Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, April 11-14, 2001

4 Million Misused Painkillers, Sleep Pills Last Year, Report Says
Megan K. Doyle, Cox News Service- 4/11/2001

WASHINGTON -- Four million Americans misused prescription drugs last year, according to a report released yesterday. "Prescription drug abuse is an equal opportunity destroyer," said Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health that released the report. "Many, many people are using these substances initially for perfectly reasonable purposes." The most common types of drugs abused are painkillers, depressants such as sleeping pills, and stimulants used to treat attention deficit disorders and obesity, according to the report. Most people abuse the drugs by taking more than the prescribed amount, taking the drug for too long a period of time or selling the drugs on the street, said Dr. Karla Birkholz, of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
    "A common (problem) is people who are using medications to sleep," she said. "You give them a sedative and they decide they're going to use it in other ways." The human body develops a tolerance for many of these painkillers and depressants if they are used for too long, according to the report. As a result, more of the drug will be needed to achieve the same effects first produced by the drug. This leads some individuals to take larger doses than were originally prescribed, resulting in bodily dependence and addiction.
    Yet health care professionals were quick to point out that these drugs are not addictive if taken properly and according to a physician's instructions. "Appropriately used pain medications are tremendously effective, and very, very few people develop the primary condition of addiction when these medications are appropriately used," Leshner said.
    Up to 17 percent of Americans over 60 could be affected by prescription drug abuse, and seniors could be more likely to develop an addiction because they are often prescribed the medications for longer periods of time, the report said. Other risk factors that make seniors more vulnerable to misuse and addiction include multiple diseases that require multiple drugs, inappropriate use of those drugs, and a heightened sensitivity to some medications, according to Dr. Kenneth Schmader, professor of geriatric medicine at Duke University. "Seniors take, by far, three times the number of prescriptions as younger people, making the chances of addiction much greater," said Edith Rosato, pharmacist and vice president of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, a partner in the release of yesterday's report. In addition, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic pain and many other health problems common to the elderly require treatment by the drugs that are most often abused, Schmader said.

Drunken Driving Foes Ask More for Maryland
Daniel LeDuc, Washington Post- 4/11/2001

Even as they celebrated passage of new crackdowns on drunken driving in Maryland yesterday, advocates and legislative leaders promised to come back next year to tackle still more efforts to get repeat drunk drivers off the road. Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) signed into law a measure that allows judges and juries to be informed when a drunken driving defendant has refused to take a breathalyzer test and another measure that lowers the legal limit for drunken driving from 0.10 to 0.08.
    The new laws, which take effect Oct. 1, were major goals of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other advocacy groups. Two other changes sought by advocates, new sanctions for repeat offenders and a ban on open containers of alcohol in vehicles, died in the House Judiciary Committee. Yesterday, House Speaker Casper R. Taylor (D-Allegany) promised to push for those proposals next year and to make them part of his priority agenda.
    "All of it together was too big [this year] because you are very aggressively trying to change our culture," Taylor said. "As a society we accepted drunk driving far too long. Not only that, but we laughed at it. But I think we're starting to turn a corner." Advocates said that with Maryland facing a cutoff of federal highway funding if it doesn't pass the repeat offender legislation and open container ban next year -- and with 2002 being an election year -- the measures have a better chance.
    Lawmakers did close a loophole in Maryland law that said judges and juries cannot be told when people stopped on suspicion of drunken driving refuse to take a breathalyzer test. The proposal had been a top priority for the state's prosecutors, who often were left without breathalyzer test results to prove their cases and unable to tell judges and juries why. Habitual drunk drivers have long learned the system and routinely refuse breathalyzer tests. "For too long that refusal allowed repeat offenders to break the law without consequences," Glendening said as he signed the legislation at a State House ceremony. Next year, advocates said they may push to make it a crime to refuse to take a breathalyzer test.
    By lowering the blood-alcohol limit for drunken driving, Maryland joins the District, Virginia and nearly half of the rest of the states that have adopted 0.08. "It's a deterrent," said Wendy Hamilton, the Maryland public policy liaison for MADD. "You're going to get people to think more before they get behind the wheel . . .because the risk of being arrested and convicted is higher."
    An average 170-pound man must have four drinks in one hour on an empty stomach to reach 0.08, according to MADD's studies. A 137-pound woman would reach that concentration after about three drinks. The organization's reports said that at 0.08, a driver's judgment about such basic driving skills as speed control, braking and lane changes are affected. Last year, about 17,000 people were stopped for drunken driving in Maryland. Of them, about 1,500 had a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or 0.09, which will make them subject to stiffer penalties under the new law.  "People can drink all they want," said Sen. Ida G. Ruben (D-Montgomery), who helped sponsor the legislation. "Just don't get behind the wheel of a car and make it a lethal weapon."

Drug-Culture Panel Urges 'Less Hysteria' Over Ecstasy
Monte Whaley, Denver Post- 4/11/2001

BOULDER - The dangers of Ecstasy have been largely overblown by police and the media, observers of the drug culture told a high school crowd Tuesday. The panel told nearly 1,000 Boulder High students that education about the substance is needed more than blaring headlines and harsh "Just Say No" messages. "What we need is a little more wisdom and a little less hysteria," said Emmanuel Sferios, founder and executive director of DanceSafe.  DanceSafe provides information about Ecstasy and other drugs on the Web and tests Ecstasy at clubs and parties for harmful additives. Sferios was part of a discussion sponsored by the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. Other panelists included Brian Hollywood, who studied the club culture in Northern Ireland, and David McKirnan, a social psychologist.
    The group touched upon the death of 16-year-old Brittney Chambers. The former Monarch High student was removed from life support Feb. 2 after a six-day coma brought on by the pill, which she took at a party in her mother's home in Superior. The Boulder County coroner ruled she died from drinking too much water to prevent dehydration, a condition triggered by ingesting Ecstasy. The panelists said publicity about Brittney's death added to the hysteria surrounding the drug but provided little real information for the public. News reports about Ecstasy also fuel curiosity about the drug's effects. "The drug war can work paradoxically," McKirnan said. More study is needed on Ecstasy's long-term effects, he said, but it does appear to dull short-term memory.   Most problems with Ecstasy are caused by heat stroke at unregulated dance parties where there is little ventilation or water, he said. Some Ecstasy tablets also are tainted with more dangerous drugs. "It's safer to buy at a home or apartment rather than at an event," Sferios said.
    Ecstasy was used in psychotherapy until about 1985, when it was classified as an illegal drug by the federal government. Then, deaths began occurring because tainted pills arrived on the market, Sferios said. A cease-fire between Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants left the military and law enforcement with big unused budgets, so they turned their attention to drugs like Ecstasy, Hollywood said. Extreme measures followed, such as the shuttering of local dance clubs. Education is now used more in Europe, a trend the panelists hope will spread to America.
    Most of the students appreciated the talk. "Everyone thought it would be a negative message, but it was good information about the risks involved," said 11th-grader Kalen Kaminski. Local law officers warned against downplaying the dangers of Ecstasy. Boulder police Cmdr. Joe Pelle said users have suffered physical problems because of Ecstasy, not just as a result of tainted byproducts. Ecstasy is also unpredictable, Boulder County Sheriff George Epp said. "That's the reason it was outlawed as a prescription drug." He's also wary of DanceSafe's "harm reduction" approach toward Ecstasy. "I'm a little skeptical about their helpfulness," Epp said. "What I've heard about them is they are there to show how to have a good time, and perhaps it's a chemically induced good time."

Expert Blasts Therapy
Kieran Nicholson, Denver Post- 4/11/2001

GOLDEN - Therapist Connell Watkins used brainwashing techniques on 10-year-old Candace Newmaker during an intensive two-week therapy session, which ended in the girl's death, according to a local psychiatrist's testimony Tuesday. Susan Van Scoyk likened the videotaped therapy sessions to what kidnap victim Patty Hearst experienced in the 1970s. Citing "Stockholm syndrome," she compared Candace to Hearst and the therapists to Hearst's kidnappers.

"Candace really had no say'
In Stockholm syndrome, victims are "led to believe they're always wrong and the people who are in authority are always right," said Van Scoyk, who was called to testify by prosecutors. "Candace really had no say in anything," said Van Scoyk. Watkins and co-defendant Julie Ponder are being tried in Jefferson County on charges of reckless child abuse resulting in death. The girl's answers to most of Watkins' questions were typically found to be wrong, and her explanations weren't right either, Van Scoyk said. Watkins attempted "to make her feel as if she knew nothing and everyone around her knew the right answers."
    Van Scoyk, who works with the Kemp Center in Denver, a national treatment facility for abused and neglected children, watched the videotaped sessions, read court transcripts, reviewed Candace's medical records and history, and pored over ethical and legal guidelines as part of her research in the case, she said. Van Scoyk said the sessions broke ethical guidelines established by the National Association of Social Workers. Watkins has a master's degree in social work. "In general, the key word is respect for your client," Van Scoyk said. "Not treating them in a derogatory way and not putting them in harm's way. "The emotional well-being of the client was not cared for," she said.
    The defense says Candace suffered from reactive attachment disorder, among other psychological illnesses, and that the therapy sessions were an effort to bond Candace with her adoptive mother, Jeane Newmaker. "Intensive" measures, the defense says, had to be taken because traditional therapies, together with medications, were not working. Van Scoyk labeled the rebirthing, "holding" and "compression" sessions carried out on Candace last April as "experimental or fringe" therapies with no "scientific" validation.

Contact questioned
Watkins violated a physical-contact prohibition between client and therapist when she repeatedly grabbed the girl's face, cupped her mouth and squeezed Candace close to her chest, said Van Scoyk. The physical contact - including a compression session in which Jeane Newmaker followed Watkins' instructions to lick Candace's face - resulted in "emotional harm" and was counterproductive in treating the child, said Van Scoyk. Van Scoyk said the sessions seemed geared to benefit Newmaker more than Candace. Newmaker received most of the support and most of the sympathy.

Testimony Begins in Maxey Training School Sex Abuse Trial
Karessa E. Weir, Ann Arbor News- 4/11/2001

An egregious abuse of power or a teen's sexual fantasy? Lawyers argued it both ways Tuesday as the trial began for a former Maxey Boys Training School employee in Livingston County Circuit Court. James Cotter, 49, of South Lyon is accused of manipulating a 15-year-old inmate into oral sex at the Green Oak juvenile detention center on several occasions in 1998. At the time, Cotter, a 25-year veteran of Maxey, worked the night shift as a youth specialist on the boy's floor while the boy was in a rehabilitation program for sex offenders. Cotter faces up to life in prison if convicted of a first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge.
    Assistant County Prosecutor Pam Maas alleged in her opening remarks that Cotter had abused his authority over the boy for his own sexual gratification. Cotter selected the boy specifically because he was young, gay and had sexually assaulted his 6-year-old cousin, Maas said. "He was an easy target, easy prey, easy to discredit," Maas said. "Jim Cotter was trusted to rehabilitate a young offender. ... He exploited his position. He exploited his authority and picked a 15-year-old he thought was unworthy to be believed."
    Cotter's attorneys, Carol Lathrop-Roberts and Timothy Hensick, argued that the boy fabricated the stories about the sexual encounters to avoid punishment for having sex with other inmates. "Welcome to (the boy's) fantasy. He is a sexual predator with many victims and James Cotter is in fact one of his victims," Lathrop-Roberts said. "This did not occur. This is this perpetrator's way to divert attention away from himself and onto James Cotter."
    The boy, now 18 and living in Lansing, testified Tuesday that after Cotter flirted with him in a bathroom, he performed oral sex on him, hoping to later blackmail the man into extra favors and freedoms. "He was rubbing my arm, my butt. I knew what he was doing. I knew what he was trying to get out," the boy said. "I was going to use it to my advantage, to get out faster. I knew if I did this, he wouldn't put pressure on me." The sexual relationship continued and the boy was given special privileges, such as being allowed to stay up later at night, visit friend's rooms and make long-distance phone calls. After his relationship with other inmates came to light, he told his social worker about his relationship with Cotter, the boy testified. As proof of the relationship and under questioning, the boy offered detailed descriptions of Cotter's genitalia. The trial continues today and is expected to end next week.

Teen Testifies He Seduced Maxey Worker
Jack Kresnak, Detroit Free Press- 4/12/2001

HOWELL -- In disturbing detail, an 18-year-old admitted male prostitute and hustler told a Livingston County jury on Wednesday that he seduced a veteran staffer at the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School as part of a ploy to win better treatment.  The teenager, who is no longer lodged in the training school, said he initiated a sexual encounter with the staffer, 49-year-old James Cotter of South Lyon, because Cotter said something suggestive and "I knew what he was trying to get at." "It wasn't like I was attracted to him -- I was using him," the teen told the jury of 10 women and four men in a trial before Livingston Circuit Judge Daniel Burress. He said he was 15 when he began a sexual relationship with Cotter. "I had something over him, and I could get what I wanted," he said.
    Cotter, who has worked as a youth specialist at Maxey for 24 years, is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. His lawyers said Cotter, a father of five, has a good reputation and work history at Maxey, except for two instances in which he was written up for dispensing medication without proper authorization.
    Cotter's accuser, whose name is being withheld because the Free Press generally does not identify alleged victims in sexual assaults, said he now works at a grocery store and as a stripper at a gay bar. He lives in Lansing. In testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday, the teen said he became a prostitute at age 12, molested his 6-year-old cousin when he was 13 and hustled to get money or favors in the juvenile system.
    He said he was placed at Starr Commonwealth, a residential treatment center in Albion, for about two years and often engaged in sexual activity for money with youths at that facility. He said he was transferred to Maxey in February 1998 and placed in B Hall of Summit Center, which is for sex offenders. The teen said in August 1998 he began a sexual relationship with Cotter, who worked the midnight shift. He said there were about 50 incidents of sexual touching between him and Cotter. No one else witnessed the incidents, he said. In return, he said Cotter let him make long-distance calls and visit other youths' rooms at night.  Cotter has denied the accusations.
    Assistant Livingston County Prosecutor Pamela Maas told the jury that some might find the teen "unworthy of belief." But Maas said he was selected by Cotter for a sexual relationship because his credibility could be attacked. Cotter was suspended without pay by the state Family Independence Agency, which runs the 480-bed training school in Livingston County's Green Oak Township. The trial is expected to last at least another week. Testimony will resume Monday.

Attacks on Michigan Gays Rise
Kim Kozlowski, The Detroit News- 4/12/2001

DETROIT -- Hate crimes against gays and lesbians in Michigan last year jumped 26 percent overall -- a rise blamed in part on a statewide pro-family organization fighting gay rights. The statistic is part of an annual report that will be released today by Michigan's gay and lesbian advocacy group, The Triangle Foundation. The group considers hate crimes any crime that is motivated by a bias against an individual.
    The foundation's report, culled from individual and police reports verified by the organization, also claims a 46-percent increase in harassment and a 24-percent increase in intimidation of gays and lesbians from 1999 to 2000. "Harassment and intimidation may sound like benign things, but they really are the gateway to more violence," said Jeff Montgomery, the foundation's executive director. "We make a direct correlation between anti-gay rhetoric of extremists, especially when they use rhetoric that demonizes gay people." Montgomery said it's no coincidence that the hate crimes are up during the same period that the American Family Association of Michigan and its leader, Gary Glenn, have increased proliferation of "false and disparaging information about gay people." But Glenn said he bases his information on facts and has fought to stop gay rights because he feels it is a behavioral choice with significant health risks. "The Triangle Foundation and other homosexual advocates are themselves to blame for the overwhelming majority of violence experienced because of their affirmation and promotion of the homosexual lifestyle," Glenn said.
    Triangle's report comes as lawmakers are preparing to introduce for the third time legislation that would include sexual orientation in the state's Ethnic Intimidation Act, which penalizes people who intimidate or harass someone because of their race, color, religion, gender or national origin.

Older Dads More Likely to Have Kids with Schizophrenia, Study Says
Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press- 4/12/2001

CHICAGO (AP) Older fathers are much more likely than younger ones to have children with schizophrenia, a study suggests, adding mental illness to the list of diseases linked with advancing paternal age. While previous research has suggested children of older fathers are at risk for certain cancers and birth defects, the study is the first to make the link with a psychiatric illness, said Dr. Dolores Malaspina of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In the study, men who fathered children at ages 45 to 49 were twice as likely as those under 25 to have schizophrenic children, and men 50 and older were three times more likely.
    The researchers, led by Malaspina, reviewed data on 87,907 people born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976. Their findings appear in April's Archives of General Psychiatry. ''I would guess that our study is just the tip of the iceberg,'' said co-author Dr. Susan Harlap of New York University School of Medicine. ''Eventually it would seem that the father's sperm is going to turn out to be just as important as the mother's egg.'' During their lifetimes, men's sperm cells continue to reproduce by dividing. Each time this process occurs, there is a slight risk of genetic defects. By the time a man is 20, his sperm cells have undergone about 200 divisions; by age 40, about 660. Women's eggs do not reproduce, but the eggs they are born with are subject to effects of aging. They may develop chromosomal abnormalities, such as the defect that causes Down syndrome. But Dr. Michael Watson, executive director of the American College of Medical Genetics, said those defects tend to involve larger structural cell changes, which are more easily detected through genetic testing than sperm mutations.
    Watson said the new study is not surprising, since ''there are a whole class of diseases inherited in the same way as schizophrenia where there's a paternal age effect.'' These include prostate and nervous system cancers; dwarfism; and Marfan syndrome, which causes a gangly appearance and often features skeletal and heart abnormalities. Schizophrenia occurs in about 1 percent of the population. It is thought to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The findings may help researchers zero in on the causes, Malaspina said. They also may explain the steady prevalence of the disease, showing how new mutations in each generation keep the incidence stable, the researchers said. The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation.

Virginia Panel To Study Abuse of Painkiller
Josh White, Washington Post- 4/13/2001

Virginia Attorney General Mark L. Earley announced yesterday the creation of a statewide task force to study the increase in abuse of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, just as a regional medical examiner called the problem an epidemic. OxyContin abuse is responsible for at least 39 deaths in southwestern Virginia since 1997, including 18 last year, officials said. The creation of the task force comes after meetings among Earley (R), law enforcement officials from several neighboring states and the makers of the drug, which is a synthetic form of morphine and is often used to ease the suffering of terminal cancer patients.
    In the past two years, OxyContin has risen in popularity to a point where officials in some Virginia jurisdictions believe it could overtake cocaine and heroin in availability and sales. Authorities have reported sharp increases in the illegal sale and abuse of the prescription drug and the number of crimes associated with it. "The widespread illegal trafficking and abuse of OxyContin in southwest Virginia has created a surge in criminal behavior," Earley said yesterday. "This task force will examine the problem, while gathering information on ways to address and curb the abuse of OxyContin and other prescription drugs."
    The state medical examiner's office in Roanoke confirmed yesterday that the number of deaths associated with the drug since 1997 in southwestern Virginia has risen to 39, including a revised total of 18 last year and one so far this year. Assistant medical examiner William Massello said yesterday that more deaths could be added as cases are reviewed. "This is an epidemic of drug deaths," Massello said. "I've been here for 20 years and I've never seen anything like it." Although no confirmed deaths have been reported in Northern Virginia, local agencies have investigated dozens of overdoses and have made several arrests in the past few months related to illegal possession of the drug and thefts that involved thousands of dollars' worth of the pills.
    The 25-member Task Force on Prescription Drug Abuse -- which includes doctors, health care workers, pharmacists and local law enforcement officials -- is scheduled to meet for the first time next month in southwestern Virginia. Col. W. Gerald Massengill, superintendent of the Virginia State Police and a member of the task force, said yesterday that he hopes the panel will lead to enforcement strategies and prevention. "It's a very real problem, and it needs to be addressed," Massengill said. "I think it's a good idea to bring together all of the players in trying to address this problem that is so apparent in Virginia and several other states."

How to Improve Your Brain
Tabitha M. Powledge, Washington Post- 4/13/2001

Blame it on advancing age, a brutal schedule or the barrage of info-missiles that targets you constantly, but some days your brain just doesn't feel up to the job. You dither over decisions and your focus grows fuzzy. The thoughts come in starts and fits, the words won't come at all, and you can't remember what you're supposed to do next. You can't help wondering: Maybe your life would get better if your brain got better? A slew of books is exploiting this hope. "Brain Fitness." "Building Mental Muscle." "Total Memory Workout." You'd think they were talking about physical fitness. The metaphor is no accident. The language is meant to suggest you can beef up your brain, much like your pecs, to gain power upstairs. Not just slow down the decline, but actually muscle up your mind. The suggestions for brain-building techniques cover a broad sweep, though some are mutually exclusive and others score high on the Twaddlemeter: Play games. Pop pills. Lose weight. Walk backward for two blocks. Brush your teeth with your left hand. Solve puzzles. Get your heart rate up. Do yoga and meditate to calm down. Listen to Mozart. Drink coffee, drink green tea and get a good night's sleep.
    Some of it sounds like fun, some just confusing. But does any of this stuff work? Well, yes, some. Except that the brain is not a muscle, or even a collection of muscles. Many of the ordained neural exercises, even those based on valid scientific findings, are still largely untested. Clear evidence that they yield measurable gains in brain function is still pending. The biggest and best body of evidence favors the hoariest, least controversial principles – such as the idea that practicing a mental task makes you better at it, or that a healthy brain is one housed in a body that eats and sleeps sensibly, minimizes stress and takes few drugs, legal or otherwise. You can improve specific brain skills, often at great cost – train your memory, for example, to hold an extraordinary string of numbers. But because that ability does not spill over into other skills, it's not clear what good that will do you – unless you're a spy or a Las Vegas card counter. Still, with the help of particular techniques, you may be able to boost your performance in some discrete mental tasks, such as spatial abilities and various other skills often called "intelligence." But alas, a survey of the current books and scientific research shows there's no proven, simple, heretofore-unknown method of helping a normal brain, normally nourished and reared and educated – yours, for example – become measurably brawnier overall.

Pumping Neurons
For the real thing in scientific credentials, nobody beats Lawrence Katz, coauthor of "Keep Your Brain Alive" and coiner of the term "neurobics." A researcher at Duke University Medical Center, he's a world-class expert on neurotrophins – growth-spurring molecules in the brain. Recent work by Katz and others demonstrates that brain activity boosts neurotrophin production. The neurotrophins in turn spur the growth of dendrites, the structures that make connections among brain cells. The more dendrites, the more communication takes place within the brain. The more communication that takes place, the theory goes, the greater the brain's capacity to process and use information. Katz's work is supported by, among others, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, giving it a seal of approval only slightly less classy than winning a Nobel Prize. So when Katz joins the beef-up-the-brain chorus, attention must be paid.
    In "Keep Your Brain Alive," Katz maintains you can boost brain cell activity – thus creating all those new connections and capabilities – through sensory stimulation. If we consciously tag experiences with their taste, touch, smell and sound as well as sight, he says, we give the hippocampus, the brain's tiny collector and organizer of incoming information, more opportunities for storing memories. You're more likely to remember the name of a new acquaintance, for example, if besides registering his appearance, you also note the sound of his voice, the firmness of his handshake, perhaps even his smell. The more linked associations there are, he says, the better the odds of later retrieval.
    Which brings him to "neurobics," designed to exploit this power sensory association. Sample exercises: Get dressed with your eyes closed. Eat dinner with your family in silence. Turn the photos you display upside down. Take your parent to the office for a day. Shop at a farmers market instead of Krogers. Take a new route to work. Walk backward for two blocks. Brush your teeth with your left hand. Sounds goofy? Not at all, says Katz. "The idea," he says, "is that by changing certain aspects of our everyday routine, doing everyday activities in slightly novel ways, thereby using different senses to do ordinary tasks, we can help stimulate flexibility and take advantage of the flexibility built into our brains, and preserve and possibly enhance brain circuits."
    But can the mishmash of neurobics activities really boost your brain's ability to function? Or do the exercises just make you better at the exercises? A flood of studies from neuroscience and cognitive psychology suggests the latter. And Katz concedes that the value of neurobics has not yet been proved. "Whether [neurobics exercise] translates into a real cognitive change I can't say," he admits. "The levels of rigor that go into a mass market paperback and into a journal publication are very different. The kinds of speculations and things you're allowed to do if you're writing a book, you have a little more latitude than I would give myself if I were writing something for a scientific publication." Perhaps this is the place to mention that Katz's co-author, Manning Rubin, is a longtime New York ad man.

The Learning Barrier
Talk about overall brain improvement – not the improvement of one specific function, say, spelling ability, but the much broader enhancement that so many of us covet – appears to be just that: talk. The evidence so far tells us that the complex neural pathways of the human brain communicate in exquisitely specific ways. Psychologists have a name for the process by which we apply what we've learned to a closely related area: near transfer. Chess masters, for example, can easily tackle chessboard configurations they've never seen before. A pianist adept at a Beethoven score can likely make a passable stab at picking out a Schubert composition she's reading for the first time.
    But how far can transfer be stretched? As it turns out, not far. Florida State University cognitive psychologist K. Anders Ericsson reports that scientists asked to design experiments in scientific fields other than their own aren't so good at it. Only real experts on experimental design do a better job than students. "To be a scientist in a different area doesn't give you the knowledge you need in order to design acceptable experiments," says Ericsson. Scientists have discovered no brain mechanism for allowing far transfer – spillover from one discrete mental task to an unrelated one. "We just don't know how to teach transfer, how you take these basic abilities and help people generalize," says Sherry Willis, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University. "Transfer is most likely to occur when the problems and the context are similar to the problems and the context in which you first learned. The more different the problem and the context become, the less likely it is that transfer will occur." In his area of expertise, which is expertise, Ericsson has encountered the same phenomenon. "My own work has shown extreme specialization when it comes to memory performance. You can be world-class in remembering information about digits, but when I read you regular words or letters, then you're completely ordinary," he says. Bummer.
    Evidence for this distressing principle has flowed in from many branches of cognitive psychology. Norman Park, of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, has just co-authored a paper likely to prove something of a shocker in his field of brain injury rehabilitation. The paper reviewed 30 studies to challenge the accepted belief that a damaged cognitive function can be restored through abstract exercises using that function. Patients with attention problems, in other words, won't get better by drilling on abstract tasks requiring attention – for example, picking a particular letter out of a string of miscellaneous letters. What works better, Park and his colleagues found, is specific skills training. Instead of drilling on an abstract and imprecise faculty like "attention," patients practice a task that's important in daily life . . . and that requires attention. Navigating a car around obstructions, for example. Lo and behold, they get better at it. It's a case of near transfer. What improves a brain-injured subject's ability to pay attention on the road is driving around a carefully structured obstacle course that gets increasingly difficult as the subject gets better at it. Just driving around an open area won't do it. Remember this point (if you can). We'll return to it later.

Puzzling It Out
Those skeptical about the utility of left-handed toothbrushing can survey methods proffered by other brain-gain gurus, for example the fun and games approach. The ads on Brain.com, a site that mixes news about brain research with sales pitches for products it claims will sharpen you up, say: "Brain Games to Improve Brainpower!" Mentalmuscles.com, the Web site for an outfit called Brainwaves, also features games to "test your skills" and persuade you to buy its books. Puzzles and brain teasers have legions of fans who testify that puzzling keeps them sharp. Cognitive scientists have taken little interest. One exception is Timothy Salthouse, of the University of Virginia, an expert on the cognitive effects of aging. In four studies of more than 200 crossword puzzlers of various ages, Salthouse and colleagues found that puzzle fans do indeed have higher levels of cognitive performance than others. "But it's a big leap to say that working the puzzles causes people to have greater brain power or mental functioning or cognitive ability," he says. "My guess is that something else is involved . . . and I don't think it's just the case that people of high mental ability are better at working puzzles."
    What is the something else, then? "The strongest predictor of performance on crossword puzzles was the amount of knowledge the person had: knowledge of word meanings, geography, history and current events." A just-published, much-ballyhooed study of Alzheimer's disease presents a like problem: People who pursued lots of leisure-time activities – including playing games and working puzzles – were much less likely to develop the disease than those who didn't, or who watched lots of television. This newspaper and other media interpreted the research to mean that being active staves off Alzheimer's disease. But an equally plausible interpretation is that people whose brains are already in good shape stay active into old age. The scientific paper itself mentioned this hypothesis prominently, and it is backed up by other research. Thus, playing games and puzzling may not be the cause of a healthy brain, but the consequence of it.
    Until there's further research, "there's no way to know" which is right, says lead author Robert Friedland, longtime Alzheimer's researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In the meantime, he's betting on "cause" because it gives him a basis for encouraging people. "In medicine," he says, "it's better to be wrong and help the patient than do nothing. We're not concerned primarily with what's absolutely true, just what might help." Brain teasers of various kinds win endorsements as brain food in some circles: Psychologist Morgan Worthy, professor emeritus at Georgia State University in Atlanta, for one. The author of "Aha: A Puzzle Approach to Creative Thinking," Worthy originated the puzzle form known as "linguistic equations." Examples: 1 = G. L. for M. (Giant Leap for Mankind); 1 = K. K. on the E. S. B. (King Kong on the Empire State Building); 3 = B. M. (S. H. T. R.!) (Blind Mice, See How They Run!). Worthy's epiphany came more than 30 years ago when he spotted this coded warning on a bathroom wall: m/w - p = b. (Go ahead and try it, he suggests, but "don't look for anything too clever.") When he figured it out, he recalls, he experienced a sudden flush of pleasure and satisfaction, a feeling he calls "the 'aha' effect." Worthy says his puzzles spur creative thinking, although he cheerfully concedes that hard evidence is lacking.
    Detractors aren't hard to find among cognitive psychologists. "Brain teasers are not how one becomes a better thinker," says Diane Halpern, author of "Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking," who teaches at California State University, San Bernardino. "You don't build a better brain with riddles." The problem with brain teasers as brain builders may be that pesky barrier to far transfer. Says Barry Gordon, a cognitive neurologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of "Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Everyday Life," "They definitely work for the things that you're being teased about, but don't necessarily work for the things you really want to know. Working crossword puzzles might reinforce spelling ability, but not writing ability or better thinking about words in general. "That's where the big unknowns are: how much this generalizes from one area to another."
    David Uttal agrees. "The brain just doesn't work like that. It's specialized. Different kinds of tasks are done in different ways," says Uttal, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies how young children develop spatial abilities. "It's a simplistic assumption to think that if I do a brain teaser, it's going to improve my overall cognitive ability." So if you do puzzles and brain teasers a lot, you will get better at them, guaranteed. But they won't help you get better at your work, unless of course your work is devising puzzles and brain teasers.

A Little Freud, a Little Mozart
Intelligence, a hodgepodge of competences, is another favorite candidate for improvement, despite the fact that scientists are not quite certain what it is. Win Wenger of Gaithersburg prescribes a technique he calls "image streaming" in "The Einstein Factor: A Proven New Method for Increasing Your Intelligence," a book he co-authored with Richard Poe. You close your eyes and describe the flow of mental images wafting through your head aloud to a tape recorder or, preferably, another person. (The Freudians, you may remember, called this "free association.")
    "It's such a simple thing to do. It requires only a little bit of attention, but if you keep doing it, all sorts of wonderful things happen," Wenger asserts. One of the wonders, he says, is that image streaming boosts performance on IQ tests by putting unconscious mental resources into direct use by the conscious mind.
    Wenger proffers meager but startling research support for his IQ claim. Charles Reinert, a teacher of physics at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minn., tried image streaming on his students. In one group of 35, Reinert claims, IQs improved just under a full point for every hour the students spent streaming their images. This work has not been published or repeated by other researchers. While acknowledging his research was preliminary, Reinert says, "My perception, having taught this image streaming process to every student through my door, is that it does make them better thinkers and makes them more creative." Reinert now practices long-distance healing – therapy where the healer and the patient are not in the same physical place – with an emphasis on an ancient Chinese technique called qigong.
    Closer to the mainstream, Yale's Robert Sternberg claims to have boosted student performance on standardized ability and achievement tests – rough correlates of IQ – by tailoring teaching methods to what he considers the three main kinds of student intelligences – analytical, creative and practical. (Harvard's Howard Gardner, the best-known exponent of the multiple intelligence theory, postulates as many as nine kinds.) Analytical teaching asks students to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare and contrast fairly abstract concepts. For creative teaching, Sternberg asks students to imagine what life would be like if events had turned out differently – if, for example, the Supreme Court had ruled otherwise in Bush v. Gore. Practical teaching, he says, "is continually showing kids how they can use what they learn." Taught in this tripartite fashion, Sternberg reports, all three kinds of students improve their performance on standardized tests. Sternberg suspects the effect on adults would be even stronger. To test that theory, his research group is working with the military, preparing materials for teaching Army officers these skills.
    You've probably heard that music can pump up brain activity? It can – until you turn off the stereo. A body of 45 studies on adult music listeners analyzed by Lois Hetland, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Ellen Winner, a Boston College psychology professor and author of "Gifted Children: Myths and Realities," showed that the listeners' spatial abilities were indeed enhanced – but the effect disappeared in 10 or 15 minutes. And not all music works. Mozart is a certified brain improver, but Schubert also has salutary effects. So does – make of this what you will – Yanni. But if you have ever been bored witless at an interminably repetitive performance of minimalist music, you will not be surprised to learn that Philip Glass appears to actually reduce brain functions.

What Grandma Knew
Can you consume chemicals that will help your brain work better? Sure. That's why you need your morning cup of joe. And if you sugar your coffee, that's a brain boost, too; the glucose the body derives from table sugar is the only fuel the brain uses. As for the performance of other memory-by-mouth prescriptives, natural and synthetic, that's too big a topic to cover in this space. Except to say this: None has yet been firmly established as both effective and safe. When it is, you can bet manufacturers will get the word out. So what remains? The tried and true: well-established techniques long known to provide gains in specific functions like memory, some aspects of that thing we call intelligence, and spatial abilities. Just don't expect global improvement.
    Start with that hoary joke about the best way to get to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice, practice. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Except that it really works. Practice remains the single most effective approach to improving brain skills. Practice can do more than get you to Carnegie Hall; it can keep you there. As long as they reinforce their skills for four hours daily, science is finding, true experts can retain much of their expertise in old age. Ericsson and a collaborator in Germany showed that pianists over age 60 can match speed of playing with young talents, even though the graybeards show normal age-related loss on standard IQ and memory tests. In short, maintaining their expertise did not transfer to other mental faculties. And of course memory responds to practice. In fact, says Washington neurologist and neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak, memory is the sole brain function for which neurobiological research has documented improvement.
    Ericsson has shown that practice can achieve astounding expansion even of working memory, often called "telephone-number memory" because it has traditionally been thought to have room for no more than seven items at a time. One of Ericsson's early subjects was a college student of average intelligence and, at the start of the study, average memory ability. The student was read random digits once a second in 200 practice sessions spanning two years. At the end of that time, he could hold 80 digits in working memory. With only 50 hours of training, other college students were able to up their working memory storage to 20 items. In the real world, however, there's not a lot of demand for extraordinary number recall. Moreover, while practice made perfect with number recall, the subjects continued to be quite average in their ability to recall a string of letters. That darned far transfer problem again.
    One thing that is encouraging: Contrary to what scientists used to think, the adult brain is constantly changing. Says Kenneth Whang, who oversees studies of the learning process funded by the National Science Foundation: "It used to be dogma that once you reached adulthood, you grew no new brain cells. That dogma has gone by the wayside in the past five years." Practice facilitates brain remodeling by triggering those growth-promoting neurotrophins, which recruit nearby brain cells into the parts of the brain that handle the activity being practiced, and sprout zillions of new dendrites to connect them. Those sites grow larger and more elaborate than the same locales in the unpracticed brain, and so are capable of doing more faster. But the brain is a loose confederation of quite specific abilities. You may be able to master the neural workouts in any number of trendy new books. But you're not going to buff up your entire brain.

School Shooter Explains What Drove Her to the Edge
ABC News, 4/13/2001

Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Bush hung posters of Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. in her room. She thought perhaps she would become a nun one day. But instead of finishing high school, she now faces spending the rest of her adolescence locked in a juvenile facility. On March 7, Bush walked into her school cafeteria with her father's gun and started shooting. "There was a deep part of me that just exploded," Bush tells Connie Chung in a 20/20 interview, "I'm not normally like that." Her only victim was 13-year-old Kimberly Marchese, who was shot in the shoulder. Though it will be a long time before Marchese has full use of her arm again, she says it didn't hurt when her classmate shot her. "It was like a dead person's arm attached to me," she remembers. What would push Bush, a seemingly shy girl, to the brink? For years she left a trail of clues but her parents, teachers, counselors and friends did not pick up on the warning signs. Bush grew up in a loving family and had no history of violence. The serious, introverted, deeply religious girl was, in fact, unusually caring. "We used to tell each other how lucky we were to have a child with such a good heart," says Bush's father.

Excruciating Depression
Bush was clearly different from the other kids. She was a nonconformist and by the time she entered junior high school, they began to make fun of her. She became depressed and frequently skipped school without her parents' knowledge. As her depression worsened, she began to cut herself with a razor blade and often contemplated suicide.  Increasingly concerned, her parents transferred Bush to Bishop Neuman High School, a small parochial school. It was Bush's chance for a fresh start. School records indicate Bush was "depressed," "withdrawn," and "very defensive if someone gets too close." Teachers said she was "paranoid and felt persecuted." And the teasing continued. Marchese, who was one of Bush's few friends, says, "They would say that she was like a freak or she was weird or she was like messed up." In Williamsport, Pa, shortly after Bush's sentencing, ABCNEWS' Chung spoke with her about what led to her violent act and how she views the event now, more than a month later.

Self-Mutilation
Elizabeth Bush: [At the old school] they'd just call me an idiot, stupid, fat, ugly, faggot, whatever … One incident was I was walking home from school and five or six kids were behind me and they started throwing stones at me … They were just kind of laughing and I don't know why they were doing this but they were barking at me. I don't know.
Connie Chung: So what did you do?
E.B.: I kept walking and started to cry. I kept walking faster and faster till I got home and then I just stayed in the house.
C.C.: How serious do you think your depression was?
E.B.: Really bad … I started self mutilation … I cut myself … I was angry at myself for being different.
C.C.: Why would you hurt yourself more?
E.B.: Well, people express their anger different ways. Crying helps, that didn't help me. So I thought maybe I'd try this and maybe it will help. The pain just takes away all your depression and for a minute you're not depressed anymore.

Struggle With Friendship
The classmate Bush would later shoot was one of the first to extend her friendship in her new school. Marchese was the cheerleading captain, a basketball and soccer player and even though they were polar opposites, Bush considered her a friend and revealed deepest secrets to her.
E.B.: I confided in her because I felt I could trust her … she saw the marks on my arm. She was like, 'ugh, what did you do, you know?' And I said, 'Never mind.' And she kept asking me, hassling me about it. And I said, 'OK, I cut myself.' And she was kind of like, 'why?' And I said 'because I get depressed, that's all, end of story.'
C.C.: Do you think she told other kids?
E.B.: Oh yeah … she acted as if she was my friend to my face. But when I left or something, she'd turn around and talk about me.
C.C.: Negatively?
E.B.: Yes. I know this because she talked to a friend of mine about, about me. She was laughing. She was calling me a freak and all this stuff.
C.C.: When you heard that, what were you feeling inside?
E.B.: I was very hurt that she'd do that to me … those feelings, those thoughts that I told her, they were never supposed to be revealed to anybody; and that's what she did.

Considering Suicide
E.B.: I just wanted to die. Because I had so much hell on my shoulders … if what people are considering fun is to tease me, then I'll just stop living and they won't be able to hurt me anymore … at first I was thinking of shooting myself because I wanted to show her this is what you made me do.
C.C.: You wanted to show Kim Marchese?
E.B.: Yes. I wanted her to see it. I wanted her to see everything.
C.G.: To see you committing suicide?
E.B.: Yes … I wanted her to know my pain.

'I Was Hysterical'
C.C.: Did you want to harm Kimberly Marchese?
E.B.: No, I didn't.
C.C.: Did you point the gun at her?
E.B.: Yes, I did.
C.C.: Did you pull the trigger as it was pointing at her?
E.B.: Yes I did. Yes I did but I was thinking maybe if I aimed far away from her — I didn't think I would hit her. I didn't think I hit her with the gun because she ran.
C.C.: What happened when you put the gun down?
E.B.: The assistant principal — I went into her arms and I was bawling and I was like 'Oh, my God, I shot someone — I tried to shoot somebody. Oh my God.' I was screaming and crying. I was hysterical.

'I Chose to Do It'
Within weeks, Bush appeared in juvenile court to plead guilty to a host of criminal charges, including attempted homicide. The victim's father was influential in keeping her case out of adult court. Sobbing, Bush apologized to Marchese. Bush was sentenced to a juvenile facility and could remain there until she is 21.
C.C.: Did any violence on television or violence in music contribute to what happened to you?
E.B.: No.
C.C.: Did the school shootings that occurred recently contribute to what happened to you?
E.B.: No … I had a choice to do this or not. I chose to do it.
C.C.: Do you think this would not have happened if there not been a gun in your home?
E.B.: Probably not. But I'm not blaming that.
C.C.: You've had a lot of time to think about this incident … What goes through your mind now?
E.B.: It plays over, over and over all day and all night ... And it hurts me because I hurt somebody else.
C.C.: Why did you do this interview?
E.B.: Why did I do this? Because I want to stop as many school students as I can. I want to show people that there are other ways. I want to reach out to kids that are just like me they're depressed. They want to hurt themselves, they want to hurt others. I want to stop all of that.

Jury Sees 'Rebirth' Session That Apparently Worked
Kieran Nicholson, Denver Post- 4/14/2001

GOLDEN - A videotape of an apparently successful "rebirthing" session performed by Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder, in sharp contrast to the taped session that led to Candace Newmaker's death, was shown Friday in court. Pam Molinato, the first witness called by the defense, brought her 8-year-old daughter, Tanya, to Watkins' Evergreen home and office for an intensive two-week attachment therapy session in 1999. Jeane Newmaker, Candace's adoptive mother, and Molinato both live in North Carolina.
    Molinato tearfully recalled Friday that once in Evergreen, she asked Watkins about rebirthing because Tanya "wished she had come from my tummy." "I asked if it would be available for her," she said. Molinato told the jury that the rebirthing session "absolutely" benefited her child. During rebirthing, both kids were wrapped in a sheet from head to toe and covered with pillows to simulate a womb. They were then urged to make their way out and be born. After Tanya was "reborn," she cuddled in Molinato's lap. "It was the first time her eyes sparkled and connected with mine," Molinato said.
    Prosecutor Steve Jensen submitted the tape as evidence and played it during cross-examination of Molinato. Jensen noted: Tanya was unwrapped after 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Candace was unwrapped after 70 minutes.  Candace was verbally abused by the therapists. Tanya was not. Tanya never said she could not breathe. Candace repeatedly told the therapists she couldn't breathe. Tanya didn't vomit. Candace did. Tanya didn't say she was going to die. And no one told her, "Go ahead and die," as the therapists said to Candace.
    During Friday's video, Tanya, like Candace, screams protests. She also tells the therapist she has to go to the bathroom. Ponder tells the girl, "It's not going to take very long. Can you hold it for a while?" The therapist says it will take only 10 minutes. In Candace's rebirthing session, Watkins told her it sometimes takes 18 hours for a baby to be born. Watkins gently tells Tanya its OK if she wets her pants. "Babies wet in the womb all the time. Go ahead and pee," Watkins says. Tanya cries and says, "I'm scared." The therapists and Molinato encourage her to be "born." Someone tells her to breathe. Tanya's adoptive father, her adoptive grandmother and her baby brother are in the room during the session. "OK, Tanya my baby, it is time to come out," Molinato tells her. She helps peel Tanya out of the cocoonlike wrapping. The 8-year-old cuddles in her mom's lap and feeds from a baby's bottle.
    A little later, the family of four all cuddle on a big couch. Tanya falls asleep as her father strokes her face. Tanya's grandmother gives her a heart-shaped pendant to commemorate the session. She tells Tanya it represents her mom's love for her. Toward the end of Candace's taped rebirthing session, Watkins and Ponder discover the girl not breathing and with no heartbeat. Jeane Newmaker, her adoptive mother, rushes in and screams: "Oh, my God, she's dead!" Ponder and Watkins are charged with reckless child abuse resulting in Candace's death in April 2000.

Domestic Violence Agency Rallies for a New Center
Deborah Davis Locker, Detroit News- 4/14/2001

HOWELL -- As Livingston County grows, so does its need for municipal and community services. A group called the Livingston Area Council Against Spouse Abuse is no different. It has outgrown its facility and is trying to raise $2.1 million by June 1 for a new building. The Kresge Foundation will provide an additional $400,000, which would give the council -- known by its initials, LACASA -- enough money to start construction on the county's largest nonprofit building project.
    Rick Scofield's company, May and Scofield Inc., in Fowlerville, was the first corporate sponsor. "LACASA serves a portion of the county we don't like to think is here," Scofield said. "People don't realize how strong the need is, because often people don't ask for help openly. But based on statistics, the need is there and growing." Executive director Deborah Felder Smith said LACASA's demand for domestic violence services has increased 75 percent in the past three years. In a typical year, LACASA receives 2,000 crisis calls, sees 1,500 people for counseling and advocacy services and interacts with 4,000 people through prevention and education programs. "That is due to a combination of population growth and increased awareness of the center's services," she said. "Like the county, we are growing up."
    Felder Smith said LACASA began in the late 1970s, when a grass-roots community group, noting domestic violence was a concern and the lack of local services, used $40 to start a phone line. A part-time director was hired, but there was no shelter. Volunteers took women into their homes. LACASA later rented a shelter, added children's services and sexual assault services for children and adults. It built a shelter in 1986.   Felder Smith said the group needs to raise the entire $2.1 million to qualify for the Kresge Foundation grant of $400,000. "They won't give us part of it for a near miss," she said. "If we don't raise it, we don't get a penny."
    LACASA plans to spend the $2.5 million on a 19,000-square-foot center, complete with a children's center, counseling center and administrative space. The group has raised more than $1.6 million. "For us to make the deadline it is going to take everyone in the community opening their pocketbook," said Felder Smith.

When Problems Sink in a Bottle of Booze
Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman's Life; By Devon Jersild; HarperCollins; $25, 380 pages
Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times- 4/14/2001

We've heard bits and pieces about this subject before. The headlines about binge drinking among college women. The tales of women who drink during pregnancy and give birth to children with fetal alcohol syndrome. The pictures of homeless women ruined by alcohol. But these are just fragments of a much bigger story about women and alcohol--the subject of this unique book by Devon Jersild. Jersild shatters the stereotypes of women and alcohol problems and shows us that the drunk college girls and "bag ladies" are only the most visible part of the problem. Everyday women--the mom, business executive, teacher, lawyer, high school prom queen--make up the majority of women alcoholics.
    Jersild, a writer and teacher of creative writing and women's studies, was motivated to write this book out of despair over her sister's battle with alcoholism. What she discovered was that, like her sister, women who develop drinking problems often have other emotional or life problems. Female alcoholics are much more likely than their male counterparts to suffer from depression, anxiety and eating disorders. They are much more likely to have been victims of sexual or physical abuse. Coming to terms with the alcoholism often involves untangling and examining the many factors that led to the drinking or have been impacted by it. "Most often, alcohol has been woven into the fabric of their lives, so that stories about women and alcohol are also dramas about women's relationships, their needs, their work, their feelings about their bodies, sexual abuse and other trauma, human loss and spiritual development," Jersild writes. She notes that alcohol problems in women tend to devastate every aspect of their lives, such as relationships, jobs and health. While men also often lose everything to alcoholism, women, she says, "fall harder and faster" than men.
    This is not just a book about alcoholics. Jersild examines social norms as well. For example, women who drink heavily often are considered "loose"; men typically don't suffer the same image problem. And even women not dependent on alcohol can fall victim to it. Because women sometimes drink to ease stress, dull pain or subdue doubts, alcohol use for these individuals "has to do with looking for solutions outside yourself." "Happy Hours," which is beautifully written and personalized with the stories of women, offers well-researched information on alcoholism, treatment, recovery, advertising and trends (including the disturbing increase in the number of teenage girls drinking heavily). The book notes, for example, that most treatment and recovery models are built on what works for men. For women, the often coexisting problems of depression, past victimization, other addictions and relationship difficulties call for a much different approach. Moreover, our society typically punishes the pregnant alcoholic or alcoholic mother (for example, by taking her children away) instead of looking for ways to facilitate her treatment and recovery while keeping families together. Female alcoholics are twice as likely to die as male alcoholics of the same age and yet are much less likely to be diagnosed with the disease. Breaking the silence and uncovering the truths surrounding women's use of alcohol is a first step at correcting that injustice. "Happy Hours" moves us in the right direction.

New Hampshire Wants Life Skills to Show up on H.S. Transcripts
Associated Press, 4/14/2001

CONCORD, N.H.--State education officials think school transcripts don't go far enough by indicating a pupil's performance on only three R's reading, writing and arithmetic. They want to add a fourth: real life. ''It's very helpful for young people to be thinking in those terms,'' said Glen DuBois, commissioner of the technical college system. ''It sends a strong message to them about what's important after high school in the two arenas of work and college.''
    Assuming lawmakers don't cut funding for it in the next budget, the new transcripts containing information about life skills will show up in the fall as a voluntary program. The transcripts would track pupils' progress in time management, cooperation, decision making, problem solving, communication and using information. The program has been tested for the past two years at 14 high schools around the state. While it's too soon to tell whether the program will succeed, participants so far say grading students on coping skills is time-consuming but worth it.
    Jeff Temple, a junior at Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro, believes the new transcripts could be the tiebreaker that gets him into a competitive school. ''If there is one spot and two of us have the exact transcript, extracurricular activities and community service, and I have something that shows I have real-world skills, I have an extra edge,'' he said. The University System of New Hampshire also is revising its admission requirements to make sure incoming students can demonstrate they have the skills necessary for college success. ''It gives you a clear assessment of students' ability in key areas,'' said Stephen Reno, the system's chancellor. ''The more information you have in past performance that is key to college success, you've got a better set of information.''
    The move comes as businesses and colleges around the country increasingly question the effectiveness of SAT scores in predicting student success after high school graduation. ''A pencil and paper test measures knowledge in your mind, but it doesn't give you the whole picture,'' said Mariane Gfroerer, a guidance and counseling program consultant for the state Department of Education. While the trend may be new to high schools, elementary schools for years have evaluated children on their ability to get along with others, complete tasks and solve problems. On the transcripts being developed, pupils will not receive letter grades for each skill area, but rather will be rated on a scale that ranges from ''not yet proficient'' to ''surpasses grade proficiency.'' Students will choose from a broad range of activities and projects to demonstrate their abilities in each area. They must provide three pieces of evidence for each skill. The evidence will be collected in a portfolio.

Native American Youth Struggle with Violence, Dependency, Depression
Pauline Arrillaga, Associated Press, 4/14/2001

FORT DEFIANCE, Ariz.--Yvonne Kee-Billison lay in a hospital bed, exhausted but elated after giving birth to her son. One floor down, doctors worked to save the life of her younger brother. There had been a fight at a party, over a joint. A gang member stabbed 18-year-old Fernando Kee, a pitcher for the high school baseball team, seven times. As children, Fernando and his assailant had been friends. Now, the line between allies and adversaries blurred. At 10 p.m. on April 13, 1996, Yvonne's husband climbed the hospital stairs and delivered the news: ''Your little brother passed away.'' As one young life began, another ended.
    Kee was one of 67 people killed on the Navajo reservation that year, when a series of gang-related slayings made the remote Indian territory one of the deadliest spots in the country. Over the next five years, while crime rates fell elsewhere in the United States, the nation's Indian reservations became even more dangerous, particularly for teen-agers. Isolated, impoverished, dispirited, disconnected both from their traditional culture and Western society, American Indian youth have grown increasingly violent, drug-dependent and depressed.
    Kee-Billison has seen it all firsthand. When her brother died, she was a Navajo youth counselor, assisting gang members affiliated with the one who killed Fernando. She quit after his death, but returned this year as director of the Fort Defiance Department of Youth and Community Services. She now works to bring hope to Indian youth, in memory of a brother and for the future of a son. ''I really wanted to give up when my brother passed away. It just became a meaningless effort,'' she says. Today, she adds, ''I don't want to take the kids for granted. I think there's a lot of hope.''
    School shootings, suicide pacts, teen pregnancies, drug overdoses. The signs of youth troubles are seemingly everywhere across America, with a list of familiar factors to blame from violent video games and television programs to broken homes. Among the more than 550 federally recognized tribes, adolescents have even more to contend with. Indians 12-20 years old are 58 percent more likely to become crime victims than whites and blacks.
    Indians under 15 are murdered at a rate twice that of white teen-agers. Indian youth commit suicide at more than twice the rate of non-Indian youth. Deaths related to alcohol are more than 10 times higher among Indian teens than those of other races. Arrests of Indians under 18 for alcohol-related crimes are twice the national average. With jobs scarce on reservations, poverty and unemployment levels are the highest in the nation. Alcoholism is an epidemic, and domestic violence is soaring.
    Add cultural confusion to the mix, and you've got a generation ''stuck between two worlds,'' says Tom Goodluck, a counselor at the Four Corners Regional Adolescent Treatment Center in Shiprock, N.M. Located on the northeastern edge of the Navajo reservation, the center treats about 80 Indian teen-agers annually for chemical dependency and mental health problems. Most of the patients don't speak Navajo and know little about their culture, Goodluck says. ''I see a lot of young people come in with no spirituality, no belief in a creator,'' he says. ''They don't even know how to pray. These children are hungry for something.''
    ''There is such a sense of hopelessness,'' adds Cynthia Mala, former executive director of the Indian Affairs Commission in North Dakota, where Indian leaders developed a suicide prevention plan after a half-dozen teens committed suicide in 1998 on the Standing Rock Reservation. ''For our young people, if the family hasn't taken the time to teach them about what it means to be (Indian) then it gets to be a little bit fuzzy,'' she says.
    Indian youth offer other reasons for turning to crime, alcohol and drugs. Try isolation, and sheer boredom. With most reservations hundreds of miles from big cities, kids have little to do. There are no movie theaters or video arcades nearby, few recreational escapes. ''The teen-agers are really bored with things,'' says Crystal, a Navajo high school senior. Crystal, who asked that her last name not be published, went to family court four years ago after her father attacked her in a drunken rage and she fought back. After spending 12 days in juvenile detention and being threatened with more jail time, Crystal straightened up. Some of her friends weren't so lucky. ''Most of my friends, now they all have kids,'' says the teen, who hopes to study architecture in college. ''They need to get activities here. They need to come out here and ask us.''
    Some steps have been taken to address the youth crisis. In 1997, the FBI created an Office of Indian Country Investigations and moved 30 agents to bureaus near the reservations most in need of additional resources.  Later that year, the Justice and Interior departments convened a committee of tribal leaders and law officers to discuss ways to improve public safety in Indian country. A number of measures ensued, including a Department of Justice grant program that will distribute $8 million this year to Indian communities for prevention of violence and substance abuse. But funding remains scarce, and resources are stretched thin. For example, there is on average just under one tribal police officer per 1,000 residents patrolling the Navajo reservation's 16.2 million acres, where 169,000 people live. That's compared with 2.3 officers per 1,000 in comparably sized non-Indian communities.
    The years following the violent outbreak in the Navajo Nation can serve as a model for how far one Indian community has come in confronting its youth problems, and how much further it has to go. FBI agent Mac Rominger arrived in Navajo country in 1997 as part of his agency's Indian initiative, charged with heading the probe of gang activity in Fort Defiance and the capital city of Window Rock. That year tribal police reported at least 75 active gangs within the Navajo Nation, but Rominger found little had been done to combat the problem. Tribal police, understaffed and inundated with minor crimes, took reports of gang-related offenses but rarely followed up. What started as vandalism, public intoxication and truancy soon escalated into assaults and stabbings. The gangs, Rominger says, ''operated with impunity.'' ''Nobody was doing any significant jail time. They thought, `There are no consequences. We can do whatever we want,''' he recalls. Over the next three years, federal authorities arrested and won convictions against two dozen gang members. ''It was like the Grim Reaper showed up,'' says Rominger. ''Nobody ever saw them again.''  But not all the problems died with the arrests. While gang activity dissipated in Fort Defiance and Window Rock, it has spread elsewhere across the reservation to towns such as Chinle and Pinon. In Pinon, a community of 2,050 people, there have been a half-dozen homicides in the past three years at least two gang-related, Rominger says.
    With the help of some federal funding, the Navajo Nation built two new facilities in Chinle to address the youth problems. One, a 48-bed youth detention facility, was funded in 1989 but only completed last October. It remains unopened as tribal leaders squabble over who will operate it. The other, a 20-bed substance abuse facility, also has stood empty since October because of red tape over staffing and other issues. The first tribal-owned and -operated treatment facility for youth, the center is now set to open next month.
    Kee-Billison won a federal grant for a project that incorporates Navajo ceremonies such as talking circles and sweat lodges with traditional counseling to try to reduce crime and substance abuse among adolescents. Elsewhere across the reservation, after-school programs have been implemented to tutor at-risk youth. In Chinle, teens conduct community service projects through a group called Horizons Unlimited. Yet obstacles remain. Apathy is a major one. A community crime coalition that Kee-Billison started after her brother's death has seen a huge drop in attendance. ''The courts, probation, youth services, the schools we're still the dumping ground for kids who are in trouble,'' she complains. ''Does something bad have to happen again for us to come together?''
    Those who have had run-ins with the law say it can be difficult to change. ''I couldn't find a job. Everybody just closed the door on me,'' says 28-year-old Harmon Mason, a former gang member who now works as a probation officer on the reservation. He landed the job after a youth counselor recommended him to work on a study of gang activity. Says Mason: ''It's been a real hard, difficult road.'' The road may only get bumpier when the gang members who did go to prison get paroled. ''When these guys start getting released,'' Rominger warns, ''it could get worse.''
    At least one gang member is eligible for release this summer the man who killed Fernando Kee. For Yvonne Kee-Billison, the memories of her brother's death are as fresh as that night in 1996. Every day she sees the house in which he was stabbed; it sits across the street from her office at the youth center. In her wallet she still carries a photo of Fernando in his baseball uniform. The despair and discouragement that consumed her after his death have faded, however. With her own children's future at stake, Kee-Billison hopes to meet with her brother's killer before he goes free. As she does with so many other young people, she wants to help him choose a new path toward a bright future, one free of hate and violence. ''I hope he doesn't have that mentality that, `I'm bad and I'm always going to be bad.' Maybe if I talk to him, it'll make a difference,'' she says. ''I don't know if I forgive him, but I know he has a life to live. I hope he comes out and lives that life to the fullest.''
    On the Net:
DOJ publication on Indian youth issues: http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/jjnl200012/contents.html
DOJ publication on American Indians and crime: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/aic.pdf
Navajo Nation: http://www.navajo.org

Massachusetts Program Offers Alternative to Life on the Streets
Adam Gorlick, Associated Press, 4/14/2001

HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) Carlos Cruz is nailing down the final wooden boards of what will be the roof of a two-family house. From his perch, he can see the city streets below him where he once sold drugs. They are the same city streets he was yanked from after he punched a police officer in the face. He'd rather be on the roof than on those streets.
    Cruz is part of a national program called YouthBuild, which puts more than 5,000 poor, high school dropouts to work building low-income housing. ''This is better than being on the streets and hustling,'' said Cruz, 26, who has been working on the house since 1999, when the program came to Holyoke. ''I can't believe I used to be down there. YouthBuild saved my life.'' Cruz's parole officer told him about YouthBuild. The group, based in Somerville, would teach him construction, prepare him for his GED, and give him the skills and contacts he needed to land a good job and stay clean. So far, it's worked. Cruz will be off probation in May, and he's planning to keep working as a YouthBuild supervisor.
    ''YouthBuild teaches these kids all the things they need to know but haven't learned because of where they grew up,'' said John Linehan, who oversees the Holyoke program. ''It's basic stuff like responsibility, discipline and how to dress for a job interview. But it's stuff that they didn't know before.'' And the community gets something out of it as well: low-income housing, with no labor costs. ''This is something these kids can be proud of,'' said Holyoke Mayor Michael Sullivan. ''They can drive by the house and say they built it. And they're giving something back to their communities good, clean housing.''
    YouthBuild began in New York City's East Harlem 23 years ago when Dorothy Stoneman saw the need to give job skills to young people and housing to the homeless. Her organization that started with just a handful of neighborhood kids rehabbing abandoned buildings spread through New York with the help of city financing. In 1994, YouthBuild received its first federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    ''We took a group of high school dropouts who wanted to make something of themselves and showed them how to achieve their goals and give something back to their community,'' Stoneman said. Now a line-item in the HUD budget, the Somerville-based organization is a $60 million-a-year operation serving 5,500 kids on 145 sites across the country. About 85 percent of those who complete the program go on to secure jobs or continue their education.
    In Massachusetts, the program also operates in Brockton, Cambridge, Fitchburg, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Roxbury, Springfield, and Worcester. Holyoke is arguably one of the cities that needs it the most. The city 15 miles north of Springfield has the state's highest youth incarceration rate, and 152 students dropped out of Holyoke's two high schools in 1999. ''YouthBuild is one of those programs that you just can't get enough of,'' said Sullivan, the mayor.
    The criteria for the program show that it aims to help the most in need: Applicants must be between 16 and 24 years old, be poor and a high school dropout. Most have criminal records and come from single-parent homes. Jesus Navarro fits the profile perfectly. The 16-year-old high school dropout entered YouthBuild in December, following his third arrest for assault and battery. ''My life was all about being in trouble with the courts, getting into fights, smoking weed and getting drunk all the time,'' Navarro said. ''I needed to change.'' Navarro has been passing YouthBuild's periodic drug tests, and has his sights set on getting his GED and construction union card. ''If I can get a job after this paying 10-something an hour that's something to look forward to,'' he said. ''No one wants to be stuck working at McDonald's their whole life.''
    YouthBuild's yearlong program rotates the participants' schedules. One week, a group does construction work from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., while another group spends the day being tutored. Not everyone in the program is a success story. There are now 12 people enrolled in the Holyoke program, half since the current program began in December.   ''They either drop out or we kick them out,'' Linehan said. To stay in the program which pays a $3.85 hourly stipend participants are allowed only two unexcused absences a month and must pass drug tests. But most who break the rules are given a second chance to stay in. ''Some people need a wake-up call,'' Linehan said. ''They need to know we mean business.''
    Mebellyn Vargas got her wake-up call from her 7-year-old son. ''I was just sitting around the house and he asked me what I did,'' said Vargas, a 22-year-old mother of three. ''I wanted him to have a better model to look up to. I didn't want him to grow up like I was.'' Now that she's building a new house for someone who needs it and a new life for herself, Vargas is also trying to set an example for her children and her city. ''People say young people in Holyoke are lazy,'' she said. ''They should take a look at what we're building here.''
    On the Net: http://www.youthbuild.org