families reporting negative aspects about the donation process were also more likely to experience post-traumatic stress. Based on their findings, the authors concluded that organ donation can have a beneficial effect on the grief process providing that donor families receive proper counseling and support before and after donat...
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Cave Sect Leader Hospitalized With Head Wounds
2008-04-08 14:00:00
A leader of a doomsday sect who had inspired his followers to hide in a cave for five months as they waited for the end of the world has been hospitalized with serious head wounds, Penza government officials said today. Self-styled prophet Pyotr Kuznetsov is described as being in serious condition in a hospital in the town of Bekovo, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) southeast of Moscow. Eleven of Kuznetsov's followers are still occupying the cave nearby. Although the government representative and the hospital declined to say what caused his injuries, he had been undergoing court-ordered psychiatric treatment. Penza Deputy Governor Oleg Melnichenko had stated earlier in televised comments that Kuznetsov was hospitalized with a self-inflicted open head wound. Melnichenko further added that Kuznetsov had laid his head on a tree stump and hit himself repeatedly on the head with a piece of wood. This contradicts an eariler statement that had been made alleging that cult members had b...
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The Stroker’s Legacy
2008-04-06 14:00:00
Faith healing has a long and varied history but certain cases still have a special fascination. So it was with Valentine Greatrakes, the Stroker. Born in 1628 in to a prominent Irish family, Greatrakes (also spelled Greatorex or Greatraks) was caught up in the volatile politics of the time. He fought in the English Civil War as part of Oliver Cromwell's army before returning to his family estate in 1654. Aside from his prominent role as one of the interrogators in a witchcraft trial in 1661 (he and other judges were obliged to "prove" that the defendant was a witch using the recommended tortures of the time), there seemed little else in his life to provide a hint of what came later. It was in 1663 when Greatrakes was struck by an "impulse, or strange persuasion" in his mind. He came to believe that God had given him the power to cure "the King's evil" (as scrofula, or tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, was known in those days). He reportedly told his wife who categorically deno...
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Does Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Cause Cognitive Problems?
2008-04-03 14:00:00
A study reported in the December 2007 Journal of Psychosomatic Research examined cognitive complaints in head-injured patients referred to the emergency department of a level 1 trauma center in the Netherlands.  A sample of 79 patients (ranging in age from 18 to 60) who had been admitted for mild traumatic brain injury were followed up over six months post-admission. In addition to a battery of neuropsychological tests and use of the Rivermead Postconcussional Symptoms Questionnaire (RPSQ), patients were also asked to self-monitor their cognitive and memory problems over a 12-day period. Results indicated that 39 per cent of the sample self-reported cognitive problems. These complaints were strongly related to lower educational levels, emotional distress, personality, and poorer physical functioning (especially fatigue) but not to actual extent of injury.  Severity of self-reported cognitive complaints was found not to be associated with the patients' daily observations o...
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Talks with Cave Sect Continuing
2008-04-01 14:00:00
Russian officials are reporting that talks are underway to the 28 remaining members of a doomsday sect holed up in a cave since last November to come out. Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) southeast of Moscow, said on national television that seven have already come out due to deteriorating conditions. He expressed concern for the remaining members as the cave has partially collapsed due to melting ice. "In the interests of the people's security we have to negotiate with them in such a way that they trust us. We don't plan to trick them," he said. Television pictures showed female sect members in head scarves speaking with those in the cave through a fissure in the hillside. The sect members barricaded themselves into the cave near the village of Nikolskoye in November to await the Apocalypse, which they originally calculated would come in May 2008. Earlier this week, the sect members said they would emerge on Orthodox Eas...
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The Castrato
2008-03-30 14:00:00
There are different traditions concerning why Giovanni Velluti was castrated as a young boy. Born in Montolmo, Italy in 1780, his father had planned a military career for him but this plan changed abruptly when Giovanni developed a high fever. According to the most common legend, his parents had taken him to a local surgeon for treatment and the surgeon, mistaking the parents` intentions, castrated Giovanni instead. That marked the end of any military career for the boy and he was sent to be trained as a singer. Castration in boys between the ages of seven and twelve prevents the larynx from undergoing the normal physiological changes associated with puberty and enables boy sopranos to keep their large vocal range throughout their lives. While some testosterone continues to be produced by the adrenal glands, the reduced sex hormone levels in their bodies results in other physical changes including lack of facial hair, physical tallness, smooth skin, rounding of the hips and a hi...

Casualties of War
2008-03-27 13:00:00
The Winter issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine presents a thoughtful overview on war and its casualties. Throughout America's first 145 years of war, far more of the country's military personnel died from infectious diseases than from combat injuries. This only began to change in World War II due to better methods of disease prevention and treatment. The authors suggested that soldier deaths throughout U.S. history can be divided into a Disease Era (1775-1918), during which infectious diseases were the major killer of America's armed forces, and a Trauma Era (1941-present), in which combat-related injuries were the major cause of fatalities. Using the 3,400 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq as a comparison, suicide deaths have become more prevalent than deaths from infectious disease.  Given the rising rate of suicides in U.S. soldiers posted overseas, this trend is not expected to change. Click here for the abstract.
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"My Mom Stabbed Me"
2008-03-25 13:00:00
Police in Largo, Florida reported that a mother stabbed and critically wounded her 15-year old son at a local psychiatrist's office on March 22. Celeste Grace Minardi, 51, had been attending supervised visits with her son for the past three years and there was no previous indication of potential danger. The attack occurred at 10:00 am in the office of Ronald Knauss and Associates while the mother was sitting with her son under a nurse's supervision. Without warning, Minardi pulled two long knives from her purse and began stabbing her son. After receiving gashes in his lower abdomen, neck and face, the boy (his name has not been released) managed to get away before collapsing in the lobby. Police reported that the boy was able to say "My mom stabbed me. I don't ever want to see her again" before being taken to hospital. He received emergency surgery at Bayfront Medical Center and is described as being in critical condition. Celeste Minardi is the ex-wife of attorney, T...

Starved For Science
2008-03-23 13:00:00
While the conscientious objectors (COs) who were part of the Civilian Public Service (CPS) carried out a variety of unpleasant duties, one of the most far-reaching involved their participation as research subjects in medical experiments. Under the authority of the Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. Surgeon-General, medical schools and hospitals across the United States carried out a series of medical experiments studying infectious disease and human endurance. Many COs volunteered for research despite the very real dangers that such research faced. Although no deception was used and there was full informed consent, it seems hard to believe that these research studies were carried out given the potential risks. Some of the studies involved deliberate exposure to live viruses including hepatitis, typhus, malaria and pneumonia to determine likelihood of infection and to test new treatments. Other subjects were placed in decompression chambers and subjected to temperature extre...
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Psychotic Symptoms In The Elderly
2008-03-20 13:00:00
A study in the December 2007 issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry examines the prevalence of psychotic symptoms and schizophrenia in nondemented 95-year-olds over a one-year period. A sample of 338 95-year-olds living in Göteborg, Sweden (individuals with dementia were excluded leaving 163 subjects for this study) received psychiatric and physical examinations as well as cognitive tests and interviews with close informants. The results indicated that the one-year prevalence of any psychotic symptom was 7.4% overall (hallucinations 6.7% and delusions 0.6% ). Four of the study participants met DSM-III-R criteria for schizophrenia (2.4%). No differences in cognitive functioning were found between individuals with psychotic symptoms and individuals without these symptoms. Individuals with hallucinations and paranoid ideation also had an increased frequency of paranoid personality traits. The authors concluded that there was evidence of a higher than expected prevalence...
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Lawyer Seeks Insanity Plea in Microwave Baby Case
2008-03-18 13:00:00
Lawyers are seeking an insanity plea for an Arkansas man on trial for placing his 2-month old daughter in a microwave oven last May 10. Joshua Joyce Mauldin, 20, of Warren Arkansas has been charged with causing injury to a child and faces a potential life sentence. According to his attorney, Sam Cammack III, Mauldin has a longstanding history of psychiatric problems including auditory hallucinations and mood swings and has been on medication since the age of 10. Despite concerns about his mental state, his family had accompanied him to Galveston, Texas when he reported hearing a call from God to become a preacher. After they checked into a motel, he was left alone with his daughter, Anna, as the rest of the family went to get food. He reportedly became agitated while feeding her and locked the motel room door. Mauldin then placed the infant in the microwave after first placing her in the motel room safe and refrigerator. Although he removed her immediately afterwards, Anna susta...
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In Good Conscience
2008-03-16 13:00:00
Being a person of conscience is never easy, especially during wartime when governments begin mass conscription to bolster their armed forces. Whenever drafting begins, the problems involved in dealing with conscientious objectors who, by virtue of their religious or political beliefs, refuse to serve in the military inevitably arise. Conscientious objectors (also known as COs or "conchies") in many countries were often allowed to serve in non-combatant roles (although there were frequent cases of COs being placed in military prisons where they experienced ill-treatment and abuse). When the United States entered World War II in 1941, there remained the problem of what to do with the estimated 72,000 COs who filed for exemption from conscription (approximately 0.15% of all draftees). Many of these COs belonged to pacifist religions (including Mennonites, Quakers and Seventh-Day Adventists) and it was these churches that spearheaded a new solution. The Civilian Public Service...
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Blinded By The Light
2008-03-13 13:00:00
Following reports about a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary in the sky at a hotel owner's home near Kottayam (located in southeast India), approximately fifty people have permanently damaged their eyesight by eagerly staring at the sun. Since the visions were first reported, a local hospital has examined at least forty-eight cases of patients with damage to their retinas as a result of overexposure to the sun. Dr Annamma James Isaac, ophthalmologist at St. Joseph's ENT and Eye Hospital has reported that the patients have developed " photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun," While churches have warned their congregations about the purported miracle and the dangers in staring at the sun, hopeful pilgrims are reportedly still flocking to the area and further cases of eye damage are expected. The hotel owner who had started the craze had reportedly made previous claims of statues of the Virgin Mary in his home that cried tears of honey, perfum...
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Seeking Refuge
2008-03-11 13:00:00
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has released a report indicating that Iraqi refugees in Lebanon are experiencing high levels of emotional distress and post-traumatic symptoms. The report outlines the results of a study carried out between November 2007 and January 2008 on 800 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. More than half of the refugees studied reported post-traumatic symptoms such as panic attacks, anger, fatigue, anxiety and sleep disorders. For the 34 per cent of study participants who reported experiencing direct violence, including attacks on themselves or family members, the emotional distress was particularly acute. In addition to the effects of recent trauma, factors relating to their uncertain existence as refugees are sources of added distress. Economic difficulties relating to lack of employment, poor living conditions and limited access to health and social resources and educational opportunities has led to physical expressions of anger and frus...
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The Unforgettable Shereshevsky
2008-03-09 13:00:00
It all began with a daily meeting at a newspaper in Moscow, sometime in the 1920s. The editor was handing out assignments to the various reporters and was annoyed to note that one of the newer reporters had neglected to bring along a notebook. Solomon Shereshevsky (sometimes spelled Sherashevsky), then 29 years old, was quietly listening to the editor speak while all of his fellow reporters were busy writing down their assignments. The editor had noticed this before and decided to give his employee a scolding for not paying proper attention. When meeting him afterwards, the editor was astonished to find that Shereshevsky was able to remember every detail of the meeting with perfect accuracy. The journalist was just as astonished at his editor's reaction since he thought his perfect memory was normal. Always on the lookout for an interesting story, the editor decided to send his reporter to the local university for testing. It was there that Solomon Shereshevsky met Alexander Ro...
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Surviving the Holocaust
2008-03-07 03:22:00
The January 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society presents that results of a longitudinal study examining the long-term effects of Holocaust exposure during young adulthood. A sample of four hundred fifty-eight subjects of European origin (aged 70 at baseline and 77 at follow-up) were assessed in the study. Information taken included biographical history of concentration camp internment, exposure to Nazi occupation during World War II, or lack thereof (the control subjects), and 7-year mortality data from the National Death Registry. The results indicated that the 93 survivors of the internment camps and the 129 survivors who experienced the occupation first-hand were more likely to differ from the 236 control subjects in terms of being male, being less educated, and having poorer social support. They were also found to report being less physically active, to experience greater difficulty in activities of daily living, to have poorer self-rated health, and to h...

Mitigating Factors Citied in Restaurant Murder
2008-03-04 14:00:00
An Australian judge cited mitigating factors raised in a psychological report to sentence restaurant owner Khanh Vo to seven years in prison for the manslaughter of 56-year old Anh Dung Nguyen. Vo stabbed Nguyen with a small kitchen knife after a fight broke out at the Bon Mua restaurant and karaoke bar in Richmond, Australia on the night of April 16, 2006. Justice Kevin Bell said in passing sentence that Vo, a father of two with no previous convictions, showed remorse by pleading guilty to the crime. In making his sentencing decision, Justice Bell took account of a psychologist's report that said Vo's violent childhood experiences as a refugee from Vietnam in the mid-1980s could have led him to overreact. He lived for a time in a refugee camp described in court as "violent and dangerous", especially for children. The report also suggested that Vo met many criteria depicting a major depressive episode and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sources state that the fight began within...
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After Count Alfred
2008-03-02 14:00:00
There is an anecdote about Alfred Korzybski that goes as follows: Giving a lecture to a group of students, Korzybski stopped the lesson and took a box of biscuits from his briefcase. He said that he was hungry and offered to share the biscuits with the attentive students sitting in the front row. Some of the students took him up on the offer and began to chew on the biscuits along with their lecturer. When asked, the students agreed that the biscuits were tasty. It was at this point that Korzybski tore off the white paper covering the box containing the biscuits to reveal the picture of a dog's head and the title on the box: Dog Cookies. The students who had eaten the biscuits were appalled and two of them ran out of the lecture hall to the washroom to throw up. Korzybski then reportedly said, "You see, ladies and gentlemen. I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter." A...
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Jails as Mental Health Centres
2008-02-28 14:00:00
There are more than a million prison and jail inmates in the United States who have mental illness given the harsh cutbacks in funding for community support programs. A paper from a recent issue of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation discusses the growing need for 24 hour mental health units within prisons and jails to handle this spiralling demand. The authors contend that mental illnes has been 're-criminalized' due to the incidence of related support issues such as physical and/or sexual abuse, parental substance dependence, and parental incarceration. Prisons and jails most often do not provide services for this highly traumatized population or recognize the need for such services. Prisons are not hospitals and should not be regarded as suitable replacements for mental health facilities. The authors follow up by reporting on problems with mental health care in prisons, and on several attempts to establish 'trauma-aware' care within the legal system. Click here for the ...
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Why Aren't Some AIDS Patients Getting Treatment?
2008-02-26 14:00:00
In a recently released study by the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS, an alarming forty per cent of the people who died of HIV-AIDS in British Columbia never sought life-saving treatment even though it was free. The study examined more than 1,400 HIV-related deaths in British Columba between 1997 and 2005 and found that 567 people died without ever receiving antiretroviral treatment. In a statement by Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the centre, he notes that: "We have a problem. The treatments are available for free but something is wrong because the people that most need the treatment, they're not always accessing the treatment." Low income is one of the most prominent factors associated with high AIDS mortality with residence in a poor neighbourhood being linked with reduced access to treatment. Other factors include lack of housing or transportation, mental illness, illegal activity and language barriers that play a role in an individual's ability to acces...
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Constance Kent
2008-02-24 14:00:00
It was on June 30, 1860 when three-year old Francis Kent disappeared from his bedroom in the Kent family home near Frome, Somerset. His nurse, Elizabeth Gough, discovered early in the morning that Francis was missing from his bed and a search of the grounds was launched. Rather than alerting the local police, Francis' father, Samuel Kent, drove to the next county to report his son's disappearance and left others to continue the search. The discovery of Francis' body in an outside privy horrified the searchers. Not only had the boy's throat been cut (and his head nearly severed) but later evidence showed that Francis had been suffocated. When Jonathan Whicher, an inspector from Scotland Yard, was dispatched to investigate, he immediately focussed on two suspects who were brought before the Magistrates: the child's nurse, Elizabeth Gough and Francis' sixteen-year old half-sister, Constance. While Gough was cleared of any wrongdoing or motive, Constance was another story. As...

Head Injury and Substance Use in Teenagers
2008-02-21 14:00:00
A paper published in the January 2008 issue of Journal of Pediatric Surgery contains the results of a study examining the role of drug and alcohol use in adolescents suffering from traumatic brain injuries. Using trauma registry data to identify adolescent blunt trauma victims between 2000 and 2005, demographic information, injury severity, length of hospital stay, and clinical outcomes were evaluated. Of the total number of adolescent patients sampled, 9.3% tested positive for drug and/or alcohol use (the mean age of toxicology-positive patients was 17.2 years). The most commonly detected drugs were cannabis (40%), alcohol (30%), and polysubstances (23%). Substance-positive patients were more likely to be comatose, to have more significant injuries, and require emergency operations than adolescent patients who did not test positive for substance use. Length of hospital stay was was also significantly longer. In terms of outcome, mortality was found to be significantly higher and fu...
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Bizarre Suicide by Psychiatrist Mimics Patient Death
2008-02-19 14:00:00
It was on February 14 when staff members at Pavlov Mental Hospital in Kolkata, India discovered the body of Dr. Dipankar Choudhury in the hospital duty room. The 52-year old psychiatrist had apparently strangled himself by tying his muffler to the door handle. The circumstances under which the body was found was identical to a suicide that had been committed by one of his patients in early January. A colleague reported that Dr. Choudhury had been shaken by his patient's suicide but there is no indication that his own suicide was pre-planned. While he had been visibly depressed in the weeks leading up to his suicide, it is not known if he was on medication at the time of his death. The body was discovered after his wife contacted to hospital to express her concern over a call that he had made to her that evening. An alert was sounded after the duty room was found locked from the inside. He is survived by his wife and three children and had been working at Pavlov Mental Hospi...
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Saving Ezra Pound
2008-02-17 14:00:00
The end of World War II in 1945 was a time for celebration, but it was also a time of reckoning. While the Nuremberg trials for Nazi war criminals were still in the planning stage, legal proceedings against enemy collaborators were well underway. In Great Britain, the trial of William Joyce (a.k.a. Lord Haw-haw) for treason due to his Nazi propaganda broadcasts led to his execution in 1946. And then there was Ezra Pound ... As a major figure in 20th century poetry, Pound's expatriate life in Italy led to his becoming an advocate for the Axis powers. He opposed the war (particularly the involvement of the United States) and expressed his support for Mussolini and Fascism through numerous radio broadcasts and writings. Even after the United States entered the war, Pound continued to be active in Italian politics until being arrested by Italian partisans in 1945. His incarceration by American forces near Pisa (including 25 days in an open cage) led to a nervous breakdown. Only aft...
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