A new study highlights how easily a traumatic incident can alter brain functioning, and how long that change can last.
The researchers studied people who had been close to the World Trade Center on 9/11. Four years after the attack, people who were within 1.5 miles of the disaster still showed greater activation of their amygdalas – the region of the brain that controls our fight-or-flight instincts – than a control group who had been further away.
Participants were shown pictures of either calm or fearful faces while their amygdala activation was measured through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedure. Those who were close to the WTC on 9/11 showed greater amygdala activation to fearful faces.
The results suggest that exposure to a single traumatic event may produce long-term brain changes that cause even healthy-appearing people to react more fearfully to everyday events.
The article, by Barbara Ganzel of Cornell University and colleagues, is available from the American Psychological Association at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/emo72227.pdf.
May 7, 2007
April 23, 2007
Lesson to abusers: Target socially disempowered
In a case that highlights the hypocrisy of get-tough-on-crime policies supposedly driven by sympathy for victims, the juvenile court system continued to send boys to a prominent psychiatrist for at least 16 years after he was first accused of child molestation.
Juvenile court judges continued to send new victims to Dr. William Ayres until 2003, long after the first of multiple complaints against him by boys and their parents. As of the most recent tally, at least 37 men have accused Ayres of molesting them as boys dating back almost four decades.
Economic class disparities between the accusers and the accused likely influenced the failure to prosecute. After all, whom should one believe? A prominent child psychiatrist and former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry? Or a disempowered youth who seems destined for state prison?
“You have a prominent psychiatrist saying, 'I didn't do it,' and a troubled youth who's seeing a psychiatrist," Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan told the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the Chronicle article, Ayres might never have been prosecuted without the chance intervention of a freelance writer from New York.
For more media coverage of the Ayres case, go to the blog: http://psychwatch.blogspot.com/.
Juvenile court judges continued to send new victims to Dr. William Ayres until 2003, long after the first of multiple complaints against him by boys and their parents. As of the most recent tally, at least 37 men have accused Ayres of molesting them as boys dating back almost four decades.
Economic class disparities between the accusers and the accused likely influenced the failure to prosecute. After all, whom should one believe? A prominent child psychiatrist and former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry? Or a disempowered youth who seems destined for state prison?
“You have a prominent psychiatrist saying, 'I didn't do it,' and a troubled youth who's seeing a psychiatrist," Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan told the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the Chronicle article, Ayres might never have been prosecuted without the chance intervention of a freelance writer from New York.
For more media coverage of the Ayres case, go to the blog: http://psychwatch.blogspot.com/.
April 20, 2007
Too ill to die?
Scott Panetti thinks Texas wants to kill him because it is in cahoots with the devil. The devil, he theorizes, wants to stop him from preaching the gospel to his fellow prisoners.
Panetti has a severe mental disorder. He had been hospitalized more than a dozen times before he killed his estranged wife’s parents back in 1992.
No one doubts that he is crazy (although the prosecution claims he is exaggerating). At his trial, he fired his attorney and represented himself. He flipped a coin to decide on whether to keep a potential juror on his panel. Wearing a purple cowboy suit and mimicking a John Wayne character called the Ringo Kid, he blamed the shootings on another personality named “Sarge.” As evidence, he tried to subpoena Jesus Christ, the Pope, and John F. Kennedy.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether he is too ill to execute.
In the 1986 case of Ford vs. Wainwright, the Supreme Court held that executing a person who is severely mentally ill constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, banned by the Eighth Amendment. The legal standard, known as the “Ford standard,” is whether a person is so insane that he cannot understand the link between his crime and the punishment.
But the Ford case did not give a precise definition of what constitutes competence for execution. Is a mere factual understanding enough? Or should the prisoner have a “rational” understanding of why he is going to be executed? That is the issue in Panetti's case.
The state argues that it is sufficient for Panetti to realize that he committed the murders and that he is being put to death. It is irrelevant that he thinks he is being executed for preaching the Bible.
Panetti's lawyers counter that a Constitutional execution requires more than this simple knowledge. The defendant should appreciate that the execution is society’s retribution for his crime. Panetti, living in a delusional world, cannot make that connection.
The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness agree with Panetti's counsel. They have filed a joint petition arguing that people such as Panetti should not be executed because they “cannot rationally understand the reasons for their execution."
The highly polarized Supreme Court may sidestep this complex question on procedural grounds by asserting that Panetti’s appeals were exhausted. A decision is expected by July.
Panetti has a severe mental disorder. He had been hospitalized more than a dozen times before he killed his estranged wife’s parents back in 1992.
No one doubts that he is crazy (although the prosecution claims he is exaggerating). At his trial, he fired his attorney and represented himself. He flipped a coin to decide on whether to keep a potential juror on his panel. Wearing a purple cowboy suit and mimicking a John Wayne character called the Ringo Kid, he blamed the shootings on another personality named “Sarge.” As evidence, he tried to subpoena Jesus Christ, the Pope, and John F. Kennedy.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether he is too ill to execute.
In the 1986 case of Ford vs. Wainwright, the Supreme Court held that executing a person who is severely mentally ill constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, banned by the Eighth Amendment. The legal standard, known as the “Ford standard,” is whether a person is so insane that he cannot understand the link between his crime and the punishment.
But the Ford case did not give a precise definition of what constitutes competence for execution. Is a mere factual understanding enough? Or should the prisoner have a “rational” understanding of why he is going to be executed? That is the issue in Panetti's case.
The state argues that it is sufficient for Panetti to realize that he committed the murders and that he is being put to death. It is irrelevant that he thinks he is being executed for preaching the Bible.
Panetti's lawyers counter that a Constitutional execution requires more than this simple knowledge. The defendant should appreciate that the execution is society’s retribution for his crime. Panetti, living in a delusional world, cannot make that connection.
The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness agree with Panetti's counsel. They have filed a joint petition arguing that people such as Panetti should not be executed because they “cannot rationally understand the reasons for their execution."
The highly polarized Supreme Court may sidestep this complex question on procedural grounds by asserting that Panetti’s appeals were exhausted. A decision is expected by July.
April 19, 2007
Can school shootings be prevented?
Everyone’s got an opinion about Seung-Hui Cho and how his Virginia Tech rampage could have been prevented. The university administration should have done something. The police should have done something. And where the heck were his parents?
Such acts never occur out of the clear blue sky. There are always signs. With new details emerging rapidly about Cho Seung-Hui's history, we know that Cho gave off a great many signs. And some around him noticed those signs.
At least one teacher was so disturbed that she reported him to academic authorities and to police. Police investigated his “stalking” of female students and even had him briefly hospitalized. His parents called campus administrators to voice their concerns about his mental health. Fellow students say they even wondered aloud whether Cho could be a school shooter.
The problem, in terms of violence prediction, is that many people – and especially many adolescent and young adult men – are troubled. Many are severely depressed. Many express disturbing, violent fantasies. But, fortunately, only a tiny fraction commit lethal acts against others.
In other words, hindsight is 20/20. It is far easier to realize that a young man is depressed or disturbed than to accurately predict whether he will become violent. Prior to his rampage, Cho may not have seemed all that out of the ordinary to college counselors and police.
A national study of 95,000 college students last year found that in the previous year 16% had felt so depressed that they found it difficult to function. More than 9 percent had seriously considered suicide, and one in every 100 had tried to kill themselves that year. And more and more students are seeking treatment at college counseling centers. The counseling center at Virginia Tech treats about 2,000 students a year, according to its director.
In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, the incoming president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors said that many of Cho’s signs are not at all unusual among college students.
At Cornell University, where he is director of counseling services, Gregory Eells said it is “fairly common” for a professor to call counseling services to ask what they should do when a student writes a disturbing essay.
“Would you hospitalize Quentin Tarantino?” Eells asked. “There are all sorts of writers who write about dark, violent themes, but most of them are not dangerous to themselves and others.
“It's always easy to look back and say the friend was concerned, a faculty member was concerned, they had a previous hospitalization…. But to make a jump and say that everyone who exhibits those signs is going to become the perpetrator of the worst shooting in American history is not a logical jump. That possibility is always there, but a million times that is not what is going to happen.”
The director of the counseling center at Virginia Tech agreed, pointing out that the types of stalking complaints made by the two women against Cho are not uncommon on college campuses.
"It is very difficult to predict when what someone perceives as stalking is stalking, and then how it might translate into violence later," Dr. Chris Flynn of the Virginia Tech counseling center told the Associated Press. "Clearly, if anyone had any warning about a violent incident, people would have stepped in and acted."
After a disaster such as this, some people will likely lobby for stricter laws. Laws reducing psychologist-patient confidentiality. Laws making involuntary hospitalization easier. But such laws would cast too wide a net. In the end, it may prove impossible to predict which troubled young man will become violent.
Instead, we might want to look for ways to reduce the alienation and rage felt by so many young men today. To improve school climates. To reduce the bullying, the ostracization, and the glorification of hypermasculinity that provide the social backdrop for school shooting rampages.
For an interesting perspective by educator ira Socol, go to: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/04/20/socol
At least one teacher was so disturbed that she reported him to academic authorities and to police. Police investigated his “stalking” of female students and even had him briefly hospitalized. His parents called campus administrators to voice their concerns about his mental health. Fellow students say they even wondered aloud whether Cho could be a school shooter.
The problem, in terms of violence prediction, is that many people – and especially many adolescent and young adult men – are troubled. Many are severely depressed. Many express disturbing, violent fantasies. But, fortunately, only a tiny fraction commit lethal acts against others.
In other words, hindsight is 20/20. It is far easier to realize that a young man is depressed or disturbed than to accurately predict whether he will become violent. Prior to his rampage, Cho may not have seemed all that out of the ordinary to college counselors and police.
A national study of 95,000 college students last year found that in the previous year 16% had felt so depressed that they found it difficult to function. More than 9 percent had seriously considered suicide, and one in every 100 had tried to kill themselves that year. And more and more students are seeking treatment at college counseling centers. The counseling center at Virginia Tech treats about 2,000 students a year, according to its director.
In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, the incoming president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors said that many of Cho’s signs are not at all unusual among college students.
At Cornell University, where he is director of counseling services, Gregory Eells said it is “fairly common” for a professor to call counseling services to ask what they should do when a student writes a disturbing essay.
“Would you hospitalize Quentin Tarantino?” Eells asked. “There are all sorts of writers who write about dark, violent themes, but most of them are not dangerous to themselves and others.
“It's always easy to look back and say the friend was concerned, a faculty member was concerned, they had a previous hospitalization…. But to make a jump and say that everyone who exhibits those signs is going to become the perpetrator of the worst shooting in American history is not a logical jump. That possibility is always there, but a million times that is not what is going to happen.”
The director of the counseling center at Virginia Tech agreed, pointing out that the types of stalking complaints made by the two women against Cho are not uncommon on college campuses.
"It is very difficult to predict when what someone perceives as stalking is stalking, and then how it might translate into violence later," Dr. Chris Flynn of the Virginia Tech counseling center told the Associated Press. "Clearly, if anyone had any warning about a violent incident, people would have stepped in and acted."
After a disaster such as this, some people will likely lobby for stricter laws. Laws reducing psychologist-patient confidentiality. Laws making involuntary hospitalization easier. But such laws would cast too wide a net. In the end, it may prove impossible to predict which troubled young man will become violent.
Instead, we might want to look for ways to reduce the alienation and rage felt by so many young men today. To improve school climates. To reduce the bullying, the ostracization, and the glorification of hypermasculinity that provide the social backdrop for school shooting rampages.
For an interesting perspective by educator ira Socol, go to: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/04/20/socol
April 16, 2007
Sex offenders must live as trolls
A judge has ordered five convicted sex offenders to live under a bridge near Miami because no other housing can be found for them. Under new residency restrictions, they are banned from living near schools, parks, and other places where children congregate, and even homeless shelters have refused them entry.
The judge ordered the men to stay under the bridge from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Their probation officers come by nightly to check that they are there.
Their address is listed on the Florida sexual predator Web site as “Julia Tuttle Causeway.”
One of the five, Kevin Morales, asked a judge on April 12 if he could go back to jail instead of living under the bridge. The judge said no.
Laws restricting where sex offenders can live have swept the nation since the first ones were enacted in Iowa five years ago. Iowa has seen mounting criticism of the laws, largely due to their unintended side effects. Rather than protecting children, the laws may actually endanger them more by making it harder to track and rehabilitate offenders. The laws also do nothing to protect the large proportion of sexually abused children whose assailants are family members or acquaintances, many with no prior convictions for sex offenses.
The judge ordered the men to stay under the bridge from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Their probation officers come by nightly to check that they are there.
Their address is listed on the Florida sexual predator Web site as “Julia Tuttle Causeway.”
One of the five, Kevin Morales, asked a judge on April 12 if he could go back to jail instead of living under the bridge. The judge said no.
Laws restricting where sex offenders can live have swept the nation since the first ones were enacted in Iowa five years ago. Iowa has seen mounting criticism of the laws, largely due to their unintended side effects. Rather than protecting children, the laws may actually endanger them more by making it harder to track and rehabilitate offenders. The laws also do nothing to protect the large proportion of sexually abused children whose assailants are family members or acquaintances, many with no prior convictions for sex offenses.
April 10, 2007
Sex Offender Laws Gone Amok
Wendy Whitaker, 26, had consensual oral sex with another high school sophomore when she was 17 years old. Unfortunately, the boy was two years younger. Ms. Whitaker was arrested and pleaded guilty to a “sodomy” charge. She was sentenced to probation but was required to register as a sex offender. When housing residency restrictions were enacted in Georgia in 2003, she was forced out of the home she owned because it was within 1,000 feet of a church.
If you think that punishment is extreme, consider the case of another Georgia woman, Janet Allison. The 45-year-old mother of five was forced to move from her four-bedroom house into a two-bedroom mobile home in the middle of nowhere because her former home was within a quarter-mile of a church. Yet the registered sex offender had committed no hands-on crime.
Ms. Allison was convicted of being a party to child molestation because she allowed the 17-year-old boyfriend of her 15-year-old daughter to move into the family home. Her daughter was pregnant by the boyfriend at the time.
After Ms. Allison was arrested, three of her children were removed from her custody and put into foster care, and she is forbidden from having any contact with one daughter and grandson. "I didn't touch anyone," she was quoted in a newspaper as saying. "I just thought I was protecting my daughter."
These women are plaintiffs in a legal challenge to Georgia’s registry being mounted by the ACLU and the Southern Center for Human Rights. The lawsuit argues that there is no individualized justice when all sex offenders are treated the same, regardless of whether they are violent predators or teenagers involved in consensual acts. It also asserts that forcing sex offenders out of their homes and off their jobs destroys families and creates social instability that in the long run will harm the public.
Click on the headline, above, to read more and to view a PBS video report on the Georgia law.
If you think that punishment is extreme, consider the case of another Georgia woman, Janet Allison. The 45-year-old mother of five was forced to move from her four-bedroom house into a two-bedroom mobile home in the middle of nowhere because her former home was within a quarter-mile of a church. Yet the registered sex offender had committed no hands-on crime.
Ms. Allison was convicted of being a party to child molestation because she allowed the 17-year-old boyfriend of her 15-year-old daughter to move into the family home. Her daughter was pregnant by the boyfriend at the time.
After Ms. Allison was arrested, three of her children were removed from her custody and put into foster care, and she is forbidden from having any contact with one daughter and grandson. "I didn't touch anyone," she was quoted in a newspaper as saying. "I just thought I was protecting my daughter."
These women are plaintiffs in a legal challenge to Georgia’s registry being mounted by the ACLU and the Southern Center for Human Rights. The lawsuit argues that there is no individualized justice when all sex offenders are treated the same, regardless of whether they are violent predators or teenagers involved in consensual acts. It also asserts that forcing sex offenders out of their homes and off their jobs destroys families and creates social instability that in the long run will harm the public.
Click on the headline, above, to read more and to view a PBS video report on the Georgia law.
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