Mental Illness

In their new book, "American Grace," Robert D. Putman and David E. Campbell make two assertions about the decline of religious affiliation in the United States, which they summarize in their Oct. 17 Times Op-Ed article, "Walking away from the church. " They correctly observe that Americans, especially the youngest generations, are rapidly losing a lot of their faith. The nonreligious are far and away the fastest-growing group, with nonbelievers having tripled as a portion of the general population since the 1960s and nonreligious twentysomethings doubling in just two decades.

I began worrying more than seven years ago, when I first brought him the violins donated by readers. Would they make my new friend, a Juilliard-trained musician who'd suffered a breakdown 35 years earlier, less safe on the streets of skid row? Would he be attacked by thieves? And that was just the beginning of the worries. As I got to know Nathaniel Anthony Ayers better, I fretted not just about whether I could protect him, but also about how to help him. Time passes; the worries never do. Uncertainty lingers constantly when you have a relationship with someone who has a severe mental illness, and watching the video this week of the Kelly Thomas beating was a reminder of how quickly things can go horribly awry.

Until her first breakdown, Pat was trim and active, even playing on the volleyball team in college. But deep scars on her forearms attest to a lifetime of self-abuse. Pat, 53, grew sedentary, obese and reclusive. She said she has been hospitalized 25 times. "The sicker I got, and the more doped up I became, the more I tended to become isolated," she said. This year, Pat enrolled in a program here called In Shape, designed to provide regular structured exercise for people with mental illness.

"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?"

A husband and wife were accused Thursday of taking 10 mentally ill adults out of licensed facilities and placing them unsupervised in dirty and unsafe conditions as part of a scheme to steal their government disability checks. Abraham and Alicia DeGuzman chose victims who were suffering from debilitating mental conditions and had no relatives, "zombified" some with drugs and warehoused them in slum-like squalor, according to affidavits in the case.

In 1969, Carol McDonald was 28, married and the mother of two young children, out for an evening of fun with a couple who smoked marijuana. By the end of the evening she was on her way to a 19-year addiction. "Within a few months, I was smoking every day," said McDonald, a retired bookkeeper, now 69. "I had to smoke before going to work. If something was upsetting, I smoked over it. If there was a celebration, I smoked over it. " People like McDonald may be largely overlooked in the statewide debate over legalizing marijuana.

The camera focuses on Chris Clarke, sitting on his bed in Patton State Hospital near San Bernardino, talking about killing his fiancee. "Something snapped," he says almost inaudibly. "I began thinking things that were not real. I began having paranoid thoughts and believing people were trying to get me." The interviewer doesn't say a word. Clarke begins to cry softly. "It was as if somebody else came into my body," Clarke says. "I can't use that excuse.

As professional athletes 20 years ago, Lionel Aldridge and Willie Davis were the defensive ends on one of the great football teams of all time, Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers, winners of Super Bowls I and II. Years later, out of football, they wound up traveling widely divergent paths. By 1977, Davis was a millionaire. Aldridge was well on his way to becoming a bum.

Childbirth can trigger psychiatric illnesses in some women, including depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and even psychosis. A study published Monday, however, draws the first connection ever between postpartum mental illness and later bipolar disorder. Researchers searched a Danish registry of more than 120,000 women receiving treatment for a first episode of a psychiatric illness other than bipolar disorder. They found 3,062 women who had a first episode of a mental disorder other than bipolar disorder but who were later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Memory researchers at the University of California Irvine are developing a large collection of remarkable research subjects, who themselves maintain a remarkably large collection of memories. They are people with "highly superior autobiographical memories," and UC Irvine researchers so far have found at least 22 -- and possibly as many as 32 subjects in this country alone -- who can remember with extraordinary accuracy and in extraordinary detail the events of their lives and the days on which they occurred.

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.

Later this month, preliminary hearings are scheduled to begin for two Fullerton police officers in the beating death of Kelly Thomas, an Orange County homeless man. We all need to pay attention. It would be easy to conclude that Thomas was homeless by choice because he refused to take medication to treat a range of symptoms that had been diagnosed as schizophrenia. But things are more complex than that. I myself have never been truly homeless, but I have refused mental healthcare on many occasions, often when I was at my most vulnerable.

An autopsy has found that the sudden death of a Los Angeles County jail inmate last year was not caused by a deputy's blow to his head two days prior but may have been linked to drugs the inmate was given for his mental illness. George Rosales, 18, was found unresponsive in a single-person cell in the medical ward attached to the Twin Towers jail in October. He was pronounced dead a short time later. Rosales had been punched in the head by a deputy two days earlier after the inmate made a break for an elevator, authorities said.

Movies don't come much worse than "Monday Morning," a rambling, incoherent, ineptly assembled mess about a conservative Minnesota radio host who travels to Los Angeles and falls in with the homeless, the very same group he's broadly railed against on-air. Writer-producer-director and co-editor Nat Christian may have something to say about tolerance and classism, but his message is all but lost amid an utter inability to craft a watchable story. Star Victor Browne, with his soap-opera good looks and hints of acting ability, is left to largely stumble around in a fog as his character, said radio host and would-be senatorial candidate (don't ask)

A mental illness that strikes young children suddenly may be caused by a range of factors, including infections, according to a new report. The paper, published in the journal Pediatrics & Therapeutics, reflects a consensus statement on a condition called Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections -- or PANDAS. PANDAS causes the abrupt onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in young children. In many cases, children fell ill after having a simple, childhood streptococcal infection, such as strep throat.

The man described as a doting father to his two little girls left for the market Wednesday morning to buy juice and milk. He returned to his South Los Angeles home to find his wife trying to drown his young daughters in an infant tub, authorities say. It appears the mother — who may have been battling depression or other mental illness — "snapped," killing her 1-year-old daughter and leaving her 5-year-old gravely injured, Deputy Police Chief...

HONOLULU -- With the first of the baby boomers turning 65 this year, the nation should brace itself for a growing number of older people with dementia and other types of mental illnesses, psychiatrists reported Monday at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn. It's not that mental illness is becoming more common in older people. The problem is that 20% of the U.S. population will be 65 and older by 2030 -- an increase from about 12% now. Life expectancy is also increasing, so people are living more years with dementia and other types of mental illnesses that can cause aggressive behaviors, delusions, wandering from homes or care facilities and other problematic behavior.

Shoppers who want to find good stuff and do good deeds at the same time can head to Fred Segal Santa Monica tonight for "An Evening of Gratitude. " The event, which will feature Gratitude Designs by Tara Dixon, will benefit the Flawless Foundation , which creates and supports programs that advocate for better care for children with mental illness and neuro-developmental challenges. Michael and Susan Schofield, the parents of Jani, a child featured in a 2009 story in The Times, will be on hand to talk about their experience.

The psychiatric emergency services at two county-run hospitals are so overcrowded that mentally ill patients have to sleep on mattresses on the floor, health officials acknowledged this week. The packed conditions at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center make it more difficult to de-escalate the emotions of patients who arrive at the hospital agitated and anxious, said Christina Ghaly, deputy director of strategic planning for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Maria Elena Felipe sat in the viewing area of a San Diego immigration courtroom growing frustrated as she watched her son struggle to answer questions. She couldn't help him. Ever Martinez Rivas, 32, was 29 miles away, in a detention center, his image appearing on a large video screen in the front of the room. At each question from a judge, Martinez stared blankly and stayed silent for long periods, she recalled. At one point, the judge asked Martinez if he understood what she was saying.