Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, July 18-24, 2001

Generic Prozac Could Hit the Market Next Month
Rex W. Huppke, Associated Press, 7/18/2001

INDIANAPOLIS -- Prozac could face cheaper, generic competition as early as next month following a federal appeals court ruling Wednesday. Eli Lilly and Co. had hoped to keep its patent on the blockbuster antidepressant through 2003, but a federal appeals court in Washington refused to reconsider its ruling against the pharmaceutical company. The court previously found that Lilly had improperly double-patented Prozac to extend its exclusive control over the drug, which is known generically as fluoxetine. Barr Laboratories Inc., which has been battling Lilly over the Prozac patent since 1996, plans to put a generic version on the market in August. Prozac had worldwide sales of $2.6 billion last year and was one of Lilly's best-selling drugs, accounting for about one-quarter of the company's sales.
    Lilly plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. ''We still feel it's very valid, but at this stage of the appeal we realize that the it will be difficult to get the Supreme Court to consider it,'' company spokeswoman Terra Fox said Wednesday. ''For business planning purposes we continue to operate under the assumption that fluoxetine will enter the generic market on Aug. 3.''
    Prozac costs about $2.60 a day. Bill McKee, Barr chief financial officer, would not say how much the generic would cost, but ''we would expect that when our more affordable version hits the market, consumers will save tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars.'' In afternoon trading, Lilly was up $1.70 to close at $76.75 on the New York Stock Exchange, where Barr Labs jumped $5.75 to $79.50.

Advocates, Patients Seek End to Electroshock Therapy
Michael Gormley, Associated Press, 7/18/2001

ALBANY, N.Y-- Twenty-year-old Adam Szyszko, who emigrated with his family from Poland 12 years ago, is snared in a nightmare worse than his family thought possible when they longed for America from behind the Iron Curtain, his mother and sister said Wednesday. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Szyszko underwent electroshock therapy nine months ago after he was involuntarily committed to the Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital on Long Island. Despite his parents' wishes, the hospital secured a court order under state law to administer 150 volts of electricity into his brain while he was under anesthesia in two sessions. Pending the family's court appeal, he may be headed for 18 more sessions.
    ''He was shocked and I couldn't do anything and I was crying, crying, crying,'' said his mother, Luwyna Szyszko, struggling through tears and her adopted language. She and others testified Wednesday at a state Assembly hearing on bills that would curb electroconvulsive therapy or require greater informed consent by patients and their families.  ''It's hard to believe it's taking place in a democratic and modern place like the United States,'' said Bogdan Szyszko, Adam's father.
    The therapy is used on an estimated 33,000 Americans a year, according to the American Psychiatric Association.  The Citizens Commission Human Rights International, a group that opposes the therapy and is affiliated with the Church of Scientology, said the use of forced or court-ordered electroconvulsive therapy has increased 73 percent in New York state since 1999. Despite overuse decades ago and its use to manage troublesome patients as in the movie ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' electroconvulsive therapy is safe and effective in treating severe depression, according to the American Psychiatric Association. ''It does not cause brain injury or brain damage,'' said Dr. C. Edward Coffey, neuropsychiatrist and vice president for behavioral health at Henry Ford Health Systems in Michigan. ''It's clearly effective.'' He said studies show that the treatment has an 85 percent to 95 percent response rate, an especially significant result because other treatments have already failed the patients. ''It is one of the most effective treatments we have in medicine.''
    The association says immediate side effects are rare. However, some permanent loss of memory of the days, weeks or months before electroshocks is possible, the group cautioned. No psychiatrists conduct the therapy without patients' written and informed consent or from his or her family, according to the association.
    ''Psychiatry is incapable of policing itself,'' countered John Breeding, an Austin, Texas, psychologist with the World Association of Electroshock Survivors. He was among several advocates who called Wednesday at the legislative hearing for a ban on shock therapy or its limited use only by consent from patients after they are informed of all risks. The medical profession says the therapy results in 1 death per 10,000 patients, but advocacy groups content it is 1 in 200, Breeding contended. ''Electroshock is brain damaging, period,'' said Breeding. He called it a ''desperate, irreversible and destructive act.'' ''It's completely scandalous and evil to give electroshocks,'' he said. Psychiatrists ''don't understand human nature ... or have the will and intent to offer common sense methods.'' After his testimony, Breeding described former patients as needing to carry notebooks to record the day's events and other facts, and another who ''lost'' his college education. Activist Dianna Loper called electroshock ''a crime against the spirit and a rape of the soul.''

Mentally Ill Kids Sent Out of State
Carol Kreck, Denver Post- 7/19/2001

So few resources exist for seriously mentally ill children in Colorado that the state Department of Human Services is sending them out of state for care, a practice critics say is too expensive and dims hopes of reuniting these children with their families. Over the past year and a half, about 45 children had to leave Colorado for treatment in Utah, Texas, Pennsylvania, California and Wyoming, said Judy Rodriguez, county and community support manager at human services. Twelve of those children were from Denver, and the cost of taking them out of state runs $2,000 to $3,000 a week per child - sometimes more, said Jude Liguori, child-protection administrator for the Denver Department of Human Services. In-state treatment runs half that, depending on the facility and the needs of the child. "We exhaust internal resources because we want to keep kids in their communities," Liguori said. Though Colorado has centers that could treat the children, she said, waiting lists sometimes necessitate sending them elsewhere.

Multiple mental problems
Children with multiple mental problems - for instance, one who is a fire-setter, has a mental illness and is a sex offender - are the most likely to be sent out of state because Colorado has so few places qualified to treat them, Rodriguez said. But prospects of reuniting those children with their families fade when they can't be treated together, said Bob Cooper, executive director of the Colorado Christian Home in Denver. "If you're going to be successful with kids, you have to be successful with parents." Separating children and parents prolongs treatment, Cooper said, "and the longer you have them out of the home, the more difficult it is to get them back." Cooper favors better state funding for operations like his, arguing that then his facility could expand and take in children now sent out of state.
    The effects of sending children out of state for treatment are up for debate, though. Chuck Thompson, president of the Colorado Boys Ranch near La Junta, where 90 percent of the children are from out of state, said sometimes it's best to remove children from their dysfunctional families and environments.
    Human-services staff aren't sure how long the state has lacked adequate resources for mentally ill kids because until a year and a half ago, facilities that were seldom inspected accepted difficult cases they were incapable of treating, Rodriguez said. When The Denver Post started investigating private child-placement agencies in 1999, human services created a team to monitor the care of children in 24-hour facilities. "In that process, we discovered facilities that shouldn't be operating and closed them," Rodriguez said. Six residential facilities around the state went out of business.

No inspector sees sites
Whether the facilities where children are sent out of state are any better is unclear. State Department of Human Services spokeswoman Liz McDonough said all the facilities cater to children with complicated cases, but no Colorado inspector sees the sites. The burden of inspection falls to the state in which the youth is being treated.
    Still, clinical psychologist Rebecca Hea said the decline in treatment facilities for kids began years before the six treatment facilities closed.   "Ten years ago there were all kinds of programs where kids with psychiatric disorders could go for hospitalization, and those hospitalizations were pretty long," said Hea, director of the Denver Children's Home foundation. "The average length of stay in the early 1990s was four to six months," Hea said. "In September of 1994 when I was at Children's Hospital, it averaged a month. A year later the average length of stay dropped to three to seven days.  "What that means is, treatment in locked settings doesn't exist anymore. Those kids are now being sent to residential treatment facilities, which the state does not adequately fund."
    But help in the form of more beds and more money may be on the way. "We may not have (adequate) resources for a while," Rodriguez said, but a new 15-bed facility has opened in Colorado Springs. And the Department of Human Services will seek a rule change so mental-health and child-welfare Medicaid funds can be blended, allowing for higher reimbursement rates that would encourage existing facilities to increase capacity.

Sentence Set Aside for Man Who Threatened Clintons
David Rosenzweigd, Los Angeles Times- 7/19/2001

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday set aside a nearly 3 1/2-year prison sentence for a man who sent a threatening letter to former President Bill Clinton. A district judge failed to adequately consider the defendant's plea for a lighter sentence on grounds that he had an extraordinary history of childhood abuse and suffered from diminished mental capacity, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
    The appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Martin J. Jenkins of San Francisco for an evidentiary hearing on the issues. Armondo Walter, 36, pleaded guilty last year to sending the 1998 letter threatening to kill Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea. He signed the letter with the name of a former employer whom he believed had cheated him out of several hundred dollars. Confronted by authorities, Walter said he had no intention of hurting the Clintons, but just wanted to get even with his former boss.
    At his sentencing, Walter's federal public defender asked Jenkins to take into account her client's long history of childhood abuse, which, she said, had left him with a diminished mental capacity. Defense lawyer Shawn Halbert argued that Walter's father was an alcoholic who regularly beat him, once sending him to the hospital with a broken nose. His mother once cut him with a knife, Halbert said, and encouraged him to use drugs and alcohol. And, Halbert said, a cousin sexually abused him, forcing him to also have sex with other boys, including Walter's own brother. Ultimately, Walter became addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol and he spent most of the last decade in jail on various drug and related theft convictions, according to court records.
    Under a 1992 federal appeals court decision, the psychological effects of childhood abuse can be considered by a sentencing judge only if the abuse is extraordinary. Jenkins concluded that Walter's abuse as a child was not extraordinary. He noted that when Walter was 13, he was able to fend off his father during one beating and knocked him to the ground, indicating he was not helpless.
    The appeals court disagreed. "The simple fact that when he was 13, Walter defended himself against his father's attack does not appear to us to be in conflict with Walter's alleged history of prior abuse," the panel said in a unanimous opinion. It also found that the district judge erred in determining that Walter's crime constituted a "serious threat of violence." The judges said the evidence indicates that Walter had no intention of harming the Clintons.
    The appellate court ordered Jenkins to conduct a hearing so Walter can present evidence of childhood abuse. After that, the appeals court said, the judge can reevaluate Walter's request for a departure from federal sentencing guidelines. Walter's conviction was not contested. He has been in custody since his arrest.

Drumming Strikes Something Deep Among Health Seekers
Lisa Liddane, Orange County, Illinois Register- 7/19/2001

Diane Hall had never laid a hand on a drum. Never even thought about it. But when she finally put her hands on the taut surface of the African hand drum and started tapping a tentative rhythm, she began a journey to an ethereal place. It was a place where she could unload the weight of the cancer coursing through her breast and liver. A place where she could cry without tears. Scream without words. As she played in the drum circle, she heard another drum matching her rhythm, beat for beat. And another. More drums joined in. Comforting. Empathizing. Understanding her pain.
    Since that fall night last year, Hall, 48, of Laguna Niguel, Calif., has kept her hands on drums to help her body, spirit and mind cope with the rigors of cancer treatments. She leads a group drumming at her Aliso Viejo church and facilitates drum circles in Orange County for others, especially those with illnesses. "Drumming is powerful when you play from the heart," she said, "I felt empowered, that I could walk this journey."
    Across the nation, group drumming has evolved from a fun activity to a wellness therapy that helps people cope with stress and certain medical conditions. Recently, at the University of California Irvine Medical Center in Orange, about 50 people, primarily cancer patients and their families, attempted to play in unified rhythm tiny egg shakers, African djembe drums and other percussion instruments. Many had never played a drum or percussion instrument before, but they listened, pounded the drums with their hands and followed the beat. Last March, Kaiser Permanente in Aliso Viejo, Calif., provided eight drum-circle sessions to a support group of 10 people needing emotional help, after a patient offered to facilitate the drumming. "My group found it healing," said Catherine St. James, licensed clinical social worker at Kaiser. "They said that it reduced their stress and increased their focus. Long after the sessions ended, they would still talk about how valuable the drumming was."
    Published studies on drumming are rare; researchers are just beginning to study this subject. But using drumming with traditional medicine looks promising, said Dr. Barry Bittman, CEO of the Meadville Mind-Body Center in Meadville, Pa. Bittman is a neurologist and drumming practitioner who has conducted a study on the effect of drumming and the immune system. Several unpublished and anecdotal reports about drumming's benefits show that certain types of drumming may have some health benefits for people with medical conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autism and mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder.
    New York psychotherapist Robert Lawrence Friedman chronicled many of these benefits in "The Healing Power of the Drum," (White Cliffs, $14.95). Friedman has used drumming in therapy sessions with about 80 percent of his patients. Sometimes, patients are better able to express feelings and thoughts by pounding or tapping on a drum, Friedman said. "I might ask a patient to express how he feels by playing a drum," he said. "And when he's done, I ask him what that was about."
    Drumming can accomplish several things, practitioners say:
- Release for emotions that are hard to express. "This could happen with children when there's deep pain and anguish," Friedman said. "But it can happen to anyone with emotions that are denied or repressed because they are too painful," Friedman said.
- Relieving stress. Jonathan Prince, 57, of Laguna Beach, Calif., who has bipolar disorder, in which he alternates between manic and depressed states, participated in eight weeks of group drumming at Kaiser Permanente in Aliso Viejo. During the sessions, Prince said, drumming had a soothing effect. "I felt grounded," he said. "I felt like I had longer periods of normalcy. I wasn't cycling fast between depression and mania."
- Help with Alzheimer's patients. Drumming can result in entrainment, which occurs when the body responds to external or internal rhythms, Friedman said. Tapping your foot to music is a manifestation of this effect.  Entrainment can help some Alzheimer's patients increase their typically short attention span. Patients who participated in drumming led by music therapist Barry Bernstein of Kansas developed the ability to be involved in activities that lasted 30 minutes, Friedman said.
- Connecting Alzheimer's patients with families. "Patients and their spouses or children were able to play the same rhythms even if the patients did not recognize their loved ones," Friedman said. For families, this connection is priceless. Some autistic kids also have experienced a similar effect, Friedman said. Autistic children tend to be in their own world, but when they play a drum, they have a rhythm that others can match. That rhythm is a bridge between worlds.
    Yet, for all of drumming's positive effects, we still have much to find out about drumming. We don't know how long positive effects last and if there are any harmful effects. It is possible that drumming may cause adverse effects, such as overstimulating autistic children or increasing heart rates, Friedman said. Drumming can induce a trance-like state that may cause negative reactions in people with mental conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, he said. People with medical conditions need to consult their doctor before participating in a drumming circle.
    And performance should be the least of their concerns. "The beauty of drumming is that anyone can do it," Bittman said. "Even people who grew up thinking they had no musical talent." People sometimes hesitate to participate in a drumming circle because they feel embarrassed or are shy about not playing a "good" rhythm. "Drumming is recreational music," Bittman said. "When we play, we recreate. To recreate means--in Latin--to restore health."
    For more information on drumming, see "The Healing Power of the Drum," by Robert Lawrence Friedman (White Cliffs, $14.95); "The Heart of the Circle--A Guide to Drumming," by Holly Blue Hawkins (The Crossing Press, $12.95); "Drum Circle Spirit," by Arthur Hull (White Cliffs, $29.95); www.egroups.com/community/handdrumming

Chicago Suicides Refocus Spotlight on Baffling Disorder
Associated Press, 7/21/2001

CHICAGO -- A mother of quadruplets flees home and drowns herself in Lake Michigan less than a week after their births. Another new mother disappears from her house several months after her baby is born and jumps to her death from a 12th-story hotel window. Aracely Erives, whose body was found in the lake on Wednesday, and Melanie Stokes, who died June 11, were among four new mothers to commit suicide in Chicago over the past two months, authorities say.  The women could have met pushing strollers in the park, sharing stories of sleepless nights, first smiles and favorite lullabies. Instead, at a time that is supposed to bring wondrous joy, they were all struck by postpartum depression.  The condition has been in the spotlight recently because of Andrea Yates, a Houston woman said to have been afflicted with the most severe form of the illness. She is accused of drowning her five children in the bathtub June 20.
    Authorities believe the recent cases do not mean there is any surge in postpartum depression-linked violence, but rather reflect a slowly growing awareness of the baffling disorder. Experts admit they know frustratingly little about postpartum depression and its causes. And some say not enough is being done to detect it before tragedy strikes.  "People dismiss it and say that you can just snap out of it, that you've chosen to feel this way. That is totally wrong," said Lisa Anderson, a Tacoma, Wash., shipping company auditor. She went to several doctors before finding one who took her seriously when she developed postpartum depression after the birth of her third child last year.  Anderson, 33, said she thought her family was better off without her and contemplated suicide. But medication and counseling helped her, and she said women should know "they shouldn't blame themselves for this illness."
    Postpartum depression happens in about 10 percent of pregnancies and typically develops within the first few weeks after childbirth, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is often blamed on the dramatic drop in estrogen and progesterone, pregnancy-sustaining hormones, that occurs with childbirth. But there is little scientific evidence to support that theory, said Dr. Valerie Davis Raskin, a University of Chicago psychiatrist.
    An NIH study is seeking to test the theory by using drugs to create a "scaled-down" hormonal state of pregnancy in non-pregnant women and then measuring their mood after immediate withdrawal of the synthetic hormones. One problem is trying to figure out which women are susceptible, since all women experience a hormone crash after giving birth but only a fraction develop postpartum depression, Raskin said. The condition is known to run in families, and women who had had previous mental ailments, including an extreme form of premenstrual syndrome, also face an increased risk, she said.
    Women with difficult pregnancies, such as 27-year-old Erives, who spent more than a month on bedrest, are also at risk. Carol Blocker, Stokes' mother, said her daughter's symptoms began soon after her baby's birth in February. "She stopped eating, she couldn't sleep, she was very agitated," Blocker said Thursday. "She told me that she felt like a walking zombie. She told me she was a living corpse." Stokes, 41, was eventually hospitalized and diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, an extreme variation that affects one in 500 to 1,000 women. But she was later sent home. Stokes' mother is promoting legislation Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., introduced in her daughter's name that seeks more research and services for postpartum depression victims. "I'm not going to let her die in vain," Blocker said.
    The U.S. government does not track postpartum depression-related violence, but estimates that up to 200 U.S. infants a year are killed and many more suicides are committed by afflicted mothers, said Laurence Kruckman, a medical anthropologist at Indiana University in Pennsylvania. Kruckman said the United States lags behind places like Britain, where all new mothers are evaluated for postpartum depression before they are sent home, and nurses make at least two mandatory home visits to check for symptoms within 40 days of childbirth. At Indiana Hospital outside Pittsburgh, where Kruckman works as a consultant, all new mothers are screened for postpartum depression and are offered free support-group sessions with their babies where experts look for symptoms. New York and New Jersey are the only states that require hospitals to give mothers information on postpartum depression, said Sonia Murdock, president of Postpartum Support International, a Santa Barbara, Calif., group.
    On the Net:  Postpartum Support International: http://www.postpartum.net

Research Indicates Brain Damage From Ecstasy
Donna Leinwand, USA Today- 7/21/2001

BETHESDA, Md. -- The first studies of people who use the drug ecstasy show that the popular club drug impairs memory and damages the brain mechanisms that regulate sleep, mood and learning. The early results of the studies, presented at a scientific conference Thursday at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, found that brain damage from ecstasy in some cases may persist for years. "We are finding that even a single use can produce brain changes," Institute director Alan Leshner said. "Now we need to find out whether these changes are permanent or whether the brain will recover."
    The trade and use of ecstasy have mushroomed since 1995. In that year, federal agents seized a few hundred thousand pills. Last year, federal agencies confiscated more than 11 million. In a study in England, ecstasy users had memory impairment on average 2 1/2 years after they stopped taking the drug. Valerie Curran, a researcher at University College London, studied current and former ecstasy users and compared them with people who smoked marijuana and drank alcohol. Curran found that those who took ecstasy on weekends in doses commonly sold on the street and at rave parties showed more memory impairment than the marijuana and alcohol users.
    A brain scan study by scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York found that people had decreased blood flow to their brains two weeks after taking a low dose of ecstasy. "While we do know a lot about (ecstasy), there's still a lot we don't know," says Glen Hanson, chief of the institute's neuroscience research division. "In a way, we are conducting this huge experiment on hundreds of thousands of kids who are taking the drug at parties and thinking everything's OK, yet we don't know what the end result will be. That's very scary."

Grim Reminder on Mental Illness
Micheline Maynard, New York Times, 7/21/2001

DETROIT-- The news of Heinz Prechter's suicide earlier this week was a jolt to Detroit's business community, which knew Mr. Prechter as an ebullient German immigrant who arrived in the United States with $11 in his pocket and made a fortune in the auto business. Even more shocking was the cause. For years, Mr. Prechter had been under treatment for severe depression. His condition was a secret to all but his family and some close friends. Publicly, Mr. Prechter displayed a carefree persona as a political fund-raiser and the sole owner of a privately held company--with $550 million in revenues--that perfected the auto sunroof and helped develop specialty cars like the Dodge Viper.
    His secrecy was not surprising. "There is still this enormous embarrassment in America about having some mental health problem," said Dr. Ronald C. Kessler, professor of health care policy at the Harvard Medical School. "The workplace is the last bastion" of secrecy. Mr. Prechter was certainly not alone among business and political leaders to face depression. Ted Turner was treated for manic depression in 1985 and took lithium for years. And George Stephanopoulos, the former aide to President Bill Clinton, has openly discussed his treatment.
    The stigma may have been greater a generation ago, when Senator Thomas Eagleton was forced to step aside as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate after acknowledging that he had undergone electroshock therapy. And a decade before that, Phillip Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, committed suicide after struggling with depression.
    Even those who knew Mr. Prechter was ill had been buoyed during his last weeks, when his joie de vivre, absent in recent months as he battled an injury, seemed to have returned. "I thought this time he had made it back," said Gov. John Engler of Michigan, who delivered a eulogy at the Prechter funeral.
    Mr. Prechter's death has already raised local consciousness. Calls to the University of Michigan's Depression Center, where Mr. Prechter received treatment, more than doubled in the three days after his death. And his affliction was openly discussed throughout his 90-minute funeral. "We come here to acknowledge that emotional depression robs one of hope," said the Rev. Karl Travis in an opening prayer.
    Nationally, clinical depression takes a nearly $44 billion annual toll in the workplace, according to the National Mental Health Association. At any time, one in 14 employees suffers from depression, with over 200 million workdays lost each year. Symptoms range from low morale and fatigue to alcohol or drug abuse. About 12 percent of men and up to 25 percent of women suffer from depression during their lifetimes, the association said. While more women attempt suicide, men are more likely to be successful, doctors say.
    Dr. Jeffrey Lyon Speller and Dr. Tanya Korkosz, who have studied depression in corporate settings, estimate that as many as 10 percent of senior executives have at least some symptoms of manic depression, yet 9 out of 10 of their cases are going undiagnosed and untreated. Depression is still widely misunderstood. This is certainly so in Detroit. The prevailing attitude is "Keep a stiff upper lip, have a strong cocktail, and maybe it will go away," said Dr. Sheila Marcus, director of the adult ambulatory psychiatry at the University of Michigan clinic. Even Mr. Prechter's company, ASC, does not offer its employees treatment programs for depression. "I can tell you that will change," said David Treadwell, Mr. Prechter's successor as chairman of ASC.
    During the public viewing of Mr. Prechter's body, attended by 3,000 mourners, several people told Mr. Treadwell, "I wish I could have talked to him; I could have snapped him out of this," he recalled. Robert C. Stemple, former chief executive of General Motors, who was on a business trip when Mr. Prechter died, said he did not believe the news report and called home to see if it was true. "How could I misread this guy?" he said.
    In late June of this year, Mr. Prechter was reported to have been irritable. He complained about the side effects of medication he was taking to alleviate the pain of an injury--his family would not say what kind--suffered on an Alaska fishing trip last fall. Many people now speculate that the constant pain might have helped push him to suicide. In fact, Mr. Treadwell said, for most of the last year Mr. Prechter was battling his third major bout with depression, after one in the late 1970's and a second in the early 1990's.
    Though he continued to come to his office during the latest bout, Mr. Treadwell said Mr. Prechter had lost interest in both business and politics. He skipped the Geneva Motor Show in February, the industry's most elegant annual event, where he was always a fixture. Recently, however, Mr. Treadwell saw hopeful signs. Mr. Prechter, who had said he was not interested in an ambassadorship, changed his mind. Governor Engler said Mr. Prechter also began pursuing the idea of establishing a global automotive center at the University of Michigan.
    The euphoria was short-lived, as Mr. Prechter's listlessness returned. On July 5, his final day in the office, Mr. Prechter was "not good," Mr. Treadwell said. The last employee to see him leave, Mr. Treadwell said, was a security guard, who told Mr. Prechter: "Heinz, you look tired. You've got to go home." His wife found his body, clothed in robe and shoes, the next morning in a guest house on his estate. He had hanged himself.
    In the days since Mr. Prechter's death, Dr Marcus said she was touched by how many Detroit-area executives confided to her that they or members of their families had encountered depression. Mr. Prechter's widow, Waltraud, and his children, 21-year-old twins, have pledged to back efforts to fight the affliction. "There's a certain closeness of the moment that allows people to begin talking more thoughtfully about what this event meant to them," Dr. Marcus said.

Man Suffering from Mental Illness Sent Alone to Hospital
Detroit Free Press, 7/21/2001

FLINT, Mich. (AP) -- Royal Oak Police found a mentally ill Goodrich man sleeping on a baseball diamond after he was allegedly sent unsupervised to a Madison Heights Hospital. The parents of Gary Kortas Jr., 18, say their son has heard voices in his head telling him to kill people and that Genesee County Community Mental Health workers sent him alone by taxicab to a Madison Heights hospital this week. He was dropped off at the hospital early Wednesday morning and wandered to the baseball diamond six miles away because he could not get in the building, his parents said. Kortas has since been returned to Madison Community Hospital, where he admitted himself for psychiatric treatment and is in good condition, his parents said. He has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline schizophrenia.
    Community mental health Medical Director Dr. Robert A. Cuthbertson declined to confirm details about the incident, citing patient confidentiality. He said patients often are taken to the hospital by cab and the agency has few options to help people with mental illness voluntarily enter the hospital. Cuthbertson said he is looking into the incident.
    Doctors at Hurley Medical Center in Flint had released Kortas to the mental health crisis center on Tuesday. He was restrained and taken to Hurley after he threatened a caregiver at a Goodrich adult home with a butcher knife, said his mother, Susan Kortas. Susan Kortas said the decision to send her son alone put the driver and the public in jeopardy. "This is a person who is still mentally ill, who is still hearing voices to kill people, and they're going to send him by a taxi cab?" she said. "I want to go over and shake them and say, "What's wrong with this picture?"' The Kortases have reported the incident to state Rep. Virg Bernero, D-Lansing, who is a mental health advocate. He is investigating with state Rep. Jack Minore, D-Flint, The Flint Journal reported Saturday.

Student Raped by Coach Rebuilding her Life
Danny Robbins, Houston Chronicle- 7/22/2001

Most of the time, Rachael Purdom doesn't dwell on it. She takes a full load of classes at the University of Houston. She teaches swimming and water safety. She isn't one to engage in self-pity, and even if she were, she would be hard-pressed to squeeze it into her schedule. But then there are the days when something happens to remind her of "him." She sees a certain type of vehicle, hears a particular comment or sees an item in the news. Those days can be a struggle.
    Forcibly raped seven years ago by one of her basketball coaches at Pershing Middle School, Purdom still rides a roller coaster of emotions. "I mean, of course, I think about it," she said. "Every time I see a truck that resembles the truck he drove, I always have to look, just in case, and I always think to myself, `What would I do if I did run into him?' "
    Purdom's case, which came to the attention of authorities three years after the incident occurred, led to a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child against her coach, Eugene Jackson. He ultimately pleaded guilty and received eight years' probation. It also spawned civil litigation in which Purdom accused the Houston Independent School District of failing to deal adequately with inappropriate behavior on Jackson's part before the attack, which occurred during a school event, an overnight "lock-in" party at a downtown athletic club. The suit was dismissed in February after the parties worked out a settlement during mediation.
    Even with both legal matters having run their courses, Purdom, now 21, has found closure elusive. In an interview, she spoke of attending the University of Houston, where she is studying political science and history, and of her outside interests, one of which is serving as director of the Houston Apartment Association's water safety program. But she also spoke of how she still fears her attacker; how she struggles to deal with men, particularly those in positions of authority; and how she felt the need to give up something that once was at the very heart of her existence -- competitive athletics.
    When she reported the assault, Purdom was an 11th-grader at Lamar High School and had competed as a varsity athlete in five sports -- basketball, softball, soccer, cross country and track and field. Feeling as if coming forward made her a pariah, she subsequently chose to graduate a year early and enroll at Houston Community College, a decision that essentially killed her chances of receiving an athletic scholarship and ended her athletic career.
    "I'm kind of dumbfounded sometimes when I think about how much my life has changed in that respect," she said. "I was `the athlete.' Ever since I was a little girl, I was the MVP on all my teams and had all these trophies. My family had pretty high expectations of what they wanted me to do athletically. Yeah, that definitely changed."  Purdom's attitude, particularly her decision to end her athletic career, is illustrative of the anguish typically felt by survivors of sexual abuse by an educator, according to people who deal regularly with the subject.
    Teri L. Miller, a Nevada homemaker who serves as president of Survivors of Educator Sexual Abuse and Misconduct Emerge Inc., described Purdom's case as "textbook." Miller compared it to that of a board member of SESAME who refused to continue her music studies after being sexually abused by a music teacher. According to Miller and others, victims of sexual abuse often experience serious difficulties later in life, including drug and alcohol problems and instability in relationships. Some achieve a level of normalcy, particularly if they receive counseling and strong family support, but even the fortunate ones come away with scars, she said.
    "What it is," said John Seryak, an Ohio middle-school teacher who has written a book based on statements from survivors of educator sexual abuse, "is a lifelong sentence for the victim. Not that the victims always stay victims. Some turn out to be `victors,' because they get to a point of healing to some degree. But I have not in my experience seen a whole lot of people who become totally what we would call `normal.' "You might have your normal life, your trials and tribulations in your marriage or in your job. But for survivors of sexual abuse, every single one of those life events becomes greatly magnified." Purdom, who received two years of counseling and hopes for more, apparently falls into the "victor" category, although the trauma isn't totally behind her. Wanda Schultz, Purdom's maternal grandmother and the person most responsible for raising her, believes the assault sent Purdom into a decline from which she has yet to recover. "People see a sadness in Rachael," she said. "She's not the same person she was before the rape."
    The assault occurred in February 1994, when Purdom was 13 years old and in the eighth grade. She and other members of Pershing's boys and girls basketball teams were participating in an overnight lock-in sponsored by the school to mark the end of the season. The event was held at the now-defunct Texas Club. Jackson, a math teacher who also served as the assistant basketball coach for the eighth-grade girls, was a chaperone. After the attack, which occurred in one of the club's meeting rooms, Purdom tried to push it out of her mind, as if it never happened, behavior that experts say is normal in such cases. At the end of that school year, Purdom was named Pershing's Athlete of the Year, an honor that required her to attend a ceremony and receive a plaque from Jackson.   Looking back on that occasion, she said the ceremony was "terribly awkward" but not enough to cause her to mention the incident or come forward. "I had repressed the thing so much," she said. "I mean, I remember thinking to myself, `If I never think about it again, maybe it never happened.'  "But I did react in other ways. I started hanging around with the wrong crowd. I started drinking whenever I could get my hands on alcohol. I started smoking pot. I did all my high school rebellion in middle school and the summer after eighth grade." Also during that period, she began dressing in a way that hid her sexuality in an attempt "to make myself as ugly as possible so no one would come on to me."
    In a victim's response letter to then-state District Judge Mary Bacon, Purdom described the attack in vivid terms.  "I remember feeling like a trapped animal fighting ... ," she wrote. "Not the kind of caged trap for rodents, but the type of trap that clamps onto an animal's leg, allowing it to bleed to death. "I felt dehumanized and removed from my body. I remember watching this horrible event take place as if I was not inside my body at one point. Somehow, I mentally took a third-person point of view for a time."
    She also revealed in the letter that she twice attempted suicide in the year after the assault. She wrote that both attempts occurred when she was drinking at home alone. On one occasion, she wrote, she tried to overdose on sleeping pills. On another, she put a gun in her mouth but did not pull the trigger because she did not want her grandfather, who owned the gun, to feel guilty for having it in the house. "I also dreamed of running away," she wrote in the letter to Bacon, "but the destinations in my dreams were never real. They were always places where I could live alone forever, like deserted islands. "Overall, my junior high school time after the rape was a nightmare, and thinking about it depresses me."
    At Lamar, Purdom quickly established herself as one of the school's best athletes. Her primary sports were basketball and softball, but she also competed in track and cross country and even suited up for the soccer team when it was short-handed. Initially, she said, she adjusted well to high school. But eventually she began having feelings similar to those she experienced immediately after the assault. She said she also felt "immensely guilty" at the notion that her silence might put other students at risk.
    Finally, midway through her junior year, she spoke of the assault for the first time, describing it in a therapy session arranged after a journal she had been keeping at school was examined by Schultz, her grandmother. Schultz said she had been troubled by her granddaughter's behavior but considered it nothing more than "teen-age rebellion" until seeing signs of deeper depression in the journal. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think Rachael had been sexually abused," she said. Purdom's therapist, Olga Flores, reported the matter to police, starting a chain of events that led to Jackson's arrest, resignation and guilty plea.
    As a result of the plea agreement, finalized in November 1998, Jackson received eight years' probation and was required to pay $5,000 in restitution, register as a convicted sex offender and have no contact with children other than his own without court approval. After his arrest, Jackson was reassigned by HISD to the Southwest District office. He resigned from his position with the school district in August 1997.
    Jackson's resignation coincided with the completion of an investigation by Mike Martin of HISD's Professional Standards division. The investigation confirmed that Jackson had sexually assaulted Purdom and had behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional manner around other female students at Pershing. Included in Martin's report was an April 1996 memo to Jackson from Patsy Finch, then the Pershing principal. In the memo, Finch noted that she had admonished Jackson for hugging female students in the school's hallways Jan. 15, 1994, about a month before he assaulted Purdom.
    Purdom cites the burden of dealing with the criminal and HISD investigations as a significant reason for her decision to complete the course work necessary to graduate from Lamar that summer and not remain in school for her senior year. "I'd been unhappy with high school," she said, "but once that (the charge against Jackson) happened, it was unbearable. They (the media) didn't name me. They didn't say my name on the (television) news. But they narrowed it down enough. And, of course, being on the basketball team, word started spreading. It was just too much." As Lamar's starting point guard at the time, she also sensed that her coaches found the situation unsettling. "I thought my basketball coaches reacted very strangely," she said. "They kind of isolated me. They were no help whatsoever."
    Barbara Meadough, who was the head coach of the Lamar girls basketball team at the time and remains in that position, said she did not become aware that Purdom had reported an assault until the season had ended. She said she can remember Purdom behaving strangely, at one point missing a practice because of a court date, but assumed she was dealing with a guardianship issue regarding her grandparents. She conceded that she might have handled the situation differently had she known about the assault charge, but does not believe she or anyone else made Purdom feel isolated. "Nobody at Lamar would have isolated her," she said. "Why would we do that?"
    Purdom said she felt betrayed by the criminal justice system because Jackson was able to avoid jail time. Quoted after the sentencing, prosecutor Joe Owmby said the case would have been difficult to win for several reasons, one being Purdom's delay in reporting the assault, but that thinking has not mollified her. "Basically, he (Jackson) just got a new job, moved and is living his life," she said. "I left high school, started at a community college, and I'm trying to live mine. So, actually, the only difference (between them) is he's a registered sex offender. I think it's pretty even-steven when you look at it. "I had my life examined, turned upside down. I've lost friends. I've lost associates. People have been interviewed I never hoped would be interviewed. People know things about me I never would want anyone to know. And here he is. He pleads guilty, walks out the same door, and it's over for him."
    Her civil suit, filed in U.S. District Court in January 2000, contended that HISD allowed Jackson to chaperone the lock-in despite numerous previous allegations that he had touched female students. Also named as defendants were the Western Athletic Group, the company that operated the Texas Club at the time the assault occurred, and Hines Interests, the company that managed the building -- now known as Chase Tower -- where the club was located.
    Purdom said she received less than $100,000 as a result of the settlement, an outcome she was willing to accept because she was tired of being under scrutiny.  She said one factor in her decision to settle was the type of questions she faced during her deposition, much of which focused on her sex life and family history. "I wanted it over," she said of the lawsuit. "I wasn't in it for the money. I told my lawyers that from the very beginning. Had we gone to trial, we probably would have gotten more than we expected (in damages) because of the emotional value, but I didn't want to go through that. "HISD's point was to make me out to be this terribly dysfunctional person with an awkward life, someone who isn't mentally competent to be telling this story. All that would have been aired in a trial. I didn't want to put my family through that. I didn't want to go through that. There's no amount of money that would have made it worth it."
    Purdom's primary attorney, Susan Eisner Hiatt, declined to discuss details of the settlement but said settling the case made sense because the evidence, including the memo referring to the warning Jackson received in January 1994 for hugging female students, was not compelling enough to make HISD liable for the assault. "Let me just say that it is really, really hard to recover (damages) from a school district," she said, "because the law makes it so difficult. You almost have to prove that someone at the school knew with a lot of specificity what this person was doing and then looked the other way to allow them to do it. I mean, it's almost that bad." She said she is working to get Purdom more money for counseling through the Texas Crime Victims' Compensation Fund.
    Members of Purdom's family have differing perspectives on how she has been affected. Schultz, her grandmother, describes herself as "still sad about what could have been." Purdom's aunt, Carri Sellers, also thinks of the lost opportunities, particularly those that would have been available through continued success in athletics, but believes the healing process is going about as well as can be expected. "We have survived," she said. "The family has survived. Rachael is on her way back. She has a lot of courage, and last year I wouldn't have told you that.   "I've told her, `Hang on,' because things are so much harder when you're young. The family has helped her, but mostly Rachael has been trying to help herself. I'm really proud of her, and I've told her that."
    Purdom's own assessment is perhaps somewhere in the middle. The good days outnumber the bad, but the bad days hit hard. "I've gotten to the point where I don't think about it every day," she said, "but I do think about it weekly. If something happens that reminds me, if I see somebody who looks like him (Jackson) and I think, `Oh, my God, it's him,' if there's a trigger, I can think about it all day, every day, for as long as it takes for it to go away. "I see stories about little girls who are abducted or raped. Like that little girl who was taken off to Kerrville (11-year-old Leah Henry). When they found her, I broke down, but not because she'd been found. I mean, I was happy she was home, but I also thought, `Look at all those people cheering. They have no idea. They have no idea what she's in for.' "

D.C. Court's Class Shows How Society, Health Are Imperiled
Avram Goldstein, Washington Post- 7/22/2001

The transaction may seem simple: Men cruise city streets in search of prostitutes, buy sex and move on. Yesterday, 10 men who tried to do that but were arrested learned that satisfying their sexual urges with hookers is far more complicated and destructive. By the time the men graduated from the District's first "John School," an experimental, court-approved diversion class that allows them to avoid a criminal record, they learned that their pursuit of prostitutes fuels a violent business that ruins lives, spreads diseases and trashes neighborhoods.
    The men ranged in age from 21 to 54 and were from across the area. They first saw a disturbing, graphic slide show on sexually transmitted diseases that could have been shown at a medical conference. Then they heard four former streetwalkers tell how customers had beaten, abused, degraded and used them and how they had been virtual slaves to pimps or drugs. Jackie McReynolds, who worked in the District, addressed the men as if they were her old johns. "Sometimes you gang-raped me and put a knife to my throat and made me have oral sex with you," she said. "You told me I am worthless and nothing, and I felt like it. Sometimes I looked for compassion, but you didn't care. You treated me like dirt."
    The class listened to a Montgomery County woman who eight years ago saw her 15-year-old daughter lured into drug abuse and prostitution by a man who had gained her trust while hanging around Montgomery Village Middle School for two years and showering her and two classmates with attention. He persuaded all three to run away and walk the streets for him. "This pimp brainwashed my kid," the mother said. She said many prostitutes are underage girls who look older, and she accused men in the class of being no better than sexual predators and exploiters of children: "You don't seem to understand how trapped these kids are." Another former hooker who said she came from a middle-class home said her pimp was the anchor in her troubled life and that it was unthinkable to disobey his orders to sell her body and to give him all the money she was paid. But to sell herself, she said, she had to take heroin. "I liked the feeling of not feeling," she said.
    The men also heard from Logan Circle residents who for years have railed against the nightly invasion of streetwalkers and the mess they leave behind: used condoms, befouled clothing, human waste, and empty liquor bottles and drug vials. The neighbors pleaded for relief from cruising johns and to be left alone when they walk in their neighborhood, rather than be solicited on the sidewalks, said resident Leslie Miles.
    The all-day session was developed by Caroline G. Nicholl, a former police official in Britain who promotes "restorative justice," a recently developed approach to crime prevention. The idea is to show criminals how their acts harm others, including those not directly involved, and explain the role lawbreaking plays in larger criminal enterprises and social problems. The men who took the $300 course chose it after arraignments on solicitation charges. Completion qualifies them for having the charges dismissed. They weren't supposed to make comments in class, but two men managed to squeeze in apologies to the former prostitutes before they left. "I'm sorry, ma'am," said one man who seemed ashamed. "Please forgive me."

Study: Exercise Helps Mental Health
Reuters News Service- 7/22/2001

Elderly women who exercise regularly are less prone to suffer mental decline, another indication that physical activity helps stave off some of the frailties of aging, researchers said on Sunday. "This finding supports the hypothesis that physical activity prevents cognitive (mental) decline in older ... women," said study author Kristine Yaffe, a psychiatrist and neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco.
    The researchers tracked nearly 6,000 mostly white, healthy women aged 65 or older living in planned communities, such as nursing homes, whose mental faculties and levels of exercise were evaluated over a six- to eight-year span. Those in the highest quartile of exercise—measured by calories expended walking, gardening, or more rigorous activities—were 26 percent less likely to develop cognitive decline than those in the quartile who exercised the least. For example, for every mile per day the women walked, they lowered their risk of mental decline by 13 percent, the researchers said. Walking speed was not a factor. A few previous studies have linked exercise with better mental health, but the latest study adjusted for confounding variables such as smoking and use of hormone replacement therapy. Yaffe cited several possible benefits of regular exercise among the elderly, including increasing cerebral blood flow, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease in the body and brain, and stimulating nerve cell growth.
    The report, which was published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, said at least one in 10 people older than 65 and half of those over 85 develop some form of cognitive impairment ranging from mild mental deficits to dementia. "Further research is needed to determine if physical activity programs could prevent clinically significant cognitive impairment and if our findings can be replicated in other populations," Yaffe wrote.

Experts: Kids Worried About Weight
Martha Irvine, Associated Press- 7/22/2001

CHICAGO -- One comes home and announces her intention to diet because "I'm getting fat!" Another wishes she wore a smaller clothing size. And yet another declares herself "ugly" after studying fans wearing hip-huggers and midriff tops at a concert. Such moments are hardly surprising in a world that many say is obsessed with weight and looks. But these comments come from children - girls ages 6, 8 and 5. Experts say they are part of a growing number of young children, especially girls, who fret about body image. In extreme but increasingly common cases, some are being treated for eating disorders.
    Dr. Ira Sacker recalls the 6-year-old girl who came to his New York practice because she was eating paper to curb her hunger. That was three years ago, when doctors say such patients were an anomaly. "But these aren't isolated cases anymore," says Sacker, director of the eating disorder clinic at Brookdale University Hospital in Brooklyn and co-author of the book "Dying To Be Thin." "It seems to be a trend."
    That doesn't mean every child who worries about body image ends up anorexic or bulimic. But even some who, by societal standards, would be considered thin say they worry about how their peers view them. "Sometimes, what I look like makes me feel bad," Danielle Darling, a tall, blue-eyed blonde from Bakersfield, Calif., says on her way to a community theater audition. She's the 8-year-old who wishes she wore a size smaller than a 12. Then there's 10-year-old Kirstie Bilbrey. She stops to consider the question of body image after shopping with her mom at a store filled with glittery makeup and sweet-smelling bath gel at a mall in Schaumburg, a northwest suburb of Chicago.
    A smiley, athletic girl who's attending cheerleading day camp this summer, Kirstie bashfully admits that, just moments earlier, she had complained that her shorts "make my butt look big." Her mother, Ann Bilbrey, says Kirstie is much more concerned about looks than her two teen-age sisters ever were. And she says girls in the Scout troop she leads - second-graders among them - regularly discuss dieting. "I've never seen girls more confident in my life," Ann Bilbrey says. "And yet, on the other hand, they're very aware of what they're wearing and how people view them."
    Experts have documented the trend, here and abroad. Studies published earlier this year found that children as young as age 5 in Australia and Hong Kong wanted to be thinner, echoing similar U.S. findings. An online poll conducted by Harris Interactive in January found that 17 percent of girls ages 8 and 9, and about a third of girls ages 10 to 12, perceived themselves as overweight. That compares with 16 percent and a fifth of boys, respectively, in the same age groups.
    Some researchers and parents blame the influence of thin images in everything from magazines and TV to textbook drawings of girls that, one study found, have become skinnier over the years. "I'm sure she looks at images of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Destiny's Child with their thin, flat bellies," Tammy Christensen, a mother from Highland, Utah, says of her 9-year-old daughter, who regularly complains about being fat, even though she's 4-foot-5 and weighs only 60 pounds. Some parents say pop stars' clothing styles only reinforce the thin, sexy "ideal" girls strive for. Just about every mall carries short skirts, tight-fitting tiger-skin prints and belly- or back-bearing shirts in small sizes. One department store at the mall where Kirstie and her mom were shopping sells T-shirts, in girls' sizes 3 to 9, with such slogans as "This Is What A Hottie Looks Like" and "Caution: Your Boyfriend's At Risk." Not that every kid could fit into those clothes.
    Federal statistics show a growing proportion of the nation's children are overweight - 14 percent of children ages 6 to 11, and 11 percent of those 12 to 17 - making the ideal even more elusive. "Just because they want it, doesn't mean they can achieve it," says Dr. Marla Kushner, director of adolescent medicine at Chicago's Weiss Hospital. She, too, is seeing increasingly younger patients, particularly girls, concerned about gaining weight that their developing bodies often need. But she says there are problems, including children who simply don't get enough exercise.
    Nutritionists also say parents need to stress healthy eating habits instead of dieting - and then walk the talk themselves. Avoiding weight criticisms also is key. "I catch myself saying things like, 'Oh, honey, hold your stomach in,'" says Danielle's mom, Nona Darling. "I know I probably shouldn't." Instead, she says tries to concentrate on letting her daughter be who she is, wear what she likes (within reason) - and not worry too much about what other people think. It seems to be sinking in. "It's not really what you're wearing or what you look like," Danielle says when asked how she chooses her own friends. "It's the person - it's what's inside."
    On the Net: Kushner's site: http://www.askdoctormarla.com

Meth Use Linked to Jump in ID, Mail Thefts
Sam Skolnik, Seattle Post-Intelligencer- 7/23/2001

In the past couple of years, incidents of mail and identity theft have skyrocketed in the Puget Sound area. At the same time, local arrests for the production of methamphetamine -- the powerful and highly addictive stimulant -- also have soared. One thing has become crystal clear to police, prosecutors and defense lawyers dealing with these growing problems: The two are directly related. Without meth and the bone-deep addictions it can cause, there would be virtually no mail-theft problem, they say. In fact, investigators believe that between 95 and 100 percent of the crimes are committed to support a meth habit.
    "Almost without exception, the people we're arresting for these types of crimes are doing meth," says Tom Montgomery of the Seattle office of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. "It's a plague." And these mail and identity theft rings are getting more complex. In one recently busted by police, 19 people so far have been arrested for stealing checks, forging driver's licenses and other forms of identification, and swindling more than $800,000.
    The King County Sheriff's Drug Enforcement Unit more than doubled the number of meth-lab busts from 60 in 1999 to 135 last year. It is on a pace to make almost 200 this year. Likewise, the number of Washingtonians seeking help for meth addictions has exploded in recent years. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, Md., the number of people statewide admitted into treatment programs for meth abuse grew by sevenfold -- from 774 in 1993 to 5,173 in 1998, the latest year such numbers are available. Not coincidentally, authorities say, the number of arrests for serious mail-theft crimes by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service also has shot up in the last several years.
    According to Postal Service statistics, there were 14 arrests on serious mail-theft charges, usually relating to identity theft, in the broader Puget Sound area in fiscal year 1998. In fiscal year 2000, there were 67. The jump was just as dramatic in the five-state region of which Washington is a part. From 1997 to 2000, in Washington as well as Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and Montana, the number of arrests for all types of mail- theft crimes jumped from 42 to 225.
    Like meth addicts, crack cocaine and heroin users also often resort to crime to raise money to buy more drugs. So why the connection between meth and identity theft? Prosecutors and police believe that a "meth subculture" -- often composed of loose-knit groups of manufacturers, sellers and users -- has latched on to mail and identity theft because they are non-violent and non-drug-related crimes with relatively small penalties. Further, police often have to follow a long and convoluted paper trail to catch up with the perpetrators, making capture less than a sure thing. And the effect of the drug -- a powerful rush that can last anywhere from 12 to 18 hours -- feeds into the intense work cycle necessary to effectively commit identity fraud, they say. Often, thieves will steal checks, and other correspondence with personal information, from mailboxes. The less sophisticated of them will often just "wash" the checks with a solution that erases the pen ink, and then make the checks out to themselves. But increasingly, the thieves create false checks in the victim's name, and forge driver's licenses, birth certificates and other IDs with the victim's name but the photo of the thief. At that point, they can write bum checks to purchase goods or simply deplete the bank account. Some of the more advanced operations use low-level thieves to go "boxing" to steal the mail, and then sell it -- for meth -- to others who then create the IDs. "These people are just prolific," says William Redkey, head of the General Crime Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office. "When they get hopped up on speed, they cannot steal enough mail, they cannot make enough IDs. It's amazing."
    Because federal sentences are stiffer and the crimes are often complicated, federal prosecutors get first crack at the cases in the region, and end up prosecuting most of them. According to Redkey, identity thieves are predominantly white and urban. Both men and women commit the crime, he says, and many are HIV-positive, in part because users share the needles they use to inject the drug. Sometimes called ice, crystal or crank, meth can be "cooked" using cheap, over-the-counter chemicals or hardware-store items. It can be injected, smoked, sniffed or swallowed. The drug works by stimulating the central nervous system. Meth is highly addictive. "Every single person tells me that, even when they were on other drugs, they were in control of their lives until meth," says detective Mike Klokow of the fraud and computer forensics division of the King County Sheriff's Office. "They can't walk away from it."
    In one recent federal court case, two men admitted to a chronic use of meth for months or years before they committed their crimes. On Dec. 21, Anthony McDonald and John Heckendorn were arrested at a Holiday Inn hotel in Marysville under federal arrest warrants. According to court papers, agents found "numerous" pieces of stolen mail; a counterfeit Postal Service key; seven Washington state driver's licenses, each bearing the photo of McDonald or Heckendorn but containing a different name; counterfeit checks; and supplies to create false identification documents, including a computer, digital camera, printer and scanner. McDonald, 37, and Heckendorn, 29, had been living in a halfway house in Seattle for earlier mail-theft and bank-fraud crimes -- Heckendorn had escaped three days after he arrived -- before beginning their mail/identity spree in October 2000. Both men pleaded guilty to six counts of possession of stolen mail and identification documents. On June 21, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly sentenced McDonald to 46 months in prison and Heckendorn to 71 months. Both men were ordered to pay back the money they stole -- a joint bill of $80,000 for both men, and an additional $41,358 for McDonald. Both men were addicted to meth, according to sentencing memos filed by their attorneys.
    After Heckendorn's halfway house escape, according to his memo, "John fell back in with a group who were already in the process of committing various postal crimes to raise money to satisfy their own drug addiction." According to McDonald's sentencing memo, he also was abusing both meth and heroin throughout much of the past decade. From early 1999 to mid-2000, while on probation, he held a steady job and was attending drug treatment. But a series of events, including his father's death, caused him to begin taking drugs again and associating "with old 'friends' who talked him into involving himself" in mail and identity theft. Identity theft is not a violent crime per se. But the effect on victims can be just as harsh and lasting, they say.
    One Seattle woman, a self-employed artist, had her mail stolen, including a check she had sent out, two weeks before Christmas. She is still feeling the effects, she says. The woman, who asked not to be identified, said that $12,000 was quickly emptied from her bank account by the thieves. "It was my business and personal account," she says. "It was all the money I had." She says it took months to convince her bank and other businesses that she had been victimized. The woman is now more suspicious of people, she says, and will never again put a check in her mailbox. "There's a lot you have to do to get your life back," she says. "It definitely scars you. It's violating."
    Federal and local authorities are taking several steps to address the burgeoning problem. In August, a working group was set up including representatives from the U.S. Attorney's office, the Postal Inspection Service, the state Attorney General's Office, the Department of Social and Health Services, and others. According to Klokow, the King County detective, it's going to take more than meetings. "If we don't put a hard thumb down on the meth dealers and labs," Klokow says, "this problem is only going to get worse."

Elderly People With High Blood Pressure & Depression at Risk
ABC News, 7/23/2001

Elderly people with high blood pressure and depression are twice as likely to have heart failure as people with high blood pressure who aren't depressed, according to a new study. Researchers looked at more than 4,000 people over 60, conducting electro cardiograms, blood pressure tests and other standard heart tests on both the depressed and nondepressed subjects. Those who were depressed showed much higher signs of heart disease that could lead to heart failure. The study, by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, appears in this month's Archives of Internal Medicine.
    "We suspected that this would be true because depression is associated with sympathetic nervous system activation, which causes the release of stress hormones and that plays a role in the progression of heart failure," says lead author Jerome Abramson. Previous studies have shown that depression is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease in general, but it had not been known whether depression alone could be a risk factor.
    One of the problems with treating depression in the elderly, say experts, is that they are not likely to seek help when they are feeling depressed. Furthermore, depressed patients also tend not to comply with doctors' orders when it comes to other ills. "Depression is associated with a stigma," says John Kaskow, head of geriatric psychology at University of Cincinnati. "Patients tend not to come forward when they're depressed. They feel ashamed." But treatment of depression, Kaskow says, can lead to significant improvement in how well and how long a person lives.
    Kaskow and Abramson agree that medical personnel should treat depression just as aggressively as other diseases like diabetes. "It's paramount," Kaskow says. "Doctors really need to treat depression because it leads to several kinds of health problems, especially for the elderly," Abramson says. "Sometimes, health care professionals look at depression in the elderly as part of the aging process and it just doesn't have to be so

Experts Tout Proposed Colorado Home for Sex Offenders
Stacie Oulton, Denver Post- 7/24/2001

GOLDEN -- Jefferson County's proposed teen sex-offender treatment facility could be the first ever developed under national standards, and prominent sex-offender experts heaped praise Monday on how the facility would be run. One expert said the county's proposal for a 48- to 60-bed facility just north of Golden off Colorado 93 could be a model "not just for this nation, but the world." "It would be a shame to miss this opportunity," said Jerry Thomas, a national expert who helped develop new national standards for treating sex offenders.
    But more than 200 residents and lawyers representing opponents at a hearing before the Jefferson County Commission weren't convinced. The audience grumbled when an official with Hand Up Homes for Youth, the company that would run the county's facility, couldn't say how many escapes have occurred at the company's existing facilities in the state. The public didn't get a chance to comment on the proposal but will when the meeting continues tonight.
    Monday's meeting was filled with more than three hours of presentations by county officials and others about why the commissioners should approve the facility. Safety remained the focus of the hearing with the experts and county officials hammering away at the fact that the center would not be home to predatory offenders akin to adult criminals. "They are not rapists, pedophiles or predators. They're kids. They are children themselves. They are kids who have done stupid things," said Raymond Nelson, a clinical specialist with Hand Up Homes for Youth.
    The facility will have motion detectors, a fence, a sheriff's deputy on site and other safety precautions. One expert said nearby homeowners "should consider themselves fortunate" that the facility would be a half-mile or more from their homes because most treatment facilities are in neighborhoods.
    Golden officials upped their attack on the center by filing condemnation papers in court Monday, arguing that Golden should be given ownership of the land for open space. The county is expected to argue that the city doesn't have the power to condemn county-owned land. But the city also renewed its call for the county to reconsider its ordinance capping sex offenders to one per home in residential areas. That law prompted the county to propose building the facility. Golden and dozens of other cities have passed the same cap, and the City Council has said it may be time to reconsider those laws and convene a task force to figure out different solutions than what the county has proposed.
    In another lawsuit filed by a homeowners group, a judge declined to grant a temporary restraining order to stop the commission hearing. But the lawsuit wasn't withdrawn. The suit wants the commissioners removed from making a decision about the facility. It contends the commissioners discussed the proposal and made decisions about it before the hearing.

Failed Appeal to Free Sex Offenders in Colorado
Kirk Mitchell, Denver Post- 7/24/2001

More than 100 sex offenders must be released from prison quickly following a decision Monday by the Colorado Supreme Court not to rehear two landmark sex-offender cases. The decision ends or precludes parole supervision for hundreds more. "I am disappointed in the court's final ruling, but the state must now abide by that decision," said Attorney General Ken Salazar, who had asked the court to reconsider its earlier decision in the matter.  Sex offenders will be released from prison with no parole supervision starting today, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan.
    Monday's Supreme Court ruling not to hear the cases, a 4-3 decision, is the latest in a series addressing which of several conflicting parole laws apply to sex offenders. The Supreme Court did not explain its decision. The action will accelerate releases of hundreds of sex offenders from parole or prison and eventually affect 1,512 sex offenders given prison sentences between 1993 and 1998. Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court and the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on two occasions that sex offenders should be governed by a 1996 law, which severely limited the length of parole, instead of the tougher 1993 mandatory parole law.
    Salazar appealed the rulings. On June 26, the high court upheld the earlier decisions. Within a few days, Salazar sought a new hearing but that appeal was rejected Monday. "We exhausted those legal options in challenging the court's decisions, but in the end fell one justice short of prevailing because of the confusing sentencing and parole statutes enacted by the General Assembly in 1993 and 1996," Salazar said.
    Because of the ruling, 116 sex offenders must be released from prison as soon as possible. They were sent to prison after violating parole that, the courts have determined, they should have never been on. The first to be released will be 72 sex offenders whose prison sentences did not specify that they would serve mandatory parole. The other 44 sex offenders did have mandatory parole written on their sentences, and a judge must change their sentences before they can be released. Corrections officials have sent letters to sentencing judges across the state asking them to immediately issue new sentencing orders. The judges are to fax those orders, not mail them, to the DOC, spokeswoman Heidi Hayes said. Beginning today, an additional 251 sex offender parolees will be notified that they are no longer on parole, Hayes said.  When the remaining 1,145 sex offenders are released after completing prison terms, they will not be automatically be placed on parole. In the past, parole would have been mandatory; now it will be at the Parole Board's discretion.
    The sex offenders will have to abide by beefed-up monitoring. Sex offenders convicted of felonies could be charged with an additional felony if they fail to register with local law enforcement. Their pictures will be posted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation if they fail to register. For a small fee and with identification verifying their residence, people can obtain information about sex offenders in their neighborhoods and other areas where their children go. The changes came about this year after the mix-up over releasing sex offenders came to light.

Colorado's Worst Sexual Predators Slip Through ID System
Julia C. Martinez, Denver Post- 7/24/2001

Some of Colorado's most dangerous sexual predators are not being accurately identified because of a breakdown in the state's evaluation process, an audit released Monday found. That means some sexually violent offenders might be receiving lighter sentences and getting released from prison earlier than they should, auditor Heather Moritz told lawmakers on the Legislative Audit Committee. "It is important for our criminal justice system to do everything it can to accurately identify and properly sentence these individuals," Moritz said. The audit also revealed that state authorities have no idea how many sex offenders are unregistered in Colorado. Some 8,600 offenders have signed up for Colorado's sex offender registry, as required by state law, but an untold number are not.  Lawmakers hope a new law passed this year that mandates "risk assessments" for all sex offenders will solve the classification problem by identifying the most dangerous sex offenders before they're sentenced or released.
    At the time the audit was conducted, the assessments were only sporadic. However, lawmakers fear there still could be a loophole in the law since judges still make the final decision as to whether someone's a violent predator. Auditors cited incomplete and nonexistent "risk" evaluations by state-hired experts as reasons why sexually violent predators weren't being accurately identified before. They're supposed to be doing both pre- and post-sentencing evaluations. To be designated a sexually violent predator, offenders must be convicted of one of five crimes: first- or second-degree sexual assault; unlawful sexual contact; sexual assault on a child; or sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust.
    Auditors reviewed a sample of 77 pre-sentenced convicted sex offenders and found that risk assessments on 40 of them were incomplete. While the auditors found that 28 of the 77 were "sexually violent predators," only eight had been identified as such by the state's experts at sentencing. Of the 20 found not to be sexually violent predators, auditors said one of them should have been rated the most dangerous of all 77. And according to their evaluation, one other had committed a sex offense after being released from a 17-year sentence for raping a 14-year-old girl.   The audit committee reported its findings to the proper state officials, and will continue to review to see if the new law helps the system.
    Other problems still persist though, according to the audit. Colorado has no law requiring any criminal justice agency to verify if sex offenders have actually registered. No one, for instance, has kept track of the 1,000 convicted sex offenders released from prison since 1991, auditors found. "As a result there is no way to determine how many sex offenders have failed to register and who these individuals are," said Moritz. A 1991 law requires anyone convicted of a sex offense, or released from prison after July 1, 1991, on a sex offense charge, to register annually with local law enforcement. They also must register if they move to another town. The audit said there is a mismatch between the number of offenders on local registries and the state's central registry, kept by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. In one sample of local registrants, auditors found that only 8 percent of the offenders were under supervision. Bob Cantwell, CBI chief, said he has contacted chiefs of police statewide to reconcile the sex offenders on the local registries with those on the central registry. He said Denver has employed three more detectives "to confirm that all sex offenders are where they're supposed to be."

Local Women Sought for PMS Drug Trial
Detroit Free Press, 7/24/2001

A new study is seeking women to test a nasal spray of artificially created pheromones to treat premenstrual syndrome and the more severe form of PMS, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. PMS affects 40 percent of women of childbearing age and PMDD affects 3 percent to 8 percent. PMS is the result of the chemical imbalance of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that controls mood. Pheromones are better known as chemical messengers that animals release to attract their mates. Scientists have isolated human pheromones and, in the 1990s, Dr. David Berliner and his coworkers at Pherin Pharmaceuticals identified the vomeronasal organ (VNO) in the nasal passage as the sensory organ for pheromones in humans.
    This new spray, PH80, contains one of the more than 1,000-patented vomeropherins, compounds related to pheromones that stimulate receptor cells in the VNO. The PH80 stimulates the receptors in the nasal passage, which sends a message to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus regulates mood, sleep, appetite, hunger and the reproductive system. Eventually, the signal stimulates the regulatory centers of serotonin in the brain. The only approved drug to treat PMDD is the antidepressant Prozac. There are no approved drugs for treating PMS. The study hopes to show that PH80 can treat both, is faster acting and has no side effects.
    The study began July 9 and will continue for 6 months. Four centers nationwide are participating in the study, including the Farmington Hills-based Psychopharmacology Research Corp., which specializes in the treatment of people with chemical or hormonal imbalances. Nonsmoking women ages 18-37 with no nasal surgery and who have not taken anti-depressant medicines in the past 6 months can enroll in the study by calling Psychopharmacology Research at 866-841-9090.

California's Proposition 36 Eligibility Debated in Courts
Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times- 7/24/2001

Entering the debate over Proposition 36, a state appeals court has agreed to hear arguments on whether drug defendants convicted before the measure took effect July 1 can be sentenced to drug treatment rather than time behind bars. Responding to a writ from the Los Angeles County public defender's office, a second appellate district panel on Thursday ordered the release of an inmate who had been sentenced to jail rather than treatment. The defendant, Janet Delong, was found guilty of cocaine possession in May, but was not sentenced until July 12. The state appellate court will take up the issue in late September. At Delong's sentencing, Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner denied a public defender's request to sentence her under the initiative. "I don't find that she falls within the scheme of Proposition 36 within the time frame allotted," said Sautner, a judge at the Airport Branch Courthouse.
    Approved by 61% of California voters in November, Proposition 36 gives first- and second-time drug offenders convicted of possessing, using or transporting drugs for personal use the chance to receive probation and treatment rather than jail sentences. As courts grapple with how to implement the law, legal challenges are occurring around the state. In Orange County, prosecutors have appealed judges' rulings that authorized drug treatment for defendants whose crimes they say are not covered by the initiative. Los Angeles County prosecutors, meanwhile, are studying the possibility of appealing rulings that have allowed drug offenders arrested before July 1 to participate in Proposition 36 programs.
    The outcome of the Sept. 24 appellate court hearing could affect several cases. Currently, the July 1 cutoff date is being interpreted differently from court to court. "There are judges on both sides on this issue," said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan, who supervises the county's drug courts. "Nobody is going to be totally happy until the appellate court tells us exactly what cases come in under Proposition 36." The final word eventually will come from the California Supreme Court, he said. At this point, Tynan believes most California judges recognize that the spirit of the law is to allow for treatment rather than incarceration.
    Judge Stephen Marcus shared that opinion when he granted a defense attorney's request to sentence Los Angeles Avenger quarterback Todd Marinovich under Proposition 36. Marinovich was arrested in December and pleaded no contest to heroin possession in March. In another high-profile case, actor Robert Downey Jr. was arrested in April but waited until July 16 to plead no contest to charges of possessing cocaine and being under the influence. Downey also was placed on probation and allowed to enter drug treatment.
    Proposition co-author Dave Fratello said that he intended the law to apply to defendants sentenced after July 1, but that some prosecutors are reading the law differently. "There are some forces out there that are trying to find ways to exclude people from the proposition, and this is one of the ways to do it," he said.
    Delong, 35, was arrested in August for possession of cocaine and was found guilty by a jury May 18. Out of custody on her own recognizance, she voluntarily enrolled in an outpatient rehabilitation program. On July 12, Delong was sentenced to 150 days in the Los Angeles County Jail and immediately taken into custody. At the sentencing, prosecutors said the Culver City woman should not be allowed to take advantage of the new initiative because she was convicted before July 1. "Our office believes she's not eligible under the law," said Jane Robison, a district attorney's spokeswoman. "It is our reading of the law that the cutoff date is the conviction date."
    Defense attorneys argued that the official conviction date is when the judge imposes the sentence. They believe that the Delong is an ideal candidate for rehabilitation and that it does not make sense for her to be incarcerated. "It boils down to an issue of fairness," said Deputy Public Defender Alex Ricciardulli, who is handling the Delong appeal. "Here is a person just as needy and as drug-addicted as anyone else. It would be extremely unfair to exclude her just because of the timing of the offense." Ricciardulli filed a writ with the 2nd District Court of Appeal on July 19, and the court issued the order to show cause that same day. Delong was released from jail the next day, attorneys said.