Mental Health

For kidnap victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard, recovery is rare. A full portion of her life -- her entire teens and 20s -- was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them. They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now. Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children.

Judge Michael Tynan stepped down from the bench and congratulated five criminal defendants who had turned their lives around. His voice cracked as he told them how proud he was, and then he threw a party and passed out pieces of chocolate cake, with hugs all around. In Orange County Superior Court, a beaming Judge Wendy Lindley congratulated felons on their successful reforms and then led the cheers, with spectators and court personnel joining in.

A UCLA professor who taught the student accused of slashing a female classmate's throat last week said Saturday that he told a university administrator 10 months ago that he had concerns about the student's mental health, but strict federal privacy laws prevent UCLA officials from disclosing how they handled the issue. Stephen Frank, an associate professor in the university's history department, met the suspect, undergraduate student Damon Thompson, when he enrolled in the instructor's Western civilization class late last year, Frank said in an interview.

The conclusion in recently released Justice Department memos that CIA interrogation techniques would not cause prolonged mental harm is disputed by some doctors and psychologists, who say that the mental damage incurred from the practices is significant and undeniable. An August 2002 memo outlined 10 interrogation techniques used on top Al Qaeda suspects, including waterboarding, stress positions and -- for one prisoner with a known fear of insects -- cramped confinement with a bug.

A mentally ill man who broke his neck in a Glenn County jail cell and is now a quadriplegic has filed suit in federal court, alleging jail officials violated his constitutional rights by denying him mental health care and using excessive force to subdue him with Taser guns and pepper spray. In addition to monetary damages, the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S.

Wouldn't it be something if the giants of mental healthcare reform in California turned out to be three men named Lanterman, Petris and Short -- and a pop singer by the name of Britney Spears? The first three were state legislators. More than 40 years ago, impelled by film and fiction horrors such as "The Snake Pit" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and even more by true-to-life mental hospital outrages, they drafted what they called a Magna Carta for mental patients.

It's Valentine's Day, and one family is showing its love by showing up in court. Britney Spears' parents plan to ask a judge to keep her under their care and supervision. Try finding a hearts-and-flowers card for that -- "To our daughter, we love you, please go back into the hospital." Last month, I used Spears' very public mental torment to illustrate how a 40-year-old California law created to give mental patients dignity and legal protection has backfired.

Jim Grivich had always known that one day the letter would arrive. He'd worried about what to do if it came, discussing it with his wife over dinner and with his mother as she lay in bed, dying. Still, when he got the letter in 2006 informing him that his brother Bobby would have to leave the state institution where he had lived for more than three decades, he was dismayed. Grivich scrutinized it, looking for a way out.

More than a quarter of higher-ranking enlisted soldiers showed signs of mental health problems after being sent to war zones for the third or fourth time, a sharp increase over those on their first or second deployments, according to a military study issued Thursday. The findings of a new Army report on the behavioral health of soldiers in Iraq are the first to quantify the stress of repeated deployments on combat soldiers.

The rampage carried out nearly a year ago by a Virginia Tech student who slipped through the mental health system has changed how American colleges reach out to troubled students. Administrators are pushing students harder to get help, looking more aggressively for signs of trouble and urging faculty to speak up when they have concerns.