Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, December 23-26, 2006




Pataki Signs Bill on Parity in Health Care
Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times- 12/23/2006

Ending months of uncertainty, Gov. George E. Pataki yesterday signed into law a bill requiring that commercial insurance policies pay for mental health care in much the same way they cover physical illness. The Assembly and the Senate reached agreement on the terms of the bill in June — though they did not complete passage of it until this month — but for six months the governor would not say publicly what he intended to do with it.
      The signing ceremony was a rare victory for the kind of emotional politics that rarely succeed in a government most often moved by large electoral blocs, moneyed interests and lobbyists. Many legislators credited passage of the bill to the family of Timothy O’Clair, a boy who committed suicide at 12, who campaigned relentlessly for the measure.
     Despite the widespread attention given to the O’Clair crusade, the effect of such health care mandates, which can raise insurance premiums, is narrower than it appears. Most people have health insurance through large employers or unions, plans that are usually governed by federal law, which exempts them from state laws. In addition, most commercial policies already cover mental health treatment, which the governor said had helped allay his concerns about cost, and so do government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
     Business organizations — whose members pay for most health insurance — and insurance companies generally oppose these kinds of mandates. But they did not work against the mental health bill this year, after small employers were exempted and after coverage that would have mandated treatment for alcohol and drug addiction was taken out of the bill.
     Timothy O’Clair killed himself in 2001, after the mental health benefits provided by his parents’ insurance ran out. His parents, Tom and Donna, who live near Schenectady, set out to prevent the same thing from happening to other families, taking up a cause that advocates for the mentally ill had pursued for years. They drove countless times to the Capitol, pigeonholing lawmakers and staying through late-night sessions. In particular, Mr. O’Clair, a mechanic who has Timothy’s image tattooed on his arm, became a fixture at the Capitol, and many lawmakers say they were won over by his persistent, poignant appeals. “We, collectively, lost Timothy, not just his family and friends,” Mr. O’Clair said yesterday, standing beside Mr. Pataki in the opulent Red Room in the State Capitol. “Anybody whose life he may have affected as an adult, as a student going through college, as a father, a grandfather — we all lost Timothy.”
     Legislative leaders agreed on the bill in June, but by then, both houses had finished their regular session for the year. The Senate returned in September and passed the bill, but the Assembly did not return until this month. The bill passed both houses unanimously, but even after the bill was sent to the governor on Dec. 13, it was not clear what he would do. In September, when the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, told reporters that Mr. Pataki had said he would sign it, the governor said he did not recall the conversation. Mr. Pataki, who leaves office in little more than a week, said he satisfied himself that the bill did not unduly raise health insurance costs. But he said he was concerned that employers and insurers might not have time to comply with the law, which takes effect on Jan. 1. “There does need to be time to implement it adequately, and I would hope that early next year that the Legislature will take a look to see” if businesses should be given more time, he said.
     The law requires that commercial insurance policies like those bought by employers provide equivalent coverage, or parity, for mental and physical illness. An employer with fewer than 50 workers could opt out, but the insurer would be required to offer a policy that covered mental illness. The law pledges that the state will develop a method to help small businesses pay for that coverage if they choose to buy it.
     As of early this year, 22 states had parity laws, according to a review by the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the number may have grown since then. Many of those, like New York’s, include exceptions for small businesses and substance abuse treatment. There were at least 17 other states that mandated some kind of mental health coverage, but not full parity with other health benefits.

Reunion Is Part Sorrow, Part Success
Mary Otto, Washington Post- 12/24/2006

In the final chapter of this series, staff Writer Mary Otto recounts the story of one couple's journey through the Family Recovery Program, an experimental Maryland court attempting to help drug addicts get clean, then get their children back from state custody. The stories reflect scenes she witnessed or, when noted, recounted to her. Last month, Stacy Coleman graduated from the program, while Keith Cromwell was beset by a relapse and health problems.

On the night before little Keyona is coming for a three-day home visit, Stacy Coleman tells her fiance she is running out to the store. Instead, she stays out all night, violating the curfew of the transitional apartment where they now live and risking their chance for winning back their 1-year-old.Keith Cromwell, stunned that she would throw away 10 months of clean living, slips out early in the morning and finds Coleman back in their old Baltimore neighborhood, on St. Paul Street. "I saw her in a bar, drinking," he recalls. "She said she didn't want the baby. She didn't want the responsibility." Cromwell persuades her to come home with him, take a shower.
      When the caseworker from the Department of Social Services arrives with Keyona, he is there to take the toddler and explain that her mother isn't feeling well. He gets Keyona settled down with Coleman and heads off to his part-time job as a receptionist in a doctor's office. But later in the day, while he is busy signing in a patient, he gets an urgent call from his cousin. She has spotted Coleman back on St. Paul Street, sitting on the porch of an old neighbor, a drug user. Coleman has Keyona with her.
     Amid warnings from the doctor that leaving could cost him his job, Cromwell rushes out. He finds Coleman and the baby right where his cousin said he would. "She wasn't high. I just took Keyona and left her sitting there," Cromwell recalls later, devastated. Then Coleman disappears and spends two weeks back on the Baltimore streets. She is barred from returning to the Lanvale transitional housing program for violating the rules, and with her year in the Family Recovery Program finished, she can't find a ready alternative. "From the first time we met, she said she wanted out of the madness," Cromwell says. "She left a roof over her head, her child and somebody who cared about her to go back to that madness."
     They had lost their baby to foster care shortly after she was born in July 2005, when Coleman tested positive for cocaine. Since then, the couple had been part of the Family Recovery Program, with its regimen of drug treatment, urine tests and court appearances. Coleman had struggled to quell her addiction initially but had stayed clean since February. Her progress earned her a spot at the Lanvale transitional living center in Baltimore, which offers recovering addicts another year in a structured environment, with on-site counseling, parenting support and help improving job skills or education.
     Cromwell had relapsed briefly in the summer and had been hospitalized in September with pancreatitis, but he was determined to stay clean and get his child back. He had only recently been allowed to move into the Lanvale apartment with Coleman, who had been making plans to get her GED at a school near the doctor's office where Cromwell worked. There was a good child-care center nearby. A hearing on a plan for Keyona's long-term placement was set for Nov. 17.
     Now Cromwell had the only chance of getting Keyona back. "I realized it ain't gonna be a family," Cromwell says. "It's just gonna be me and the little one." He cleans and recleans the apartment, waiting. He keeps everything perfect for Keyona -- her small, bright clothes folded neatly in the drawers, her stuffed animals carefully arranged in her crib. He buys her a pink snowsuit and a training potty.
     Then the day of the hearing arrives. Keyona Cromwell, case No. 805206001. 1 p.m. Room H-9. Cromwell arrives right on time with his caseworker from Lanvale, Melisa Pool. They settle onto a bench outside the hearing room as other proceedings drag on. Then Cromwell's cellphone rings. It's Coleman, calling from Philadelphia. She is in a treatment program up there and going through a crisis. "Stacy, I can't help you right now," Cromwell says, upset.
     Finally the hearing begins. After all of Cromwell's months of treatment, of counseling, of relapse and recovery, of heartening chats with Judge Martin P. Welch, the question of Keyona's placement is weighed in about three minutes of arcane discussion among the lawyers and a special master appointed by the juvenile court. A lawyer for Keyona interjects, requesting a trial or settlement on the matter. A date is set for Jan. 19, and the hearing is over. Cromwell leaves the courtroom, not quite sure what happened. He utters an oath, shakes his head in frustration, stares at the floor. "Mr. Cromwell, why are you looking like that?" asks Keyona's social services caseworker, Rubie Meekins, as she walks out of the courtroom. "She's coming home to stay."
     Cromwell looks up in surprise, then wonder. In conversations with caseworkers and his court-appointed lawyer, he learns what to expect: a series of transitional visits leading up to the Jan. 19 hearing. Keyona might arrive for her first visit as early as the following Monday. Walking out of the courthouse, Cromwell dials Coleman's number. "Stacy! I got her!" Then he sees a friend across Gay Street."I got MY DAUGHTER!" he shouts. Monday arrives, but there is no sign of the caseworker or Keyona. A bleak Thanksgiving comes and goes without his little girl. Cromwell struggles with loneliness, confusion and frustration.
     Finally the visits begin. Keyona, 17 months, is walking now, and she takes three earnest little steps for each of Cromwell's long strides as they explore the halls of Lanvale. Neighbors, most of them mothers with young children, and counselors greet them at every turn. "This must be Keyona!" "My little angel," Cromwell declares. In the apartment, she sits quite still next to him. She is not a restless child. Her large eyes take in everything. He shows her an alphabet game and rag doll and plays songs for her on his cellphone. He holds her and murmurs, "We're gonna be alright."When the phone rings, it is Meekins, saying she is downstairs to pick up Keyona. He reluctantly zips on her little pink jacket, gently tucking her soft hair into the hood. Then he puts on her thicker fleece jacket. "Look up, Keyona," he says as he zips it up to her chin. She lifts her small thoughtful face and stands there on her own, bundled against the cold. She follows him to the door and walks beside him down the hall.
     Friday evening, three days before Christmas, Meekins brings Keyona back. The caseworker hands over the sleeping child, a duffle bag with all her clothes, her medical records and her coupons for food assistance. She is home for Christmas and, possibly, for good."It's not like I'm out of the woods," Cromwell says. "They will continue to do what they have to to make sure she's safe and secure, to make sure I don't mess up. "As he speaks, Keyona is napping on his couch after an afternoon spent playing with toys and scampering up and down the hall outside their door. Cromwell resolves to focus on his child, to meet each challenge more slowly and carefully. 'This is just the beginning of little things," he says."I have my gift -- my child."

Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire of Dr. Freud
Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times- 12/24/2006

Either way, Sigmund Freud, scribbling in the pages of a Swiss hotel register, appears to have left the answer to a question that has titillated scholars for much of the last century: Did he have an affair with his wife’s younger sister, Minna Bernays? Rumors of a romantic liaison between Freud and his sister-in-law, who lived with the Freuds, have long persisted, despite staunch denials by Freud loyalists. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, Freud’s disciple and later his archrival, claimed that Miss Bernays had confessed to an affair to him. (The claim was dismissed by Freudians as malice on Jung’s part.) And some researchers have even theorized that she may have become pregnant by Freud and have had an abortion.
      What was lacking was any proof. But a German sociologist now says he has found evidence that on Aug. 13, 1898, during a two-week vacation in the Swiss Alps, Freud, then 42, and Miss Bernays, then 33, put up at the Schweizerhaus, an inn in Maloja, and registered as a married couple, a finding that may cause historians to re-evaluate their understanding of Freud’s own psychology. A yellowing page of the leather-bound ledger shows that they occupied Room 11. Freud signed the book, in his distinctive Germanic scrawl, “Dr Sigm Freud u frau,” abbreviated German for “Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.” “By any reasonable standard of proof, Sigmund Freud and his wife’s sister, Minna Bernays, had a liaison,” wrote Franz Maciejewski, a sociologist formerly at the University of Heidelberg and a specialist in psychoanalysis, who tracked down the record in August.
     Freud’s wife, Martha, knew about his trip with Miss Bernays, if not its nature. The same day Freud signed the hotel ledger, he sent his wife a postcard rhapsodizing about the glaciers, mountains and lakes the pair had seen. In the card, published in Freud’s collected correspondence, he described their lodgings as “humble,” although the hotel appears to have been the second-fanciest in town.
     The evidence is persuasive enough for Peter Gay, the Freud biographer and longtime skeptic on what he called “the Minna matter,” to say that he is now inclined to revise his work accordingly. “It makes it very possible that they slept together,” he said. “It doesn’t make him or psychoanalysis more or less correct.”
     The revelation is also likely to reignite a longstanding debate about Freud’s personal life. The father of psychoanalysis, whose 150th birthday was celebrated this year, plumbed the darkest sexual drives and secrets of the psyche. But scholars still argue about how scrupulous Freud was in his own behavior. Peter L. Rudnytsky, a former Fulbright/Freud Society Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna and the editor of the psychoanalytic journal American Imago, said the disclosure was hardly a “so what?” matter because “psychoanalysis has such a close relationship to the life of Freud.” “Psychoanalysis has invested a great deal in a certain idealized image of Freud,” said Dr. Rudnytsky, a professor of English at the University of Florida. “Freud dealt with issues considered suspect — sexuality — things that made people uncomfortable, so Freud himself had to be a figure of impeccable integrity.” In any case, he said: “Things that happen in people’s intimate lives are important. It’s very Freudian.” Freud himself was cryptic, writing to the American neurologist James J. Putman in 1915: “I stand for a much freer sexual life. However I have made little use of such freedom.”
     Peter Swales, a historian and researcher who has spent decades uncovering details of Freud’s relationship with his sister-in-law, hailed the discovery as recognition of what he called “Minna Bernays’s central, fundamental and profound place in Freud’s intellectual biography.”
     How Dr. Maciejewski discovered the hotel ledger in itself seems strangely Freudian. He spent August 2005 retracing the Swiss idyll taken by Freud and Miss Bernays for a book, published this year, on Freud’s long fixation on Moses. While in Switzerland with Miss Bernays, Freud had trouble remembering a name. Dr. Maciejewski theorized that the lapse involved some secret guilt of Freud’s, but he could not get to the bottom of it. However, while reading the proofs of his book last spring, he said, “a feeling of you forgot something crept over me.” In August, he returned to Maloja, and asked at the Schweizerhaus if the original guest book still existed. It did, and there, on a page from 1898, he found Freud’s entry. Dr. Maciejewski said he came away convinced that “they not only shared a bed, they were even up to misrepresenting their relationship to strangers as that of husband and wife, a subterfuge they surely then maintained whenever feasible during subsequent holidays together in faraway places.”
     Dr. Maciejewski published an article about his find in a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, in September. An English version will appear in American Imago next month. Freud helped found the quarterly, now published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in 1939, shortly before his death in London, where he lived after fleeing the Nazis. Minna Bernays died in London in 1941. Jürg Wintsch, proprietor of the Schweizerhaus, confirmed the existence of the ledger entry, which he said Dr. Maciejewski had first brought to his attention. He described Room 11, now called 24, as one of the largest in the hotel and said its structure was substantially unchanged since Freud’s visit. He said he had been hoping to keep Freud’s stay there a secret until the hotel’s 125th anniversary next June.
     The triangle of Freud, his wife and her sister has long been irresistible to scholars, including Dr. Gay, who noted in a 1989 essay, “As every biographer of Freud must ruefully acknowledge, that great unriddler of mysteries left behind some tantalizing private mysteries of his own.” The most riveting among them, he wrote, were the rumors of a love affair with Miss Bernays. But, he added, scant evidence of any romance could be found in the published correspondence between Freud and his sister-in-law, although some letters were intriguingly missing. From the moment Freud fell in love with Martha Bernays in 1882, he was also drawn to her “intelligent, caustic” younger sister, Minna, whose fiancé died of tuberculosis in 1886, the year the Freuds married, Dr. Gay wrote in the essay. In 1896, Miss Bernays moved in with the Freuds, helping with household chores and child rearing. She lived with them, it turned out, for 42 years.
     In 1953, Ernest Jones, Freud’s student and first biographer, tried vigorously to dispel stray gossip about Freud’s “second wife.” He dismissed what he called “strange legends” and described Freud as “monogamic in a very unusual degree.” Mr. Jones wrote, “His wife was assuredly the only woman in Freud’s love life, and she always came first before all other mortals.”
     This idyllic portrait largely held sway until 1969, when John M. Billinsky, a psychologist at the Andover Newton Theological School in Massachusetts, published an interview he conducted with Jung in Switzerland in 1957. Recounting a visit with his wife to Freud in Vienna in 1907, Jung told Dr. Billinsky that Freud had said, “I am sorry I can give you no real hospitality; I have nothing at home but an elderly wife.” In contrast, Jung described Miss Bernays as “very good looking” — although later photographs show her rather dour and stolid — and said that in private she confessed that “she was very much bothered by her relationship with Freud and felt guilty about it.” “From her I learned that Freud was in love with her and that their relationship was indeed very intimate,” Jung continued. When Jung and Freud traveled to America in 1909, Jung said, Freud confided some dreams about Mrs. Freud and Miss Bernays, but then abruptly ended the discussion, saying, “I could tell you more, but I cannot risk my authority.”
     Jung’s account was attacked as unreliable by, among others, Dr. Kurt R. Eissler, the longtime director of the Sigmund Freud Archives who, as recently as 1993, six years before his death at 90, wrote in a published essay, “In one respect Freud was undeniably superior to Jung: his sexual record was lily white.” Dr. Eissler said that Freud’s theory “of course was obscene, with its eternal harping on sex, but the conduct of the man who originated it was beyond reproach.”
     What Dr. Eissler did not say was that four years before the Billinsky interview, he had heard many of the same things about Freud and Miss Bernays firsthand in an interview with Jung in Zurich in 1953. But Dr. Eissler and the Freud Archives placed an embargo on the transcript of the interview for 50 years and then ordered the papers sealed for an additional 10 years, until 2013. A German transcript, stamped “Confidential,” in the Library of Congress was made available in 2003 for reading only at the library, although a copy was obtained by The New York Times.
     In 1981, Dr. Eissler was at the center of an uproar at the Archives when his designated successor as director, Jeffrey M. Masson, was fired after breaking ranks with orthodox Freudians over interpretations of psychoanalytic theory and Freud’s character.
     In the 1953 Jung interview, which Dr. Eissler apparently never cited publicly, Jung said he thought Miss Bernays had developed a psychological attachment to Freud but that when he had broached the subject, Freud turned unresponsive. “Every man has his secrets,” Jung concluded, adding that when it came to Freud himself, “the unconscious was something which one should not touch.”
     Jung theorized to Dr. Eissler that Freud had experienced some disappointment in love, sublimating it into a drive for power and developing a neurosis expressed in fear of losing control of his bladder. “It could be precisely that he got into this conflict which in marriage is all too frequent, right?” Jung said. “The young woman, the other woman.” Jung said that he vaguely recalled something about “a possible pregnancy,” but quickly added, “That can all be a stupid assumption.”
     Hardly so to Mr. Swales. In a 1982 journal article, he argued that Freud’s story of a young man’s episode of forgetfulness in his 1901 book, “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” was actually thinly disguised autobiography, exposing Freud’s own alarm over an inconvenient pregnancy. Since then, Mr. Swales said, he has traced a 1900 trip by Freud and Miss Bernays to the Austrian town of Meran where she may have had an abortion, falling mysteriously ill after returning to Vienna. Freud, in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, said that Miss Bernays was suffering from a lung ailment, but, Mr. Swales said, “The jury is still out.”

Benefits of belonging
     Educational background accounts for one of the most dramatic gaps in civic health, a gap that's been widening since 1999. In general, the less education a person has, the less involved they become in their community, even at a social level. Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County have predominantly college-educated populations, which may help explain why social disconnection here seems to be more the exception than the rule. The connections themselves don't have to be service-oriented to be helpful.
      Mark Erzen, 35, joined the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society for the exercise. That and good conversation on three-hour rides pretty much sum up his expectations. Erzen became president of the club a few years ago: He jokes that he missed a meeting and they elected him. One day in 2005, while talking with the group's new newsletter editor, Lynda Collins, Erzen mentioned he was an aspiring teacher. Collins happened to be working for Eastern Michigan University, supervising student teachers in Plymouth. Erzen was just starting to explore student teaching options. "She said, 'I've got a great teacher for you,' and I ended up student teaching for an award-winning teacher at a middle school in Plymouth that was near my house,'' Erzen said.

Art of citizenship
     Part of Treppa's doctoral work involved studying management of volunteers, but almost 40 years as a priest has also shaped what he believes about building strong communities. At the parish level, he says, there are three things that are critical. One is collaboration; another is having basic communities - small groups of people meeting in the neighborhoods. The third is choirs. "When people get together (in a choir) they're doing something in common,'' he says. "When they present their work it gives them a sense of accomplishment and they're making a contribution to a community. ... They just love to sing.''
      Scholars have found that dancing, playing music and other artistic activities bring more joy than many other leisure activities, according to a report by the Saguaro Seminar, a project led by Harvard University public policy professor Robert D. Putnam. That, in turn, enhances our willingness to reach out and connect with others. If you consider activities like voting and going to meetings to be civic broccoli (good for you, if not necessarily fun), then, the report says, participating in the arts is more like civic fruit - good for you, good for the community, and tasty too.

Connecting with friends
     When Lynda Collins retired from teaching, the friends she'd made through the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society and the Ann Arbor Ski Club became her bridge. She moved to Ann Arbor and each overlapping circle of friends connected her more firmly to the community. Collins says she hasn't always been a big joiner, but through the bike club she connected with a book club. The ski club led her to a golf league. She helps put together the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society's big annual ride, the One Helluva Ride. It's One Helluva lot of work but Collins sticks with it. "I guess (it's because) you don't want to let your friends down,'' she says. Each winter, she rents a place in Florida with a bunch of bike club friends and they ride in the sunshine while Michigan is cast in gray.
     Studies show the circle of friends with whom Americans feel they can talk about important matters is shrinking. According to a Duke University study, about one in four Americans has no one with whom they can have those heart-to-hearts. "A lot of what we get from (a social network) is probably support,'' Ybarra says. "Having some allies makes us feel secure, feel like we belong. That has been shown to have all sorts of implications for our mental health and our physiological health. "... People vary in how extroverted they are, but deep down, even though people may not realize it, they do need relationships.''

Hairdressers Enlisted To Aid Abuse Victims
Elizabeth Mehren, Los Angles Times- 12/26/2006

BANGOR, Maine -- The new customer slipped into Janie B. Good's hair salon cautiously, as if worried that someone might see her. She was only in her 30s, but fear had etched tight lines in her face. With a nervous edge, she told Good: Don't cut off too much. He doesn't like my hair short.

It's your hair, Good started to tell the young woman, whose tresses draped down over her shoulders. But as the client had leaned back for a shampoo, Good spotted bruises on her neck. Easing her fingers across the woman's scalp, Good felt bumps that could only have come from being struck.

"Honey," Good recalls saying, "we need to talk."

One reason Good, 59, became a hairdresser was that she figured it offered a window into human dynamics. Now she is one of nearly 300 Maine stylists and beauty students trained to recognize signs of domestic abuse and to serve as resources for victims.

As part of a broad strategy to reduce the state's domestic violence rate, Maine public officials have identified hairdressers as new allies, using salons as a staging area. These beauty professionals have been recruited not as enforcement agents, but as informed listeners who can suggest options to their clients - if they are ready to hear them.

Each year, more than half the homicides in this sparsely populated state are traced to domestic abuse. Abuse victims often balk at going to the police because they fear that authorities will not act, or that their abusers will hear that they were reported and seek retribution. Hairdressers are seen as potentially safe confidantes.

Authorities say there is no way to quantify the results of this evolving approach. But in Maine, officials said, more and more women who call domestic violence hotlines begin by saying, "I heard about this from my hairdresser."

Hairstylists such as Good place decals on their work-station mirrors and hand out nail files printed with the number of a domestic violence hot line.

Maine's strategy is modeled on an effort in Alabama that won fast support from law enforcement specialists throughout the country. Trolling for new ways to reduce domestic violence, two Birmingham charities came up with the idea of enlisting hairdressers. The approach was received so well locally that a board member of one of the sponsoring groups decided to fund a broader domestic-violence curriculum for stylists.

Dianne Mooney, founder of a home decor direct sales company called Southern Living at Home, joined with the National Cosmetology Association and Clairol Professional to form the Salons Against Domestic Abuse Fund and to begin a program called Cut It Out. Attorneys general around the country picked up on the plan, mindful of widely documented national statistics that show that at least one in three women - and a far smaller proportion of men - will experience domestic abuse.

Clients who entrust their appearance to a beauty professional often develop a comfortable, long-lasting relationship. Hairdressers make frequent physical contact with their customers. They see their clients regularly and work on a first-name basis. The good ones know when to keep their counsel: What is shared in the salon stays in the salon.

In turn, the hairdresser can supply basic information like the name and phone number of the nearest shelter.

Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe was worried about the domestic violence rate when he heard about the plan to use hairstylists.

"The key here is not being judgmental, but supportive," Rowe said. "These salon professionals are saying, `Here is some information,' not: `You should leave that jerk.'"

Blackberry, the Newest Home Wrecker
Katherine Rosman, Wall Street Journal- 12/26/2006

There is a new member of the family, and, like, all new siblings, this one is getting a disproportionate amount of attention, resulting in jealousy, tantrums, even trips to the therapist. It's the BlackBerry.
As hand-held e-mail devices proliferate, they are having an unexpected impact on family dynamics: Parents and their children are swapping roles. Like a bunch of teenagers, some parents are routinely lying to their kids, sneaking around the house to covertly check their e-mails and disobeying house rules established to minimise compulsive typing. The refusal of parents to follow a few simple rules is pushing some children to the brink They are fearful that parents will be distracted by e-mails while driving, concerned about Mom and Dad's shortening attention spans and exasperated by their
parents' obsession with their gadgets..
      Bob Ledbetter III, a third-grader in Rome, Ga., says he tries to tell his father to put the BlackBerry down, but can't even get his attention. "Sometimes I think he's deaf," says the 9-year-old.
     The household tension comes as gadgets like BlackBerrys and Treos - once primarily tools for investment bankers and lawyers - have entered the pantheon of devices that have forcefully inserted themselves into the American home. The problem has only gotten worse as more devices combine phone and e-mail. Since many people rarely leave home without a cellphone, more events are now susceptible to office e-mail.
     The gadgets have become recognizable to young children. Lucas Ellin, a Los Angeles 5-year-old, pretends he has his own, parading around the house with a small toy in his hand while shrieking, "Look, Mommy, it's my BlackBerry!" In Austin, Texas, Hohlt Peeore, 7, and his sister, Elsa, 4, have complicated relationships with their mother's BlackBerry. "I feel very annoyed," says Hohit. "She's always concentrating on that blasted thing." (Hohlt says he picked up word "blasted" from the film "Pirates of the Caribbean.") Elsa has hidden the BlackBerry on occasion - Hohlt says she tried to flush it down the toilet last year. But Elsa also seems to recognize that it brings her mom comfort, not unlike a security blanket. Recently, seeing her mom slumped on the couch after work, Elsa fished the BlackBerry from her purse and took it to her. "Mommy," she asked, "will this make you feel better?" Emma Colonna wishes her parents would behave, at least when they're out in public. The ninth-grader in Port Washington, N.Y, says she has caught her parents typing a-mails on their Treos during her eighth-grade awards ceremony, at dinner and in darkened movie theaters. "During my dance recital, I'm 99 percent sure they were e-mailing except while I was on stage," she says. "I think that's kind of rude."
     Safety is another issue. Will Singletary, a 9-year-old in Atlanta, doesn't approve of. his dad's proclivity for typing while driving. "It makes me worried he's going to crash," he says. His dad, private banker Ross Singletary calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some e-mails are important enough to look at en route."
     Some mental-health professionals report that the intrusion of e-mail gadgets and wireless technology into family life is a growing topic of discussion in therapy. They have specific tips for dealing with the problem, like putting the device in a drawer during a set time period every day.
"A lot of kids are upset by it," says Geraldine Kerr, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Morristown, N.J. She says parents need to recognize that some situations require undivided attention. When you shut off the device, she says, "You're communicating nonverbally that `you matter and what's important to you is important to me."'
     Still, like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind the school, parents are secretly rebelling. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile e-mail from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips. The kids "think I have a small bladder," she says. She declined to be named because she's afraid her children might discover her secret.
     For many parents, finding the right balance is a struggle. Although mobile e-mail allows them to attend a soccer game in the middle of the day, it also brings the office into the family room after dinner. In an age of connectedness, they sometimes have trouble disengaging from the office - and
many admit they check their other messages more often than required. Bob Ledbetter Jr., whose son questions his hearing, agrees that he spends too much time while checking his e-mail. The commercial real estate developer usually turns off his BlackBerry each night around 7:30 but then sometimes finds himself fiddling on his laptop computer. Totally disconnecting during family time "is a discipline I need to learn, says Ledbetter. "Even though I'm home, I'm not necessarily there."
     Parents point out they're not alone in their habits. Jerry Colonna, father of ninth-grader Emma, says that for her birthday earlier this month, she asked for and received a T Mobile Sidekick "She's, obsessively on e-mail now," he says. "Kind of ironic." Emma responds: "I use it a moderate amount"
     One of BlackBerry's biggest defenders, Jim Balsillie, the chairman of BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion, says children should ask themselves, "Would you rather have your parents 20 percent not there or 100 percent not there?" Yet he, too, struggles with the issue. His wife tried to keep him off the device after work, asking him to leave it by the front door every night. When he snuck it in his pocket, he feared getting caught.
     Part of the blame certainly lies with the corporations that are outfitting their staffs with e-mail devices, treating the expectation that employees will be available and responsive at all times. Still, some professionals have successfully carved time away from e-mail, says Melissa Mazmanian, a fourth-year doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. For her dissertation, Mazmanian, 31, is studying the patterns of BlackBerry use among nearly 200 bankers, lawyers and employees of a footwear manufacturing company. People with infants and toddlers most actively set aside personal time, and colleagues learned to leave them alone.
     More often, intervention is required. Lucas Ellin, the son of "Entourage" creator Doug Ellin, says his dad checks his e-mail at restaurants and during soccer games. Lucas sometimes tries to divert his father's focus away from the device by hiding it or taking his dad's face in his hands to physically get his attention. When nothing else works, Lucas turns to the highest of authorities. "I go tell my mom that Daddy's not listening and then my mom yells at him," he says



Undoing Alcohol's Damage to the Mind
Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times- 12/26/2006

In addition to claiming lives, marriages, homes and careers, alcoholism has a greedy way of robbing its victims of brainpower, as well. Over time, alcohol dependence literally shrinks the brain and several of its components. And in so doing, it erodes an alcoholic's ability to learn new tasks, remember things and organize for action. Even regular, heavy drinking can take a cognitive toll, researchers have found.

But a new study published in the journal Brain details the remarkable ability of the thinking organ to regenerate itself and regain function when its host chooses the path of sobriety. The research also underscores a key warning — quit now, or risk damage that could be harder to reverse.

A team of European researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to assess the brains of 15 alcohol-dependent and 10 healthy subjects and tracked the volume of two key brain chemicals that are indicators of cell health and activity. The subjects were given a battery of tests of cognitive function at the beginning and end of the study. As the 10 male and five female alcoholics embarked on a journey of sobriety, the team of radiologists plotted a remarkable story of comeback.

In less than two months without alcohol consumption, the brain volume of alcoholic subjects increased, on average, 1.85%. Cerebellar choline levels — indicators of how well brain cells are able to relay messages — increased 20%. Levels of another brain chemical that indicates proper function of the brain cells went up 10%. The more dramatic those changes, the greater the improvement in a subject's performance on tests of cognitive function.

The study is among the first to show where regeneration occurs most robustly in the early days of an alcoholic's recovery — in the brain's ventricles and in the white matter that helps brain cells and brain regions coordinate and communicate more smoothly with one another.

By comparison, the brains of healthy subjects, who also were asked to abstain from alcohol during the study period — did not change.

Dr. Andreas Bartsch of the University of Würzburg, Germany, said the study, when added to several that have shown similar resilience on the part of the brain under assault by alcohol, holds a hopeful message for drinkers beset by lapses of memory, motivation and judgment.

"Abstinence pays off and enables the brain to regain some substance and perform better," Bartsch said. "The adult human brain, and particularly its white matter, seems to possess genuine capabilities for regrowth," he added.

The study is the latest and most detailed of a mounting body of research showing how alcohol — even heavy drinking that falls short of dependence — can impair cognition, and how abstinence can prompt at least a partial reversal of intellectual deficits.

Those studies have established that alcoholism can cause significant loss of short-term memory skills and of higher-order functions such as reasoning, planning and prioritizing. In adults as well as adolescents, alcohol abuse was associated with changes in the brain — in particular in the prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher reasoning.

The most well-documented alcohol-related impairments occur in a drinker's visual-spatial skills — those that allow us to drive, read a map and orient ourselves in three-dimensional space. A Stanford University study published in August found that although middle-aged alcoholics who had been abstinent for as little as six months regained virtually all lost function on measures of abstraction, attention, memory, reaction time and verbal skills, the damage to their visual-spatial skills was not so easily undone.

Studies have found that women are particularly vulnerable to the cognitive effects of alcoholism, and that smoking tobacco during recovery can significantly hamper the brain's process of self-repair.

The length of a person's descent into alcoholism is also key, a point that Bartsch's study underscores. Bartsch says that among the 15 alcohol-dependent patients who participated in his study, the degree to which a subject showed return of lost brain volume and function correlated with the duration of their alcoholism. Those who had been dependent longest showed more modest, and in one case, no recovery, he said. That's why, he said, it's important for alcoholics to quit as soon as possible, before secondary medical or psychiatric disorders make recovery harder and cognitive deficits more difficult to reverse.

To Clancy Imislund, a recovering alcoholic who is managing director of Los Angeles' Midnight Mission, research that details the comeback of cognitive function hits home but also misses a key point.

"It's a funny thing: The brain of an alcoholic is really a dried-out brain," said Imislund, referring to research suggesting that alcohol cripples and kills brain cells, in part, by dehydrating them. "As the alcohol goes out of your system and the synapses get to working better, if you stay sober for a while, it's been my experience they come back pretty well."

But Imislund added that, with abstinence, alcoholics must face the outside world again, and the challenge of doing so reinvigorates the brain — a dynamic that research, he acknowledges, may never capture.

"When you straighten out, you get going again and you get some focus outside of yourself," Imislund said. Alcoholics, he added, may "appear to be mentally retarded. They're not, they're just mentally self-obsessed. They need to be pulled out of themselves. And that's when your cognitive abilities return, I believe."

In a commentary accompanying Bartsch's study, Yale University psychiatrist Graeme Mason wrote that physicians treating alcoholics in recovery could use the latest research to encourage those patients by holding out the prospect that abstinence will pay off with real gain in intellectual function. The study and the commentary appear in the Dec. 18 online edition of the journal Brain.