Mental Health

Remember the bogyman? Or the nasty gremlins or even Freddy Krueger? These monsters can haunt dreams and cause children to fear the dark. As children grow older, most can overcome such fears, but some cannot. Lisa Branco, a junior at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, says she has acrophobia, an innate fear of heights. She distrusts her balance and avoids high places. She remembers peering down from the Empire State Building when she was 6 years old and suddenly becoming dizzy and deathly afraid.

Re "Beating video may be a mental health watershed," May 9 The fatal beating of Kelly Thomas at the hands of Fullerton police officers is another glaring example of failed police administration as it relates to the training of officers to properly handle resistive, combative or aggressive mentally disabled people. All medical staff and personnel employed in treatment centers for mental patients receive certified professional training on how to physically handle these types of incidents.

This, I had to see. The looniest Laker speaking to middle schoolers about mental health? "I know no parent wants their kid to be hearing from the guy who was on the Jimmy Kimmel show in his boxers," said Ron Artest from the stage of the Eastmont Intermediate School in Montebello on Thursday morning. "But I put all that aside today. " The Laker who impulsively dyes his hair, tweets his anger and was recently stopped by police while driving what appeared to be a Formula One race car through Los Angeles was speaking to middle schoolers about the importance of mental stability?

President Obama said Wednesday that he now supports gay marriage . In an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, he explained that for him, it's an issue of fairness : “It's also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.” But studies show there's another reason to favor gay marriage - it's good for public health. A study published in February by the American Journal of Public Health found that gay men in Massachusetts were in better physical and mental health after that state became the first to recognize same-sex marriage in 2003.

He was winding up four days of routine financial meetings in Philadelphia and had told his administrative assistant to confirm his return flight to Los Angeles. He had just finished reading Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" and was looking for another good book. He was trying to figure out when he could reschedule dinner with actor Vincent Price. And, as he always did whenever he went out of town, Edgar Rosenberg kept in close telephone contact with his wife.

A yoga meditation program could reduce depression symptoms and boost mental health, a study finds, and that's not all - it may also show benefits at the cellular level. The study, published recently in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry , involved 49 caregivers ranging in age from 45 to 91 who were taking care of family members with dementia. Caregivers are at risk for high stress levels, often with no outlet or relief, which can lead to health problems. The participants were randomly assigned to two programs: Kundalini yoga Kirtan Kriya meditation or passive relaxation with instrumental music.

The group therapy session at Afghanistan's flagship mental health hospital began, as many do, with sharing. Foruzan, 28, a slight woman in a black and silver head scarf, told the psychologist she was possessed by an evil spirit, or jinn. She sought help at a shrine, she said, and thought she was healed. But then the heartburn returned. Beside her, Parvin, 20, a rosy-cheeked student, who like other patients at the hospital asked that only her first name be used, said she suffers intense headaches and needs medication to think clearly at school.

SAN FRANCISCO - A homeless man plagued by schizophrenia is beaten to death by police in Fullerton. A man from Fort Bragg fixates on aliens for years while denying he is ill, then kills two men before dying in a gunfight with law enforcement. A Nevada County mental health client who had refused additional care storms into a clinic and kills three workers. Those headline grabbers, according to a task force pressing to change the California law that governs involuntary civil commitment to psychiatric hospitals, were merely the most visible signs of a broken system.

Ventura County officials who work with disturbed children were not surprised to learn last year of a sharp increase in the number of youngsters experiencing serious emotional problems. After all, parents and teachers had become more willing to ask for help by reporting such cases to mental-health workers. But authorities say they were alarmed that the county lacked a comprehensive intervention program to deal with the children's problems.

For New York City resident Esperanza Muñoz, the attack on the World Trade Centers is not over 10 years later — not by a long shot. At odd moments, the stench of death still rises to her nose, and the 55-year-old woman slides into a haze of nausea and tears. She suffers headaches and is awakened several times a week by nightmares of headless bodies and shoes with bits of feet left inside. She dreads the sound of sirens or a passing plane. Muñoz lives in the New York City borough of Queens, and can't — or won't — go into Manhattan, even to attend her support group for Latinas still scarred by the events of Sept.

"I sleep in trash cans. " It is a minute and 45 seconds into the security camera video. Kelly Thomas, 37, jaws with police officers at a Fullerton bus depot, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his backpack double-strapped. It is the night of July 5, 2011, about 8:30. It's still 80 degrees outside. A few pedestrians wander by. A car passes. There is no indication that the lives of every person on the tape are about to change. "You planning on going to sleep pretty soon?"

After it happened, Megan Beza was consumed with figuring out why. Did her husband's struggle with painkillers play a role? His months of fruitless job-hunting? But with suicide, there are rarely tidy answers. What is known is that southern Nevada's unusually high suicide rate spiked with the recession, and Megan thinks that must explain, at least in part, what happened the morning of Oct. 25, 2010. John Beza had just returned from dropping off their 4-year-old son, Jacob, at preschool.

SAN FRANCISCO - A homeless man plagued by schizophrenia is beaten to death by police in Fullerton. A man from Fort Bragg fixates on aliens for years while denying he is ill, then kills two men before dying in a gunfight with law enforcement. A Nevada County mental health client who had refused additional care storms into a clinic and kills three workers. Those headline grabbers, according to a task force pressing to change the California law that governs involuntary civil commitment to psychiatric hospitals, were merely the most visible signs of a broken system.

U.S. Army prosecutors have moved to open a legal review to determine whether Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is mentally competent to stand trial on charges of murdering 17 unarmed civilians in southern Afghanistan. Attorney John Henry Browne, who is representing Bales in the case, said he was notified that the Army is moving to start a sanity board hearing. During that proceeding, teams of psychiatrists and neurologists will prepare findings on Bales' mental health at the time of the attacks and attempt to determine whether issues such as combat stress or a prior brain injury could have rendered him not responsible for his actions.

A yoga meditation program could reduce depression symptoms and boost mental health, a study finds, and that's not all - it may also show benefits at the cellular level. The study, published recently in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry , involved 49 caregivers ranging in age from 45 to 91 who were taking care of family members with dementia. Caregivers are at risk for high stress levels, often with no outlet or relief, which can lead to health problems. The participants were randomly assigned to two programs: Kundalini yoga Kirtan Kriya meditation or passive relaxation with instrumental music.

Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have an increased risk of mental health disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder . Now a new study finds these individuals are also more likely to receive opioid pain prescriptions and to misuse those drugs. The study , published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., creates a picture of escalating problems for veterans who come back from war with emotional and physical problems. The study examined 141,029 veterans of the recent wars after their return home.

The final straw for Carolyn Alves came last fall when she tried to help her daughter Cecelia dress for kindergarten. The volatile 6-year-old had worked herself into a frenzy as she tried on outfit after outfit, rejecting each as unacceptable. The tantrum at full bore, she scooped up a pile of clothes and hurled them at the front door of the family's Spanish-style bungalow in Glendale. The clock ticked past the school's 8 a.m. bell. Alves pulled her wailing child into her arms and held her on the couch.

Physical activity is known to exert a powerful "feel-good" effect, brightening mood and enhancing mental health -- in fact, regular exercise may be as effective as medication for some people with depression. A growing body of evidence supports this boost to psychological well-being, but the exact mechanisms are not completely understood.

A mentally ill Orange County teen who "aged out" of treatment programs last year and went off his medication during a 60-day jail stay has been missing since his predawn release nearly three weeks ago, his distraught mother said Monday. Matt Hoff, 18, hasn't contacted his family in Ladera Ranch since he was let out of the Orange County Central Jail in Santa Ana at 4 a.m. on Feb. 7, said Jennifer Hoff, who has appealed through a Facebook page for help finding her son. Hoff had been in custodial treatment for severe mental illness for most of his adolescence and was "medically compliant" when he returned to California nine months ago from a Texas facility after he turned 18, his mother said.

As Cedars-Sinai Medical Center prepares to shut down its inpatient and outpatient psychiatric programs, advocates and doctors said they fear that it will disrupt patients' mental health care and could lead to more people ending up homeless or in jail. The hospital "has literally been a lifeline for thousands of patients who have come to rely on the psychiatric treatment they've received here over the years," said Carole Lieberman, an attending psychiatrist at the hospital. "Where are they going to go now?"