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Killer of Sportscaster Arrested in Border Incident 2007-12-06 07:00:00 A 51-year old former patient, previously convicted for the murder of prominent Ottawa sportscaster, Brian Smith, in 1995 is being held in a Buffalo area jail following an altercation with a Peace Bridge officer on November 30. Jeffrey R. Arenberg of Barrie, Ontario had been attempting to cross the international border as part of a commercial bus filled with Canadian passengers. He had earlier been refused admission on November 5 based on a history of drug convictions. When the officer attempted to search him for weapons, Arenberg allegedly punched the officer in the face. He is scheduled to appear for a detention hearing and has reportedly pled not guilty to the felony charge.
In 1995, Arenberg went to an Ottawa television station and gunned down Brian Smith, a popular broadcaster and former hockey pro who had just finished his 6 p.m. sports show. According to police, Arenberg had killed Smith due to delusions that television stations were broadcasting messages into his head. He was Read more:Killer
, Border
, Incident
What Causes Postconcussion Syndrome? 2007-12-20 07:00:00 The causes, diagnosis and outcome of postconcussion syndrome (PCS) remain controversial, especially following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) . An article in the August 2007 issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry describes the results of a prospective study examining the role of preexisting psychiatric disorders, demographic factors, injury-related characteristics, neuropsychological and psychological variables in shaping acute PCS. Using a sample of 90 traumatic brain-injured admissions to a Level 1 trauma hospital and 85 non-brain injured trauma controls, participants were given a battery of neuropsychological and psychological tests and a PCS checklist. Statistical analyses were used to predict acute PCS after 5 days postinjury. The results indicated that diagnosis of acute PCS was not specific to mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI 43.3%; controls 43.5%). Pain was found to be a significant factor but the the strongest predictor for acute PCS was previous hi Read more:Syndrome
Russian Activist Being Held in Psychiatric Hospital 2007-12-18 07:00:00 In a disturbing development by the Russian
government, opposition activist Artem Basyrov was detained by two plainclothes officers and sentenced to be held in a psychiatric hospital in the central region of Mari El. The November 23 arrest is the latest in a series of psychiatric committals directed against political figures and journalists critical of the current regime. The psychiatric board that reviewed the 20-year old Basyrov's case alleged that he had "harassed" a woman and was suffering from "some sort of mental illness". Basyrov's supporters dismiss the allegations as "idiocy" and maintain that his arrest was designed to punish him for running as an Other Russia candidate in the local legislature. Basyrov was one of the organizers for a "Dissenter's meeting" that was scheduled to take place on November 24th. The other organizer, Mikhail Klyuzhev, was arrested on November 22 for "hooliganism" and held for three days. While his Basyrov's is scheduled for review in a few weeks, Read more:Activist
Travelling to Mars 2007-12-16 07:00:00 While spirit mediums and trance channellers come and go, there has never been anyone else quite like Catherine Elise Muller (more commonly known as Helene Smith). Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1861, Catherine`s father was a Hungarian merchant with a talent for learning languages and her mother was prone to seeing ``visions``. From an early age, Catherine had a vivid imagination and extremely intense daydreams. She would tell her parents of her visions of brightly coloured landscapes, bizarre images, and bright lights and openly speculated about being a changeling. It was in 1891 that she was first introduced to Spiritualism and quickly showed a remarkable talent for automatic writing. She also showed a knack for mediumship and communicated with different spirits (including the ghost of Victor Hugo). Table-tipping, spirit writing, clairvoyance, Catherine did it all. Her spirit guide, Count Cagliostro (more commonly known as ``Leopold``) acted through her body and she claimed not to re Read more:Travelling
Happy Holidays 2007-12-25 07:00:00 Happy
holidays wishes to you and yours! For those of you who celebrate Christmas, may the day bring you good tidings and glad times. For those of you of other faiths, may the season be a good one for you and your families!
Read more:Holidays
, Happy Holidays
The Snakeroot Remedy 2007-12-23 07:00:00 Rauwolfia serpentina is an evergreen shrub with large leaves and flowers and tiny fruit that turn purple-black when ripe. It grows wild in India and is mainly found on the slopes of the Himalayas. The first recorded mention of rauwolfia roots (known as snakeroot or "sarpagandha" in Indian medicine) was in 600 BC although oral tradition describes it as a mainstay of Indian Avuredic medicine for thousands of years before that. Snakeroot gained its name as a treatment for the effects of snake venom but it was also used for treating insomnia, diarrhea, dysentery and uterine complications. Traditional healers also used it for the sedation of mental disturbances and it became known as the "insanity herb" for that reason. Rauwolfia serpentina was given its scientific name in the 17th century by a French botanist who named the shrub in honour of 16th century botanist and physician Leonhard Rauwolf. Still, its medical properties weren't formally identified until 1933 when Rauwolfia's value i
Seeking Refuge 2008-03-11 07:00:00 The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has released a report indicating that Iraqi refugees in Lebanon are experiencing high levels of emotional distress and post-traumatic symptoms. The report outlines the results of a study carried out between November 2007 and... Read more:Seeking
The Unforgettable Shereshevsky 2008-03-09 07:00:00 It all began with a daily meeting at a newspaper in Moscow, sometime in the 1920s. The editor was handing out assignments to the various reporters and was annoyed to note that one of the newer reporters had neglected to... Read more:Unforgettable
Surviving the Holocaust 2008-03-06 20:22:00 The January 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society presents that results of a longitudinal study examining the long-term effects of Holocaust
exposure during young adulthood. A sample of four hundred fifty-eight subjects of European origin (aged... Read more:Surviving
Mitigating Factors Citied in Restaurant Murder 2008-03-04 07:00:00 An Australian judge cited mitigating factors raised in a psychological report to sentence restaurant owner Khanh Vo to seven years in prison for the manslaughter of 56-year old Anh Dung Nguyen. Vo stabbed Nguyen with a small kitchen knife after...
After Count Alfred 2008-03-02 07:00:00 There is an anecdote about Alfred
Korzybski that goes as follows: Giving a lecture to a group of students, Korzybski stopped the lesson and took a box of biscuits from his briefcase. He said that he was hungry and offered...
Jails as Mental Health Centres 2008-02-28 07:00:00 There are more than a million prison and jail inmates in the United States who have mental illness given the harsh cutbacks in funding for community support programs. A paper from a recent issue of the Journal of Trauma and... Read more:Health
, Mental Health
Why Aren't Some AIDS Patients Getting Treatment? 2008-02-26 07:00:00 In a recently released study by the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS
, an alarming forty per cent of the people who died of HIV-AIDS in British Columbia never sought life-saving treatment even though it was free. The study... Read more:Treatment
Constance Kent 2008-02-24 07:00:00 It was on June 30, 1860 when three-year old Francis Kent disappeared from his bedroom in the Kent family home near Frome, Somerset. His nurse, Elizabeth Gough, discovered early in the morning that Francis was missing from his bed and... Read more:Constance
Head Injury and Substance Use in Teenagers 2008-02-21 07:00:00 A paper published in the January 2008 issue of Journal of Pediatric Surgery contains the results of a study examining the role of drug and alcohol use in adolescents suffering from traumatic brain injuries. Using trauma registry data to identify... Read more:Injury
, Substance
, Teenagers
Bizarre Suicide by Psychiatrist Mimics Patient Death 2008-02-19 07:00:00 It was on February 14 when staff members at Pavlov Mental Hospital in Kolkata, India discovered the body of Dr. Dipankar Choudhury in the hospital duty room. The 52-year old psychiatrist had apparently strangled himself by tying his muffler to... Read more:Bizarre
, Suicide
Blinded By The Light 2008-03-13 07:00:00 Following reports about a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary in the sky at a hotel owner's home near Kottayam (located in southeast India), approximately fifty people have permanently damaged their eyesight by eagerly staring at the sun. Since the... Read more:Blinded
In Good Conscience 2008-03-16 07:00:00 Being a person of conscience is never easy, especially during wartime when governments begin mass conscription to bolster their armed forces. Whenever drafting begins, the problems involved in dealing with conscientious objectors who, by virtue of their religious or political...
Lawyer Seeks Insanity Plea in Microwave Baby Case 2008-03-18 07:00:00 Lawyers are seeking an insanity plea for an Arkansas man on trial for placing his 2-month old daughter in a microwave oven last May 10. Joshua Joyce Mauldin, 20, of Warren Arkansas has been charged with causing injury to a... Read more:Lawyer
Psychotic Symptoms In The Elderly 2008-03-20 07:00:00 A study in the December 2007 issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry examines the prevalence of psychotic symptoms and schizophrenia in nondemented 95-year-olds over a one-year period. A sample of 338 95-year-olds living in Göteborg, Sweden (individuals with...
Starved For Science 2008-03-23 07:00:00 While the conscientious objectors (COs) who were part of the Civilian Public Service (CPS) carried out a variety of unpleasant duties, one of the most far-reaching involved their participation as research subjects in medical experiments. Under the authority of the... Read more:Science
"My Mom Stabbed Me" 2008-03-25 07:00:00 Police in Largo, Florida reported that a mother stabbed and critically wounded her 15-year old son at a local psychiatrist's office on March 22. Celeste Grace Minardi, 51, had been attending supervised visits with her son for the past three... Read more:Stabbed
Casualties of War 2008-03-27 07:00:00 The Winter issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine presents a thoughtful overview on war and its casualties. Throughout America's first 145 years of war, far more of the country's military personnel died from infectious diseases than from combat injuries....
Talks with Cave Sect Continuing 2008-04-01 07:00:00 Russian officials are reporting that talks are underway to the 28 remaining members of a doomsday sect holed up in a cave since last November to come out. Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region, some 500 kilometres (310...
The Castrato 2008-03-30 07:00:00 There are different traditions concerning why Giovanni Velluti was castrated as a young boy. Born in Montolmo, Italy in 1780, his father had planned a military career for him but this plan changed abruptly when Giovanni developed a high fever....
Does Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Cause Cognitive Problems? 2008-04-03 07:00:00 A study reported in the December 2007 Journal of Psychosomatic Research examined cognitive complaints in head-injured patients referred to the emergency department of a level 1 trauma center in the Netherlands. A sample of 79 patients (ranging in age from... Read more:Brain
, Injury
, Cause
, Cognitive
The Stroker’s Legacy 2008-04-06 07:00:00 Faith healing has a long and varied history but certain cases still have a special fascination. So it was with Valentine Greatrakes, the Stroker. Born in 1628 in to a prominent Irish family, Greatrakes (also spelled Greatorex or Greatraks) was... Read more:Legacy
Cave Sect Leader Hospitalized With Head Wounds 2008-04-08 07:00:00 A leader of a doomsday sect who had inspired his followers to hide in a cave for five months as they waited for the end of the world has been hospitalized with serious head wounds, Penza government officials said today.... Read more:Leader
, Hospitalized
How Families of Organ Donors Deal with Grief 2008-04-10 07:00:00 A study published in the February 2008 issue of Clinical Transplantation examines the effect of the organ donation process on families dealing with grief. Using the British Columbia Transplant Society (BCTS) database, the authors mailed test packages to families of... Read more:Families
, Donors
, Grief
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