Noteworthy News Articles on Mental Health Topics, January 10-14, 2006



Risk: Early Health Problems Predict Later Eating Woes
Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times- 1/10/2006

Medical problems at birth increase the risk of anorexia and bulimia later, a new study reports. Babies' early eating difficulties, poor muscle tone, low birth weight and a placenta with defective blood circulation were all associated with eating disorders by the time the children were 16 to 18 years old. Diabetes and anemia in the mother were also linked to eating disorders in the children, as was preeclampsia, a common maternal syndrome characterized by high blood pressure, fluid retention and kidney problems.
      The study, in the January issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, analyzed the obstetric records of 114 young people with anorexia, 73 with bulimia and 554 others with neither. To prevent bias, the researchers examining the obstetric records did not know which belonged to people with disorders. If the mother had anemia, the risk of anorexia was more than doubled, and maternal diabetes increased the risk by a factor of four. Babies with early cardiac problems were also more likely to suffer from anorexia later in life, as were those who needed oxygen administered at birth. Subjects with bulimia were more likely to have had low birth weight, early feeding problems and defective placentas.
     "It is important to keep in mind that we are speaking of risk factors, and not causative factors," said Paolo Santonastaso, the senior author and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Padua in Italy. "This means that most babies with obstetric complications will never develop an eating disorder." Dr. Santonastaso also emphasized the importance of a combination of factors. "We generally think that single complications are less important than the effect of the number of complications," he said.



Study: 15 Pct. of Workforce Affected by Alcohol
Jamie McGeever, Reuters News Service- 1/10/2006

NEW YORK -- There may be an alcohol problem brewing in American offices, shops and factories. An estimated 15 percent of the U.S. workforce consumes alcohol on the job, has a drink before going to work or otherwise is under the influence of alcohol, according to a study by the University of Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions. That equates to some 19.2 million workers impaired during the workday via intoxication, withdrawal or hangover.
      "Clear policies should be in place regarding alcohol impairment and impairment at work," wrote Doctor Michael Frone, principal investigator of the study. "But despite management's responsibility for the development and enforcement of such policies, managers report elevated rates of consuming alcohol during the workday, working under the influence of alcohol, and working with a hangover," he said.
     The institute said that the study, the first of workplace alcohol use to utilize a representative sample of the U.S. workforce, surveyed 2,805 employed adults across the United States from January 2002 through June 2003. Young, single men figured prominently among those who were affected by alcohol, the results showed. Drinking on the job, being under the influence or working with a hangover was more prevalent among men than women, more common among younger workers than older staff, and among unmarried workers than married workers, the study found. Coming into work with a hangover was the most common finding. The highest levels of alcohol use and impairment were in management, sales, catering and construction.
     "Of all psychoactive substances with the potential to impair cognitive and behavioral performance, alcohol is the most widely used and misused substance in the general population and the workforce," Frone said. "The misuse of alcohol by employed adults is an important social policy issue with the potential to undermine employee productivity and safety," he added. The institute said that 10.8 percent admitted they either drank at work, before work or turned up with a hangover but that it happened less than once a month, while 2.9 percent said it was a monthly occurrence and 1.65 percent said weekly.
     On the Net:
Research Institute on Addictions: http://www.ria.buffalo.edu
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: http://www.niaaa.nih.gov
U.S. Labor Department initiative: http://www.dol.gov/dol/workingpartners.htm




 Ever Since Falstaff, Getting Sloshed Is Cricket
Sarah Lyall, New York Times- 1/11/2006

LONDON, Jan. 10 - Britons have long been known for their love of alcohol and their belief that among the naturally repressed, drinking is an essential prelude to relaxation and joie de vivre. Shakespeare's plays are teeming with merry, sozzled characters who are at their funniest, punniest and bawdiest when drunk. But Britons are just as notorious for their tendency to segue seamlessly from drinking into brawling, to overdo it and then behave like loutish hooligans. This sets them apart from even their hard-drinking counterparts in northern Europe and causes widespread dismay among health-care workers and police officers forced to deal with drinking-related illness, injury and crime. Part of the problem is that in British pubs, now able to stay open later under a recent law, drinking is not a Continental-style accompaniment to a meal or conversation, but an end in itself. "You'd never find Sartre in an English cafe for two reasons," the writer George Steiner is quoted as telling Jeremy Paxman, in Mr. Paxman's book "The English." "A) No Sartre. B) No cafe."
      The country's confused attitude toward drinking, its habit of celebrating it and condemning it by turns, was evident last week when Charles Kennedy, the convivial leader of the Liberal Democratic party, resigned from his leadership post after admitting he was an alcoholic. While he said he was cured, members of his party said his drinking - never a secret - had finally so hampered his political performance that they had lost confidence in him. At several crucial parliamentary debates, for example, Mr. Kennedy simply failed to show up, forcing aides to fill in for him. There was a disastrous, sweating, stumbling speech at a party conference, another debacle at the London School of Economics and a time when he gave almost incoherent answers to a reporter asking basic policy questions. His aides always blamed fatigue or illness for his behavior. Mr. Kennedy's problem was not drunkenness per se, but an impolitic failure to function effectively while drunk. British politics has historically been full of men who drink and are proud of it, too. William Pitt the Younger liked a bottle or three of port a day.
     The late Alan Clark, a minister and bon vivant in Mrs. Thatcher's Tory government, described in his diaries how, after sharing three bottles of wine with a friend, he found himself publicly "sneering at the more cumbrous and unintelligible passages" in the party-written speech he was then called on to deliver in Parliament. "Helter-skelter I galloped through the text," he writes, with some pride. "Sometimes I turned over two pages at once, sometimes three." Although a fellow legislator rebuked him for being "in this condition" (it is considered poor manners to accuse another member of being drunk, and the insult "not sober" was reportedly banned in 1945), Mr. Clark did not lose his job.
     Churchill began each day with a whisky and soda; he "slurped through the war on a tidal wave of Champagne and brandy," writes Ben Macintyre in The Times of London. Drink also featured heavily in the life of George Brown, a Labor foreign secretary in the 1960's, who is once said to have stumblingly invited a guest in flowing purple robes at a reception in Peru to dance. But it was not to be. "First, you are drunk," the guest is said to have replied. "Second, this is not a waltz; it is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman; I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima."
     For Britons, alcohol is a relaxant, an emollient, a crutch, an excuse. In her book "Watching the English," the social anthropologist Kate Fox argues that drinking does not turn English people into unattractive louts, but rather allows them to express the unattractive loutishness latent in their character: in other words, they drink so that they will have license to behave badly. "By blaming the booze, we sidestep the uncomfortable question of why the English, so widely admired for their courtesy, reserve and restraint, should also be renowned for their oafishness, crudeness and violence," Ms. Fox writes. Their antics have earned them a notoriety across Europe, from northern cities where boozed-up Britons go on bachelor weekends to southern resorts where young people on cheap package tours disgust the local residents by their fighting, vandalism and public displays of vomiting and al fresco sex.
     The British tendency to binge on alcohol is taking a toll on the nation's health. Last week, The Lancet reported that in the last half-century Britain has had the largest increase in Europe of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver, an effect of excessive drinking. While cirrhosis-related deaths in other European countries have declined by 20 to 30 percent since the 1970's, cirrhosis deaths among men in Scotland doubled in the 1990's; among British women, it increased by almost half. Such statistics are reported regularly in newspapers like The Daily Mail, which has given extensive coverage to the problems of drunken behavior in British city centers and which opposed the new law expanding pub hours. But The Mail and other popular newspapers cannot make up their minds where they stand. Their pages are also full of admiring reports about the inebriated antics of pop stars and other celebrities. The puerile, alcohol-fueled behavior of the contestants on shows like "Big Brother" - swearing, exposing themselves, making boozy passes at one another - is presented as amusing and high-spirited rather than alarming and depressing.
     This fall, when the English cricket team defeated Australia in the epic series known as the Ashes, the players embarked on a 36-hour orgy of drunken carousing in dozens of different bars. Freddie Flintoff, the star of the series, boasted to The Sun about how he "drank and drank and drank," appearing on national television with muddied speech, bloodshot eyes and an unsteady gait. One cricketer carried an open bottle onto the stage when accepting his Ashes medal; another reportedly threw up in the prime minister's bathroom during a reception at 10 Downing Street. Writing approvingly in The Daily Star, Michael Booker said the cricket team had validated the behavior of ordinary Britons who "enjoy one too many sherbets every now and again." Although binge drinking is not a good idea all the time, Mr. Booker added, "now and again the only thing that will really do - and I won't be popular with Mrs. Booker by saying this - is a pant-wetting, day-night blowout." Since then, the English cricket team has lost most of its matches. But in that brief, shining moment of inebriated celebration, they seemed to be saying that in Britain, it doesn't matter how much you drink, as long as you do your job.


In Maine, Drug - Overdose Deaths Take Lead
Associated Press, 1/11/2006

AUGUSTA, Maine -- For the first time, drug overdose deaths in Maine apparently exceeded the number of people killed in traffic accidents last year, officials said Wednesday. Final figures are not available yet, but state officials projected that overdose deaths in 2005 would reach 178, most of them accidental, compared with 168 highway deaths.
      Officials said drug-related deaths in Maine have nearly tripled since 2000, while highway deaths have been dropping. The 2005 highway death toll was the lowest since the 166 fatalities recorded in 1982, reflecting stepped-up patrols on risky stretches of highway and a greater emphasis on driver education, state officials said. According to a preliminary report released by the state, the number of accidental drug deaths increased from 19 in 1997 to an estimated 140 for 2005. Most of the increase is attributable to the misuse of prescription drugs, the report said.
     Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat seeking re-election, said federal budget cuts will hurt Maine's efforts to fight drug abuse. ''Let me be blunt: The Bush White House has failed to step to the plate for some of the most basic needs of Maine people,'' he said.

 

There's No Wrong Way to Grieve
Judy Foreman, Boston Globe- 1/11/2006

Grieving used to be seen as a very straightforward process: You cried at the funeral, you were sad for a few months, then you had some ''closure" and got on with your life. Most psychologists -- both pop and professional -- thought that anyone who didn't cry at the funeral was heartless, while those who were still sobbing a year later were regarded as overly emotional. Mercifully, the emerging view among mental health experts is that grieving for a lost loved one is really a disorderly, highly idiosyncratic process -- that there are no set stages to go through and no ''normal" or ''right" ways to do it.
      For Lynn Osborn, 48, of Belmont, who lost her husband to Lou Gehrig's disease four years ago after a slow, awful decline, the grieving process ''has been very personal, and it's still not over yet." ''Fortunately, it never occurred to me that there was a 'right' way to grieve," said Osborn, the mother of two sets of twins, ages 8 and 11. A vivacious woman with a passion for rowing and ballet, Osborn has become something of an expert on grief. She lost her father to a car crash 16 years ago. (''I had had breakfast with him that morning. I came home to a phone call saying he had been killed.") Though she had much more time to prepare herself for her husband's death, it was no less terrible when it actually came than her father's had been, she said. As the disease slowly robbed her husband, Charley, also a rower, of his ability to pick up his children, feed himself, talk, and, toward the end, even blink and smile, Lynn spoke with a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. ''I told him I felt there was a freight train coming. He said, 'There is a freight train coming. And there is nothing you can do to prepare for it.' " Osborn said that insight proved liberating -- and very different from the kind of counseling someone in her position might have received in the past.
     In the old days, following (or perhaps twisting) the advice of Sigmund Freud, there was a virtual commandment for people to ''process" their grief intensely, then ''let go" and, as soon as possible, ''move on." But newer research has shown that there is no right way to grieve. Some people get depressed when a loved one dies. Some don't. Some move on reasonably quickly. Others maintain a relationship with the deceased that new research indicates is healthy, not depressing. ''The idea that grief is necessarily a debilitating experience is not true. We cope much better than our social expectations say we will," said psychologist George Bonanno of Columbia University Teachers College, who has shown that among a group of ''normal, everyday people," only about half will get depressed at any point during their grieving process.
     Maintaining a ''continuing bond" with the person who has died is also normal. That doesn't mean living in the past but honoring the ways in which the relationship, in a sense, still goes on, said Phyllis R. Silverman, an associate in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of the 2004 book ''Widow to Widow." The relationship with the dead person ''is a part of who we are. So, much of our life is still connected to that person." It's also common -- and not crazy -- for bereaved people to talk to the person they have lost, said Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California, Irvine. ''There is no sign that is unhealthy." And it is normal to feel distressed when you realize you are moving on, said Silver, citing the case of a patient who had lost a child. ''One of the worst days of her life was when she realized she had gone 15 minutes without thinking about her baby. She realized she was feeling better, but that also got her upset."
     Although there's no way to fully prepare emotionally for the expected death of a loved one and no ''right" way to grieve afterward, there are a few things that can help, according to Dr. John Rolland, a psychiatrist and codirector of the Center for Family Health at the University of Chicago. In a couple, if the husband has a potentially fatal disease and the couple has had traditional gender roles, it may help to begin to ''reorganize" these roles while the husband is relatively healthy. The wife may want to look for a job, said Rolland. If she doesn't know how to balance the checkbook, he could teach her. ''You can't wait until the person is lowered into the ground." It also helps, he said, to do some ''re-prioritizing so that life goals are focused on the here and now rather than 30 years later." Researchers used to think that grieving before a loved one's death made things easier later. But many people are still ''shocked by how intense the grief is because they figured they had already done this," said behavioral scientist Kathleen R. Gilbert at Indiana University in Bloomington.
     Osborn has some suggestions, too. One is to ''record your loved one's voice. I didn't figure that out" with Charley, she said. ''But I will do that for my children." The other is to treasure the time you do -- and did -- have with the person you love. ''I don't mean to be a Pollyanna, but I had 20 wonderful years with that man," she said. ''There are people who don't have one day as happy as I had. ''It took me six months after Charley died to realize that that feeling will never go away. It's like the Grand Canyon. There's this big hole, and it hurts like hell, but it's beautiful."



Are They Here to Save the World?
John Leland, New York Times- 1/12/2006

At a coffee shop in TriBeCa one morning two weeks ago, David Minh Wong, age 7, was in constant motion. He played with quarters on the table. He dropped them on the floor. He leaned on his mother and walked away. "Tell him I'm strong," he said to his mother, Yolanda Badillo, 50. She sat in a booth with a neighbor, who was there with her goddaughter. "I woke up at 2:16 this morning, and it wasn't raining," he said. "I'm getting bored," he said.
      At David's public school, where he is in a program for gifted and talented second graders, a teacher told Ms. Badillo that he is arrogant for a boy his age, and teachers since preschool have described him as bright but sometimes disruptive. But Ms. Badillo, a homeopath and holistic health counselor, has her own assessment. To her David's traits - his intelligence, empathy and impatience - make him an "indigo" child. "He told me when he was 6 months old that he was going to have trouble in school because they wouldn't know where to fit him," she said, adding that he told her this through his energy, not in words. "Our consciousness is changing, it's expanding, and the indigos are here to show us the way," Ms. Badillo said. "We were much more connected with the creator before, and we're trying to get back to that connection."
     If you have not been in an alternative bookstore lately, it is possible that you have missed the news about indigo children. They represent "perhaps the most exciting, albeit odd, change in basic human nature that has ever been observed and documented," Lee Carroll and Jan Tober write in "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived" (Hay House). The book has sold 250,000 copies since 1999 and has spawned a cottage industry of books about indigo children. Hay House said it has sold 500,000 books on indigo children. A documentary, "Indigo Evolution," is scheduled to open on about 200 screens - at churches, yoga centers, college campuses and other places - on Jan. 27 (locations at www.spiritualcinemanetwork.com).
     Indigo children were first described in the 1970's by a San Diego parapsychologist, Nancy Ann Tappe, who noticed the emergence of children with an indigo aura, a vibrational color she had never seen before. This color, she reasoned, coincided with a new consciousness. In "The Indigo Children," Mr. Carroll and Ms. Tober define the phenomenon. Indigos, they write, share traits like high I.Q., acute intuition, self-confidence, resistance to authority and disruptive tendencies, which are often diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, known as A.D.D., or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D. Offered as a guide for "the parents of unusually bright and active children," the book includes common criticisms of today's child rearing: that children are overmedicated; that schools are not creative environments, especially for bright students; and that children need more time and attention from their parents. But the book seeks answers to mainstream parental concerns in the paranormal.
     "To me these children are the answers to the prayers we all have for peace," said Doreen Virtue, a former psychotherapist for adolescents who now writes books and lectures on indigo children. She calls the indigos a leap in human evolution. "They're vigilant about cleaning the earth of social ills and corruption, and increasing integrity," Ms. Virtue said. "Other generations tried, but then they became apathetic. This generation won't, unless we drug them into submission with Ritalin."
     To skeptics the concept of indigo children belongs in the realm of wishful thinking and New Age credulity. "All of us would prefer not to have our kids labeled with a psychiatric disorder, but in this case it's a sham diagnosis," said Russell Barkley, a research professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. "There's no science behind it. There are no studies." Dr. Barkley likened the definition of indigo children to an academic exercise called "Barnum statements," after P. T. Barnum, in which a person is given a list of generic psychological characteristics and becomes convinced that they apply especially to him or her. The traits attributed to indigo children, he said, are so general that they "could describe most of the people most of the time," which means that they don't describe anything. Parents who attribute their children's inattention or disruptive behavior to vibrational energy, he said, risk delaying proper diagnosis and treatment that might help them.
     To indigos and their parents, however, such skepticism is the usual resistance to any new and revolutionary idea. America has always had a soft spot for the supernatural. A November 2005 poll by Harris Interactive found that one American in five believes he or she has been reincarnated; 40 percent believe in ghosts; 68 percent believe in angels. It is not surprising then that indigo literature, which incorporates some of these beliefs along with common anxieties about child psychology, has found a receptive audience.
     Annette Piper, a mother of two in Memphis, said that she had planned to go to medical school until she realized she was an indigo, able to tell what was wrong with people by touching them. Like a lot of others who describe themselves as indigos, she was also sensitive to chemicals and fluorescent lights. Instead of going to medical school, she became an intuitive healer, directing the energy fields around people, and opened a New Age store called Spiritual Freedom. Her daughter Alexandra, 10, is also an indigo, she said. They play games to cultivate their telepathic powers, but at school Alexandra struggles, Ms. Piper said. "She has trouble finishing work in school and wants to argue with the teacher if she thinks she's right," Ms. Piper said. "I don't think she's found out what her gifts are. From the influence in school and friends she lays off these abilities. She's a little afraid of them."
     Problems in school are common for indigos, said Alex Perkel, who runs the ReBirth Esoteric Science Center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a bilingual (Russian-English) center dedicated to "the knowledge of ancient esoteric schools and Eastern science," according to its Web site (www.esotericinfo.com). Last year the center organized a class for indigo children but canceled it when families dropped out for economic reasons. "A lot of people don't understand the children because the children are very smart," Mr. Perkel said. "They have knowledge like our teachers. They don't want to go to school, No. 1, because they don't need the knowledge they can get from school. So parents bring them to psychologists, and psychologists start giving them pills to take out their will and memory. We developed a special program to help them understand that they came to this planet to change the consciousness because they have guides from a higher world."
     Stephen Hinshaw, a professor and the chairman of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, acknowledged that "there is a legitimate concern that we are overmedicalizing normal childhood, particularly with A.D.H.D." But, he said, research shows that even gifted children with attention-deficit problems do better with more structure in the classroom, not less. "If you conduct a very open classroom, kids with A.D.H.D. may fit in better, because everyone's running around, but there's no evidence that it helps children with A.D.H.D. learn. On the other hand if you have a more traditional classroom, with consistent tasks and expectations and rewards, kids with A.D.H.D. may have a harder time fitting in at first, but in the long run there's evidence that it helps their learning."
     Julia Tuchman, a partner in Neshama Healing in Manhattan, who works with a lot of indigo children and adults, said it was important for their families not to turn away from traditional psychology and medicine. "I'm very holistically oriented, but many people who come here I send to doctors," she said. "I'm not against medication at all. I just think it's overused." When parents take children to her for treatment - she practices electromagnetic field balancing, a touch-free massage that purports to tune a person's electromagnetic field - she said that just telling the children that they have special gifts is often a healing gesture. "Can you imagine a child going up to his parents and saying, 'I'm talking to an angel,' or 'I'm talking to someone who's deceased'?" Ms. Tuchman asked. "A lot of them have no one to talk to." She, like others who see indigos, sees them as a reason for hope.
     Even disruptive behavior has a purpose, said Marjorie Jackson, a tai chi and yoga teacher in Altadena, Calif., who said that her son, Andrew, is an indigo. Andrew, now 25, was not disruptive as a child, she said, but in her practice she sees indigos who are. "The purpose of the disruptive ones is to overload the system so the school will be inspired to change," Ms. Jackson said. "The kids may seem like they have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. What that is, is that the stimulus given to them, their inner being is not interested in it. But if you give them something that harmonizes with the broad intention that their inner self has for them, they won't be disruptive." She said that schools should treat children more like adults, rather than placing them in "fear-based, constrictive, no-choice environments, where they explode." Ms. Jackson compared people who do not recognize indigos to Muggles, the name used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books to describe ordinary people who have no connection with magic. "I would say 90 percent of the world is like the Muggles," she said. "You don't talk about this stuff with them because it's going to scare them."
     In the TriBeCa coffee shop, David Minh Wong continued to play with his coins and talk to his mother. Ms. Badillo and her neighbor Sandra McCoy said they have family members who don't believe in the indigo idea. Ms. McCoy sat with her goddaughter, Jasmine Washington, 14. In contrast to David, Jasmine listened serenely, waiting for questions. Yet Jasmine too is an indigo child, Ms. McCoy said: "I always knew there was something different about her. Then when I saw something about indigos on television, I knew what it was." Like many other indigos Jasmine is home-schooled. For Jasmine, who often sensed she was different from other children, especially in the public schools, the designation of indigo is a comfort. "The kids now are very different, so it's good that there's a name for it, and people pay attention to what's different about them," Jasmine said. Like the women at the table she said that indigos have a special purpose: "To help the world come together again. If something bad happens, I always think I can fix it. Since we have these abilities, we can help the world."

 

Couples Face a Growing Threat: Emotional Infidelity
Peggy Ann Torney, Ann Arbor News- 1/12/2006

For years S., a married woman, was happy coming home from work with a bag of groceries and plans for the evening meal. Lately, though, that has changed. Now she is more likely to race through the front door empty-handed, tell her husband by phone that she will be ordering in and sit eagerly before the computer. She is excited to learn that a particular male friend is online. Like a scene from the romantic comedy “Must Love Dogs,” S. tells her cyber pal about her day, shares her hopes, fears and fantasies, and even talks about her husband sometimes. When she hears her husband’s key in the lock, S. signs off the computer and comes to the door. He asks about her day and she replies, “Fine. But I don’t really feel like talking about it.” Although S. is not involved sexually with her online friend, her husband does have reason to worry. S. is having an emotional affair.
      Many people in committed relationships aren’t aware that emotional affairs can be equally as intense and destructive as a physical affair. According to a national survey, 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men have engaged in sexual affairs. When emotional affairs are included, the number of affairs increases by 20 percent, according to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.
     Emotional affairs are not a new phenomenon. But the combination of more women in the workplace and the increasing use and availability of the Internet has created even greater opportunity for nonphysical closeness, according to marriage counselors and experts on gender relations. “The Internet provides a new venue for emotional infidelity, but the underlying meaning is still the same,” said Dr. Don-David Lusterman, author of “Infidelity: A Survival Guide.” The Internet encourages emotional infidelity in people who may not otherwise be tempted to stray, experts say. Since there is no physical contact over the Web, the connection can be predominantly emotional.
     Men usually only recognize an affair if it becomes sexual, said Dr. John Gray, author of the best-selling book “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” Since women connect love with emotional support, they generally feel more threatened by emotional affairs, Gray said.
     Emotional affairs are deceptive activities that can undermine marriages and other serious relationships. Experts agree that it is the deceit and betrayal that causes the most damage. “It is a big deal because of deception, regardless if it becomes sexual,” said Peggy Vaughan of DearPeggy.com, a Web site that provides information and support for couples trying to sort their way through the aftermath of an affair.
     An online connection can begin innocuously on friend-finding Web sites like Classmates.com, Friendster.com or Myspace.com. Many of these online sites serve as open personal classified ads, where people put their pictures and describe their hobbies and interests. “There is an immediate feeling of intimacy,” said Rona Subotnik, author of “Infidelity on the Internet: Virtual Relationships and Real Betrayal” and “Surviving Infidelity: Making Decisions, Recovering from the Pain.” “You are not there for the sexual, but just for the emotional,” she said.
     Experts say that men and women enter the danger zone when they begin to exclude their significant other, keep aspects of their friendship secret and engage in deeply intimate or sensual conversations with their cyber friend. “If your partner knows everything about your friendship, it’s probably OK. If they don’t, it’s probably not,” Vaughan said. “If it’s really just a friendship, your partner should be able to see/know about all your interactions. If it needs to be kept secret, then it becomes a potential threat.” Once partners distance themselves from the primary relationship and become dishonest, the primary relationship suffers.
     What’s more, people in committed relationships can only devote a finite amount of energy to their love life, said M. Gary Neuman, author of “Emotional Infidelity: How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage and 10 Other Secrets to a Great Relationship.” “You may not cheat physically, but the fact that you are using energy, you are robbing your primary relationship of energy it needs,” Neuman said. In his book, Neuman describes a relationship that was threatened by an online emotional affair. Leon had been married to his wife, Maribel, for nine years before he had an emotional affair. Although he never met the other woman, he chatted with her over the Internet every night for months. As Leon spent more time chatting with his new friend, he began to distance himself from Maribel. “As Leon shared his struggles, laughter, fears and joy with his cyber mate, he drained his marriage of the emotional effervescence and renewal it needed to thrive,” Neuman said. “Leon’s emotional affair placed his marriage on the brink of destruction.”
     Of course, these cyber affairs do not have to be the death of a relationship. “The appeal of online affairs can serve as a signal that we need to rethink all aspects of our lives and determine what we can do to feel more ‘alive,’" Vaughan said. Gray said couples should tap the origins of the affair and infuse the marriage with some of that excitement. If acknowledged and dealt with, emotional affairs can shake couples out of their lethargy and force them to face what’s missing in their relationships, the experts said. “Put all you’ve got into your relationship and you’ll have it all--everything you could realistically hope for and even more than you could ever imagine,” Neuman said.

Victim Confronts Rapist at Sentencing Hearing
Art Barnum, Chicago Tribune- 1/13/2006

A young Warrenville woman who was raped almost three years ago while her parents were bound and gagged in a room 10 feet away angrily confronted her attacker at his sentencing Thursday, saying she was forced to surrender her innocence to save their lives. Damon Jones, 27, of Naperville faces up to 120 years in prison for the April 13, 2003, aggravated criminal sexual assault, armed robbery and home invasion. He pleaded guilty in October and DuPage County prosecutors agreed not to seek more than the 120-year sentence. Prosecutors said they could ask for an additional 60 years because a handgun was used in the crime. The sentencing hearing will continue Friday. After that, it will resume later this month.
     The victim, now 20, faced Jones for the first time since his arrest to tell Judge Michael Burke how the incident has affected her life. "When he attacked me, I had a few short moments to decide how to respond, all the while knowing the choices I made could mean my life and the lives of my parents," she said. "I was forced to give up my virginity in a very brutal way, because letting this man take what he wanted was the best strategy I could come up with. "Your honor, these are choices no young girl should ever be faced with," she said as Jones sat expressionless in the courtroom.
     Before the attack, Jones and two others approached the home at about 11 p.m. and asked to enter, claiming they knew the high school senior. The father denied entry, but they forced their way in and bound and gagged him and the mother and placed them face down on the floor. The three then went from room to room, looking for cash, jewelry and anything that could be easily sold, said Assistant State's Atty. Joseph Ruggiero. Jones found the 18-year-old girl, blindfolded her and took her to a room adjacent to her parents' and sexually assaulted her. When she initially resisted, Jones asked, "Would you rather I do this to your mother?" After she asked for mercy, saying she had a boyfriend, Jones replied, "He can't help you if you're dead."
     In concluding her three-page statement, her voice became angry when she looked directly at Jones and said: "You are nobody but a violent criminal and a rapist. You will not take one moment of my future away from me. You may have been done with me when you ran out of my house that night, but now I'm done with you." Her father also gave a statement, saying that after the three left his home, he and his wife freed themselves. "I rushed to find my daughter. As I approached her, I heard the words no father ever wants to hear from his daughter: `He raped me. He raped me.'" His voice cracking, the father told Burke, "If this crime was directed at me and someone wished to hurt me as deeply as possible without killing me, they would do exactly what was done that night."
      The victim said that she has been able to move on in life because "I was supported by the entire community. My neighborhood, my high school, my church, my sports teams, my extended family, my friends and my boyfriend all offered an arm, a warm meal, a caring thought, whatever they were able to."
     Jones showed no emotion as he listened to the victim and her father and more than a dozen Aurora and Warrenville police officers detail his criminal behavior since he was 14 years old. Both of Jones' co-defendants said they had no plans to commit a sexual assault. Craig Buzzell, 23, of West Chicago pleaded guilty to crimes associated with the attack and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Kenneth Stroup, 20, of Warrenville remains in the DuPage County Jail while his case is pending. Jones also is being sentenced for the April 14, 2003, armed robbery of another Warrenville home and the April 6, 2003, robbery of a Darien home.

 

Female Sex Offenders Drawing Increased Scrutiny
Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times- 1/13/2006

A casual observer of the news might think there was an epidemic of molestation cases involving women against boys. Last week, a former Orange County middle school teacher was sentenced to six years in prison for committing lewd acts with boys. The same day, a seventh-grade teacher in Kern County pleaded not guilty to two counts of annoying and molesting a minor. The next day, a probation officer was arrested on suspicion of having sex with a 17-year-old ward whom she met while working at a correctional facility in Fresno County. Since November at least eight California cases have made the news, involving women either being accused or convicted of sexually exploiting boys. Most of the perpetrators were teachers or other school personnel.
     In reality, the phenomenon is not new, sociologists and criminal psychologists say, nor is there a growing trend. Statistics from the California attorney general's office show that the number of females convicted of sex offenses in the state averaged 386 per year between 2000 and 2004, a number in keeping with previous years. The average figure for men committing similar crimes during the same time period was more than 9,000. It is unclear how the figures for California's female sex offenders compare to other states, because there is no nationwide information on the number of women who sexually abuse children, according to officials at the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
     More cases of women molesting boys might be making headlines because of stricter law enforcement and the realization that boys, not just girls, can be victims of sexual misconduct, experts agree. "People are more willing to report these incidents if they hear about them," said David Finkelhof, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Police are more willing to investigate them; prosecutors more willing to prosecute them; newspapers more willing to write about them." "Everybody used to think that a 15-year-old male who got together with a 25-year-old female was just lucky," said Carla F. Grabert, a deputy district attorney in Kern County, who prosecutes unlawful sexual intercourse and statutory rape cases. "But I think we are noticing a change of perception with the publicity that has happened nationwide," she said. "It gets thought about more. If it's publicized more, it generates conversation. There is a lot of talk about it." In addition, studies show that there has been an overall decrease in sex crimes nationwide, so "criminal justice authorities have been freed up to investigate and prosecute cases that they would not have been able to do otherwise," Finkelhof said.
      The Orange County middle school teacher sentenced last week, Sarah Bench-Salorio, 29, pleaded guilty in September to 29 counts of lewd conduct with boys. One of her victims was 12 years old when they met. The Kern County teacher, Sherry Brians, 41, was charged with two counts of annoying and molesting a minor — a crime that carries a year jail term, a $1,000 fine, or both. She pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her alleged victim also was 12. On Dec. 22, Jennifer Lynn Sanchez, a 31-year-old math teacher, also in Kern County, was charged with four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old student, and one count each of oral copulation and sodomy with the same student. A few days earlier, a former San Bernardino high school secretary pleaded guilty to statutory rape, also involving a 17-year-old pupil.
     Grabert, the Kern County deputy district attorney, said that of the 20 to 25 sex crimes cases she prosecutes each quarter, on average, one-fifth of them involved female sex offenders. Staff and students at Buttonwillow School, where Brians taught, expressed shock over her arrest. "I was just stunned," said James Murphy, the school's principal, who described Brians as a teacher "adored" by faculty and students. "There was no indication whatsoever that could be considered that the alleged actions were committed by that person."
     But some sociologists and psychologists say that fascination still tends to outweigh outrage among the general public when it comes to reports of female sexual predators. Cases involving older teenagers having sex with an older woman are often viewed as a "coming-of-age scenario," said Paul G. Mattiuzzi, a Sacramento-based clinical forensic psychologist, who has testified in several court cases involving sex crimes. Often, he said, boys are less willing to admit that they are being taken advantage of, because having sex with a mature female is "seen more as a badge of honor." But, Mattiuzzi added, when the victim is pre-pubescent, the public reaction generally tends to be less tolerant. "That is just plain child molestation," the psychologist said. "You're talking about some kind of sickness or pathology on the part of the perpetrator." Jennifer Manlove, a sociologist and senior research associate at Child Trends, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that studies adolescent sexual activity, said that although cases involving women and preteen boys are quite rare, "when [they] turn up, they make news a little more, because they are so extreme."
     The high-profile 1990s case of Mary Kay Letourneau, the former Seattle schoolteacher who was jailed for having sex with a 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, helped focus attention on boys as sexual victims. But the fact that the pair had two children together and married after the 43-year-old Letourneau's release from prison, underscored that Fualaau, now 22, was a willing participant, sociologists said. And as a result, the revulsion and objection that was originally directed at Letourneau may have dissipated.
     Matthew Felling, media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, said the news media is partly responsible for generating the fascination of female sex offenders among the general public because it has failed to adopt a code of gender neutrality in pedophile coverage. Reports about male sex offenders include words like "predator" or "monster," Felling said, while in stories involving female offenders words like "bombshell" and "romp" are common. "There is a huge dichotomy in coverage. Men are demonized, while women are diagnosed," said Felling, whose group conducts content analysis of the news media. The entertainment industry has also heightened the allure of older women having sex with much younger males, through films and television shows like "Desperate Housewives," sociologists said.
     Although the law dictates equal punishment for men and women who commit sex crimes against children, legal experts said that a double standard often applies when dealing with female offenders, who are often treated more leniently. Former Tampa schoolteacher Debra Lafave, who admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student, recently avoided prison as part of a plea agreement. Lafave, 25, will instead serve three years of house arrest and seven years' probation. And last November, Sacramento high school teaching intern Margaret De Barraicua, the 31-year-old mother of a 2-year-old boy, was sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with a special education student 15 years her junior. Prosecutors had wanted De Barraicua to register as a sex offender in order to prevent her from becoming a teacher again. But the judge declined to impose the penalty, providing that De Barraicua abides by the terms of her five-year probation.
     Finkelhof, the university researcher, said punishment is often more lenient for female child sex offenders because women are generally less likely to have a prior history of such offenses; they typically do not use violence or weapons as part of their offense; and it is less common for women to have serial sexual offending tendencies. The public perception is that women pose less of a threat than men, Finkelhof said. And, said Mattiuzzi, lawyers, when defending a female against sex offense charges, often argue that their clients used romantic bad judgment. Paul Logli, an Illinois prosecutor and president of the National District Attorneys Assn., sees a double standard in sentencing as well. "There is no question it's more likely that as a case winds its way through the court, in more cases the woman is going to get probation, whereas the man, under the same circumstances, is going to get prison," he said.



Estranged Bedfellows
Stacy Weiner, Washington Post- 1/13/2006

If you and your partner sleep apart, you may be lonely, but you're not alone. According to a 2005 National Sleep Foundation survey, 23 percent of partnered adults frequently sleep solo because of their loved one's snoring, kicking or other sleep problem. That number doesn't include those who bed down apart because of mismatched schedules or desire for different room temperatures, or to let an exhausted spouse avoid a tyke's wake-up calls. And though a small number of couples who opt for separate beds do so to recapture a sense of romance, for most, there's one simple fantasy: some decent rest. In fact, according to the National Sleep Foundation survey of 1,506 adults, disruptive bedmates rob their partners, on average, of 49 minutes of shut-eye each night.
      Kensington mom Naomi Rivkis has regularly slept apart from her husband throughout their seven-year marriage. As is the case for many spouses, it's her mate's snoring that sends Rivkis scrambling for quieter ground; more than half of snorers report having disturbed someone's sleep. Most of the time Rivkis uses earplugs, but two or three nights a week she needs a break from the uncomfortable contraptions. At first, the 36-year-old said she barely noticed the separation because her husband was in law school and often chose books over bed anyway. Now that sleeping apart is a set pattern, though, she remains unfazed, especially since the couple resolves all conflicts before bedtime. "I don't want it to look to us even slightly like sleeping apart is associated with there being anything wrong," she said. "As long as that's separated out, it's just a physical convenience."
      Still, Rivkis concedes that initially it was a bit tough on her husband (who, like lots of people, didn't want his name associated with the topic). "It could have hurt the relationship if I weren't reassuring," she said. "But he's long settled into realizing it doesn't mean anything about how much I love him." Besides, notes Rivkis, they've got a toddler. And she is six months pregnant. And her husband has a stressful job. "This is not the kind of situation that if either one of us is exhausted and falling apart, it's going to work very well," she said.
      Chevy Chase sleep specialist Helene Emsellem concurs about rest's crucial role. To recharge our bodies -- and our psyches -- adults need seven to nine hours of sleep a night, explains Emsellem, a George Washington University associate clinical professor of neurology. If we're tired, she argues, chances are we'll hold it together at work, then dump on our partners. "Is an adequate amount of sleep essential for a good relationship? You bet," she said. The stats back her up. Twenty-three percent of partnered adults say tiredness has sapped their sex lives, according to the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation, and more than a third admit that a mate's disruptive sleep habits have taken a toll on their relationship.

Sleeping Easier
So what can be done to let sleeping partners lie? For snorers, Emsellem suggests dropping some excess weight, cutting back on late-night alcohol consumption and tossing out down comforters or other bedding that might contain allergens. (But if your partner hears gaps in your breathing, she urges getting checked for sleep apnea, a potentially serious condition that can lead heart disease and other disorders.) For partners of snorers, gently rolling one's mate from his back onto his side may help -- but then, of course, you've already been awakened by the offending noise and now he may be up, too.
      In the case of night owls married to early birds, Emsellem usually prescribes a heavy dose of accommodation, starting with an earlier wake time and a willingness to sacrifice some late-night solitude. Generally, her patients are highly motivated to share a bed, said Emsellem; the vast majority who end up apart in the morning start out, at least, in tandem. "I think people who are together, are together because they want to sleep together," she said.
     Don't tell that to Kirsten and Bill Hawkins. The Silver Spring couple's sleep life was, well, just dreamy until their first baby was born. Suddenly, Kirsten found it easy to wake up and difficult to fall back to sleep. "It progressed to the point where, if my husband rolled over and woke me, I wanted to kill him," confesses Kirsten, 41. Still, they tried sleeping together until child number two came along. Then the exhausted mom realized she was yelling at her kids for no good reason, and pretty often. So she set herself a rule: She'd only sleep with Bill if she went to bed early enough to get a decent chunk of shut-eye. "It was bad there for several months" after the change, she admits. "Neither one of us knew what was happening. It was so drastic a step" in an otherwise solid marriage. Finally, they sat down and made a conscious decision and a plan. They would sleep apart on weeknights, taking turns on baby-monitor duty. On weekends, they'd sleep together so "we can keep knowing each other," Kirsten said.
     Talking over such a decision to minimize misunderstanding is a wise move, said Norman Epstein, a professor of marital and family therapy at the University of Maryland. When Epstein counsels couples who are sleeping apart, he tends to probe for underlying issues. Is there a general difficulty compromising? Is one partner acting on a punitive impulse? Maybe someone has a problem with sharing, like the spouse who marks his bedroom territory with discarded socks or mounds of books. Epstein said he'd ask if sleeping apart reflects a more pervasive pattern in their relationship, such as a tendency to create distance.
     Of course, even if a sleep-apart arrangement starts out reasonably, couples should be aware that it could eventually erode intimacy, warns Falls Church marriage and family therapist Linda Rogers. "Particularly in this area, where everybody's going 24-7, it's hard for couples to stay connected anyway," she said. "At the end of day maybe there's not even any talking, but at least there's that touching that provides a sense of closeness." She worries, too, that one person may begin finding it difficult to cross into a partner's room. To prevent such problems, she encourages couples to bolster intimacy in other ways, like making sure to go out on "dates" or setting aside time to talk.

Beyond the Bed
But what's the big deal about sleeping together, anyway? The weight on the marital bed is artificial and relatively new, argues Stephanie Coontz, who has written extensively on the history and sociology of marriage. "It represents this cookie-cutter model that developed in the early 20th century that told people you had to get every single need met by this constant togetherness," said Coontz. "It doesn't tie in with what we know about the variety of coupled relationships that have worked in history."
      What's more, noted Coontz, a professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state, that model doesn't fit contemporary life, in which couples marry later, bringing more experiences and habits to their relationships. The notion that one should be "permanently turned on, permanently available -- that if you sleep in another room, maybe you're not very sexual -- is just an unnecessary burden for modern couples," she said.
     Shana and David Jacobs of Chevy Chase aren't particularly troubled by that notion. The two physicians often go to bed apart: She's a very light sleeper and he's a pretty heavy snorer. David, 34, said he finds it reassuring that Shana's mother and one of her sisters also need to sleep apart from their spouses to get some rest. As for Shana, 32, she said simply, "To be honest, I have never really seen the appeal of spending the whole night sleeping next to somebody. Just because I love someone and want to spend my life with them, doesn't mean I want to be in the same bed at the same time. I just don't see the connection."




Scientists Work on 'Trauma Pill'
Associated Press, 1/14/2006

Suppose you could erase bad memories from your mind. Suppose, as in a recent movie, your brain could be wiped clean of sad and traumatic thoughts. That is science fiction. But real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event like rape, may make the resulting memories less painful and intense.
      Will it work? It is too soon to say. Still, it is not far-fetched to think that this drug someday might be passed out along with blankets and food at emergency shelters after disasters like the tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. Psychiatrist Hilary Klein could have offered it to the man she treated at a St. Louis shelter over the Labor Day weekend. He had fled New Orleans and was so distraught over not knowing where his sisters were that others had to tell Klein his story. ''This man could not even give his name, he was in such distress. All he could do was cry,'' she said.
     Such people often develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a problem first recognized in Vietnam War veterans. Only 14 percent to 24 percent of trauma victims experience long-term PTSD, but sufferers have flashbacks and physical symptoms that make them feel as if they are reliving the trauma years after it occurred. Scientists think it happens because the brain goes haywire during and right after a strongly emotional event, pouring out stress hormones that help store these memories in a different way than normal ones are preserved. Taking a drug to tamp down these chemicals might blunt memory formation and prevent PTSD, they theorize.
     Some doctors have an even more ambitious goal: trying to cure PTSD. They are deliberately triggering very old bad memories and then giving the pill to deep-six them. The first study to test this approach on 19 longtime PTSD sufferers has provided early encouraging results, Canadian and Harvard University researchers report. ''We figure we need to test about 10 more people until we've got solid evidence.'' said Alain Brunet, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who is leading the study.
     It can't come too soon. The need for better treatment grows daily as American troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounded minds as well as bodies. One government survey found almost 1 in 6 showing symptoms of mental stress, including many with post-traumatic stress disorder. Disability payments related to the illness cost the government more than $4 billion a year. The need is even greater in countries ravaged by many years of violence.
     ''I don't think there's yet in our country a sense of urgency about post-traumatic stress disorder'' but there should be, said James McGaugh, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California at Irvine. He and a colleague, Larry Cahill, did experiments that changed how scientists view memory formation and suggested new ways to modify it. Memories, painful or sweet, don't form instantly after an event but congeal over time. Like slowly hardening cement, there is a window of opportunity when they are shapable. During stress, the body pours out adrenaline and other ''fight or flight'' hormones that help write memories into the ''hard drive'' of the brain, McGaugh and Cahill showed. Propranolol can blunt this. It is in a class of drugs called beta blockers and is the one most able to cross the blood-brain barrier and get to where stress hormones are wreaking havoc. It already is widely used to treat high blood pressure and is being tested for stage fright.
     Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard University psychiatrist, did a pilot study to see whether it could prevent symptoms of PTSD. He gave 10 days of either the drug or dummy pills to accident and rape victims who came to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room. In follow-up visits three months later, the patients listened to tapes describing their traumatic events as researchers measured their heart rates, palm sweating and forehead muscle tension. The eight who had taken propranolol had fewer stress symptoms than the 14 who received dummy pills, but the differences in the frequency of symptoms were so small they might have occurred by chance -- a problem with such tiny experiments. Still, ''this was the first study to show that PTSD could be prevented,'' McGaugh said, and enough to convince the federal government to fund a larger one that Pitman is doing now.
     Meanwhile, another study on assault and accident victims in France confirmed that propranolol might prevent PTSD symptoms. One of those researchers, Brunet, now has teamed with Pitman on the boldest experiment yet -- trying to cure longtime PTSD sufferers. ''We are trying to reopen the window of opportunity to modulate the traumatic memory,'' Pitman said. The experiments are being done in Montreal and involve people traumatized as long as 20 or 30 years ago by child abuse, sexual assault or a serious accident. ''It's amazing how a traumatic memory can remain very much alive. It doesn't behave like a regular memory. The memory doesn't decay,'' Brunet said. To try to make it decay, researchers ask people to describe the trauma as vividly as they can, bringing on physical symptoms like racing hearts, then give them propranolol to blunt ''restorage'' of the memory. As much as three months later, the single dose appears to be preventing PTSD symptoms, Brunet said.
     Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscience professor at New York University, is enrolling 20 to 30 people in a similar experiment and believes in the approach. ''Each time you retrieve a memory it must be restored,'' he said. ''When you activate a memory in the presence of a drug that prevents the restorage of the memory, the next day the memory is not as accessible.''
     Not all share his enthusiasm, as McGaugh found when he was asked to brief the President's Council on Bioethics a few years ago. ''They didn't say anything at the time but later they went ballistic on it,'' he said. Chairman Leon Kass contended that painful memories serve a purpose and are part of the human experience. McGaugh says that's preposterous when it comes to trauma like war. If a soldier is physically injured, ''you do everything you can to make him whole,'' but if he says he is upset ''they say, 'suck it up -- that's the normal thing,''' he complained. Propranolol couldn't be given to soldiers in battle because it would curb survival instincts. ''They need to be able to run and to fight,'' Pitman said. ''But if you could take them behind the lines for a couple of days, then you could give it to them after a traumatic event,'' or before they're sent home, he said.
     Some critics suggest that rape victims would be less able to testify against attackers if their memories were blunted, or at least that defense attorneys would argue that. ''Medical concerns trump legal concerns. I wouldn't withhold an effective treatment from somebody because of the possibility they may have to go to court a year later and their testimony be challenged. We wouldn't do that in any other area of medicine,'' Pitman said. ''The important thing to know about this drug is it doesn't put a hole in their memory. It doesn't create amnesia.''
     Practical matters may limit propranolol's usefulness. It must be given within a day or two of trauma to prevent PTSD. How long any benefits from the drug will last is another issue. McGaugh said some animal research suggests that memory eventually recovers after being squelched for a while by the drug.
     Overtreatment also is a concern. Because more than three-quarters of trauma victims don't have long-term problems, most don't need medication. But LeDoux sees little risk in propranolol. ''It's a pretty harmless drug,'' he said. ''If you could give them one or two pills that could prevent PTSD, that would be a pretty good thing.''
     Klein, the Saint Louis University psychiatrist, said it would be great to have something besides sleep aids, antidepressants and counseling to offer traumatized people, but she remains skeptical about how much long-term good propranolol can do. ''If there were a pill to reduce the intensity of symptoms, that would be a relief,'' she said. ''But that's a far step from being able to prevent the development of PTSD.'' Only more study will tell whether that is truly possible.
     On the Net:
Trauma research center: www.ncptsd.org
Government PTSD info: http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/ptsdbasicstext.pdf



Sex Abuse Survivors Want Michigan Law Changed
David Eggert, Associated Press- 1/14/2006

LANSING - Timothy Hassett says he was in fourth grade when his priest began taking him to the church rectory and molesting him. The sexual abuse at St. Mary's of Redford in Detroit lasted two years, Hassett says, and the damage was permanent. He was drinking by sixth grade. Drugs followed in ninth grade. By 10th grade, he was a dropout.
     Hassett, 43, says he didn't tell anyone about the abuse until attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a few years ago. "I have no religion left," he says. "It was hard to do AA because you've got to believe in a higher power. As far as I was concerned, my higher power screwed me."
Hassett sued the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2004 because "money is the only way you're going to make them change."
     But for Hassett and other alleged victims of decades-old abuse, Michigan courts have provided no relief, ruling they waited too long to file civil lawsuits. The statute of limitations usually bars criminal charges in older abuse cases, too. With their legal options dwindling, plaintiffs and victims' rights advocates are turning to the Legislature for help. "That is probably the most promising avenue of relief for people," says Mark Bendure, an appellate attorney for Hassett and others.
     Advocates for change say few victims come forward after being abused because they're scared. Or they repress the memories until adulthood. Giving victims just a year to sue after turning 18 protects child molesters, they argue. But so far, efforts to extend the statute of limitations have gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
     House Judiciary Committee Chairman William Van Regenmorter, a Jenison Republican, says loosening time limits is controversial because supporters want legislation to apply retroactively. California courts are overwhelmed with hundreds of clergy-related cases filed after that state temporarily suspended its statute of limitations for molestation suits in 2002, he says. Possible problems also exist with suits because so much time has passed, and because the plaintiffs' recollections of abuse may be mistaken. The issue has grown more urgent for victims because higher courts recently reaffirmed that state law requires suits to be filed by the deadline, regardless of allegations that the church tried to cover up abuse.
     In November, the Michigan Court of Appeals barred the lawsuit of Hassett and two other
men who said they were abused by Detroit. area priests. The court also rejected the case of a former altar boy, Patrick Antos, who said a priest outside Flint molested him 30 years ago. The state Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse the rulings.
      Changing the law is proving difficult, partly because of opposition from the Michigan Catholic Conference, the church's lobbying arm, Paul Long, the group's vice president for public policy, says he's saddened by abuse claims but thinks legislation world do nothing to protect today's children.
"It is our belief that Michigan's statute of limitations is in the mainstream of national law and serves well its intention of fairness," Long says.
     Not everyone in the church agrees. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit traveled to the Ohio statehouse last week to testify in support of legislation that would create a one-year window in which past victims can sue. During his testimony, he disclosed that he had been molested by a priest as a teen.. He's believed to be the first U.S. Roman Catholic bishop to disclose that he was a victim of sexual abuse by clergy. There's a "strong likelihood" some perpetrators haven't been exposed, Gumbleton said. He added that civil lawsuits are the best way to deter future wrongdoing and to hold clergy accountable, along with the leaders who protected them.
     Rep. Paul Condino, a Southfield Democrat, says his bill to open up a two-year window for abuse suits didn't stem from church-related cases. He was interested, in helping women who had been abused as young girls by family members who kept it from the police. Condino says all victims deserve their day in court. "Let's let a jury of our peers decide what compensation, if any, should. be given," he says. "It's gut-wrenching to hear these stories and not want to try to do something."
     John Antos, whose son lost a civil suit against the Diocese of Lansing because he filed it too late, says it's "pathetic" that Michigan hasn't joined states such as California and Illinois in opening up clergy to civil cases for alleged abuse. "I certainly hope that Michigan comes forward," Antos says. "We pray to God that it will come forward."


Book About Recovery Raises Controversy
Edward Wyatt, New York Times- 1/12/2006

The author of a best-selling memoir whose truth was called into question this week acknowledged yesterday that he had made up details of his life. But Oprah Winfrey, whose recommendation last fall of the memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey, made it the best-selling book by any American author last year, said Wednesday that she would continue to recommend it despite Mr. Frey's admission that he made up significant aspects of his story of addiction and recovery. Ms. Winfrey's statement came last night in a phone call to "Larry King Live" on CNN, where Mr. Frey was discussing news reports this week that parts of his book differed significantly from arrest reports and other public records of incidents he recounted in the memoir.
     The Smoking Gun, an investigative Web site, reported on Sunday that Mr. Frey had never spent the three months in prison that he claimed, a disclosure that raised questions about a host of events that the author said occurred to him in jail and that he said were affected by his jailing, including the suicide of his girlfriend. "I've acknowledged that I changed things," Mr. Frey told Mr. King. But, he said, the events he changed totaled less than 5 percent of the book's content, "within the realm of what's appropriate for a memoir." Mr. Frey, who appeared on the show with his mother at his side, said he never expected his memoir to come under such close scrutiny. But he maintained that what he believes is the essence of the book is true: that he was an alcoholic and drug addict who overcame his addiction.
     In her surprise call, Ms. Winfrey agreed, offering an endorsement that had Mr. Frey, and in all probability many people in the publishing industry, breathing a sigh of relief. "Although some of the facts have been questioned," Ms. Winfrey said, "the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me, and I know it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and who will continue to read this book."
     While many details about Mr. Frey's life before and after his time in an addiction treatment facility were being questioned, "to me it seems to be much ado about nothing," Ms. Winfrey said. "What is relevant is that he was a drug addict who spent years in turmoil" and who found a way to tell his story of redemption. Ms. Winfrey said it was up to publishers, whom she said she relied on to document the authenticity of a book, to decide what rules govern memoirs and how they differ from other forms of nonfiction.
     That debate has exposed rifts throughout the publishing industry this week, not least one between a prominent author - Gay Talese - and the similarly prominent publisher of Mr. Frey's book, Nan A. Talese. The two, of course, are husband and wife. Mr. Talese, a renowned author of nonfiction books and a former reporter for The New York Times, said in an interview yesterday that he believed it was unacceptable for an author or a publisher to present as nonfiction a work that contained any composite or fictional characters or events, or that otherwise blurred the lines between truth and fiction. "Nonfiction takes no liberty with the facts, and it should not," Mr. Talese said. "I think all writers should be held accountable. The trouble with book publishers is that they don't have the staff or they don't want to have the staff to ensure the veracity of a writer. You could argue that they had better, or they're going to have more stories like this one. My wife is going to hate me for this, but that is what I believe."
     His wife, Ms. Talese, whose Nan A. Talese imprint at the Doubleday unit of Random House published Mr. Frey's book, disagreed, saying memoir cannot be held to the same standard as history or biography. "Nonfiction is not a single monolithic category as defined by the best-seller list," she said yesterday when asked to comment on her husband's remarks. "Memoir is personal recollection. It is not absolute fact. It's how one remembers what happened. That is different from history and criticism and biography, and they cannot be measured by the same yardstick." "I adore Gay, but this is a debate that we've been having for 40 years," Ms. Talese said.