Providentia

"Cruel and Unusual Abuse" Alleged in Prison Lawsuit

A former inmate at an Illinois super-maximum prison is alleging "cruel and unusual" punishment in his lawsuit against the prison and his former psychiatrist, Dr Rakesh Chandra.  In the case being heard before a federal jury, 35-year old Anthony Gay is claiming lingering trauma from the psychiatric treatment that he received from Dr. Chandra at Tamms Correctional Center.  The treatment often involved his being strapped naked to a metal bed frame for up to 32 hours at a time.  Gay is claiming that the abuse that he received is causing him to self-mutilate various parts of his body.  He maintains that he should have been treated with medication and therapy instead of the restrictive treatment that Dr. Chandra ordered.  Dr. Chandra and other staff have testified that Gay's clothing was removed to prevent him from hurting himself and that he often engaged in self-harm to manipulate staff members. 

Gay, who was initially sentenced in 1993 to seven years for robbery, later incurred nineteen other charges for various offenses including assaulting officers and possession of a weapon.  He is eligible for parole in 2095. 

Tamms Correctional Center is a 500-bed maximum security facility designed to house extremely violent and/or disruptive inmates. Opened in 1998, the prison was designed to meet constitutional challenges that have been faced in other jurisdictions, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons.   Inmates are locked down twenty-three hours a day, only move when shackled, and kept segregated from other inmates during recreation.  The use of solitary confinement in dealing with mentally ill prisoners has been cited as a human rights abuse by U.S. legislators such as Senator Dick Durbin.  In a recent meeting, Senator Durbin stated that, ""While in prison, many mentally ill prisoners have limited or no access to mental health services and their conditions deteriorate." 

The case is proceeding.  Governor Pat Quinn has ordered a review of the prison and its controversial restraint policy while state lawmakers are contemplating a prison reform bill.

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The Virtuoso

He may have been one of the most promising musicians of the twentieth century. Fritz Kreisler reportedly said of him that, "a fidder such as [X] is born every one hundred years, one like [Josef] Hassid, every two centuries".

Born in the Polish town of Suwalki in 1923, Josef Hassid's mother died when he was an infant.After studying with a local violin teacher, Josef was taken by his father to Warsaw to extend his musical education. Beginning at the age of ten, he studied with Mieczyslaw Mihalowicz at the Chopin School of Music and, after only two years, went on to represent Poland at the 1935 Wienawski Competition.  A shy, introverted child, Josef's memory failed him during his final performance at the competition and he failed to make it to the second round(he still managed to receive an honour diploma for his performance). The memory lapse devastated Josef who reportedly cried for more than an hour after leaving the concert hall.

In 1937, Josef's father took; his son to Spa, Belgium to study with the legendary Carl Flesch who quickly recognized Josef's talent and took over his musical education. During his time in Spa, Josef met and fell in love with a local girl but the relationship was forcibly terminated by their parents since she wasn't Jewish. Flesch later arranged for Josef to be brought to London in 1938 for a private recital at the house of Sir Philip Sassoon.; Josef's playing mesmerized his audience. Due to the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Jewish persecution that followed, Josef and his father decided to stay in London where he continued his musical training with Flesch.

On April 4, 1940, Josef Hassid gave his first public performance at London's Wigmore Hall. Billed as the "Polish Boy VIolinist", Josef played works by Bach, Schubert, and Paganini among others. Three weeks later, he premiered at the Queen's Hall in a performance with the London Philharmonic. His brilliant playing attracted the attention of record producer, Walter Legge, who arranged for Josef to give his first (and only) recording engagement. Josef recorded four RPM records at the HMV studios on Abbey Road.Those precious albums are the only surviving record of Josef Hassid's brilliant talent (most of his recorded pieces are available on Youtube).

Shortly after his recording session, Josef's father noticed that his son was becoming increasingly withdrawn and moody. While he had always been prone to episodes of depression and performance anxiety, Josef became even more erratic over time and often went for weeks without even touching his violin.He lashed out at his father and frequently insisted that he would be giving up his music. Worried about Josef's nervous breakdown, Flesch arranged for Josef to be assessed by Thomas Horder (Winston Churchill's personal physician) who arranged to him to be admitted to his private hospital. In informing the hospital of Josef's arrival, Horder told them: "I am sending you a genius". After several hospital stays, Josef Hassid was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia.

As Josef's condition worsened, he renounced music and denied ever having played the violin. Carl Flesch wrote numerous letters pleading for Josef to return to his performing. In one letter, he stated that:"I hope you will do everything within your will-power to get well again as soon as possible. A great artist like you owes it to the world to become active again". After a year in hospital, Josef Hassid returned home and tried to return to his music but he continued to find reasons against giving another performance. As his health worsened, Josef was later diagnosed as having a brain tumour. Following a dangerous and unsuccessful brain operation (not a lobotomy as some accounts stated), Josef Hassid died in 1950. He was twenty-seven years old.

While child prodigies such as Josef Hassid and Yehudi Menuhin routinely face years of grueling training to develop their talent, we may never know why some musicians are able to succeed when others fail. Whether or not the pressure to perform played a role in Josef's mental illness, the few available recordings of his playing continue to serve as a testimony to an amazing talent that burned out too soon.

Dealing With Tinnitus

A paper published in the May 2009 issue of Rehabilitation Psychology examines explore the effects of a new tinnitus treatment program (tinnitus intensive therapy [TIT]) based on auditory perception principles and neural habituation. The researchers used a follow-up study with measurement of treatment effects every third month over a 2-year period in which the cases were their own controls. There were 25 participants with a mean age 50.1 years (SD = 16.1); 10 women (52.7 years; SD = 16.8) and 15 men (48.3 years; SD = 15.9). The participants were recruited from clinical population admitted to a polyclinic tinnitus treatment program in western Germany. Results showed that there was a significant reduction of tinnitus in the follow-up period. Mean baseline tinnitus scores (Tinnitus Fragebogen; Goebel & Hiller, 1998) at the start of the treatment were 50.9 (SD = 14.5) and the final scores were 14.2 (SD = 5.9). In total, the clinical improvement over the follow-up period was 72.1%. The authors concluded that the TIT program showed a significant clinical treatment effect and should be tested further in a multicenter treatment project. The findings support the Jastreboff habituation model of tinnitus, but social cognition factors should also be taken into account.

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Doctors call for 'Munchausen' blacklist

Whether dealing with medical services directly or through a proxy, cases of Munchausen Syndrome represent a major drain on time and resources needed for dealing with patients in need of medical services. First identified in 1951, Munchausen Syndrome (formally recognized as a form of factitious disorder) can lead to multiple hospital admissions by patients seeking attention and/or sympathy by doctors and nurses. A related syndrome, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP)involves use of a second person (usually a child) to gain attention and treatment using false or exaggerated symptoms. Although child protective services have successfully prosecuted  cases of MSP on the grounds of child abuse, the true incidence of MSP and Munchausen Syndrome remains unknown.

Doctors in the Australian state of Victoria have called for an electronic "blacklist" to alert hospitals and private clinics about patients who repeatedly seek medical treatment for suspicious symptoms. Although emergency department physicians have dubbed these patients, "frequent flyers", medical ethicists are warning about the possible risks of the proposed blacklist. Patients who have been flagged as possible Munchausen cases may be deprived of necessary treatment despite actual need as well as concerns about lack of privacy. Doctors are also recommending psychiatric referrals for suspected cases as well as working with family members to ensure that proper care is maintained and to avoid the health risks resulting from repeated medical test and hospitalizations.

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The Resurrection Men

"Up the close and down the stair, In the house with Burke and Hare. Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox, the boy who buys the beef."

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Edinburgh was a visit to the Surgeon's Hall Museum that's part of the University of Edinburgh Medical School campus.  Among the exhibits to be found there was a display dedicated to one of the most notorious episodes in Edinburgh history: the Burke and Hare case (also known as the West Port murders). Selling seventeen murder victims to Dr. Robert Knox of the University of Edinburgh medical school for dissection earned William Burke and William Hare a permanent place in forensic history and popular folklore.

Actually, only William Burke was hanged for the crime (Hare turned King's evidence and testified against his partner). After Burke's body was dissected at the medical school, his death mask and a book bound with his skin were placed in the museum where they can still be seen by visitors. William Hare managed to vanish into obscurity after the trial (or tossed face first into a lime pit by an angry mob depending on which story you want to believe). Unfortunately, that left only one target for public outrage over the murders: Dr. Robert Knox.

A well-known physician, anatomist, and zoologist, Robert Knox was one of the most popular lecturers at the University of Edinburgh's medical school. Since joining the faculty in 1822, Dr. Knox distinguished himself with writing on a diverse range of topics including anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, and anatomy. He also took over the Surgeon's Hall Museum and expanded the collection. Visitors to the dissecting theatre where Knox gave his anatomy lectures often found him "dressed with an overgown and with bloody fingers" from dissecting cadavers for medical students.

Due to the limited number of available corpses (only executed criminals who had been specifically condemned to death and dissection by the courts could be legally used), anatomy professors who wanted to teach human anatomy to students were forced to rely on illegal sources to meet the demand. Beginning in the 18th century, "resurrection men" or "body-snatchers" began to offer bodies to medical schools, no questions asked. The actual source of the bodies varied, whether stolen from cemeteries or simply indigents who had died in poorhouses (resurrectionists would often pretend to be relatives to claim the bodies). Trafficking in dead bodies was extremely profitable and cases occurred throughout the United Kingdom and other countries.

The ghoulish reputation and the stigma associated with dissection led to a certain hysteria among friends and relatives of the newly dead. Many of them actually stood watch over the gravesites to ensure that the bodies were left alone. There was also a market for "burglar-proof grave vaults" with lurid advertisements playing up the body-snatching trade and corpses "mutilated every year on dissecting tables in medical colleges". Despite successful prosecution in many places, body-snatching was often considered a misdemeanor offense nda helped ensure a steady supply of cadavers.

There was nothing unusual about Knox agreeing to buy bodies from Burke and Hare (and they had actually approached another professor first). When they were finally caught in 1828 and the body of their last victim was found in Knox's possession, Dr. Robert Knox's medical career was ruined. Although a thorough investigation showed no evidence that he had known about the murders, public opinion in Edinburgh turned against him. "Burking" became a new slang word for suffocation and local folklore helped feed the mob frenzy. Whatever hope Robert Knox had of his involvement being forgotten quickly faded as rumours of "mob justice" made him afraid for his life. While the passing of the Anatomical Act of 1832 expanded the number of cadavers available for medical school and finally put the body-snatchers out of business, it was too late to help Knox.

Despite a lengthy campaign of harassment, including attacks on his home, burning in effigy, and crowds gathering at his lectures, Knox continued to teach and do research although his career slowly went downhill. He never dissected another human cadaver despite writing numerous papers on human anatomy and was eventually forced out of all of his positions at the medical school. It was only after the death of his wife and one of his children in 1841 that he left Edinburgh for a medical school in Glasgow. Due to problems there, he searched for another teaching position and found that he had been essentially banned from every medical school in Scotland due to his presumed involvement with the West Port Murders.Despite being legendary for his medical knowledge, he had difficulty finding a job as a surgeon as well.

After eventually relocating to London and years of hardship (despite some success as a popular science writer),Robert Knox was appointed as a Pathological Anatomist at the Cancer Hospital at Brompton in 1856. He also had an extensive obstetrical practice and made numerous public lectures. Knox also continued writing on a vast array of science topics including medicine, comparative anatomy and anthropology.; While there was the lingering effect of his Burke and Hare involvement to deal with, he remained immensely popular with his friends and patients despite his failing health and the death of all but one of his six children. He slipped into a coma on December 9th, 1862 and died 11 days later without regaining consciousness and is buried in Woking Cemetery near Surrey. Even in death, he never returned to Edinburgh.

Although most of his papers on ethnic differences can rightly be condemned as racist today (he was definitely a man of his time), Robert Knox left an enormous legacy of writing including books on science, anatomy, and medicine. His books on fishing and art were popular sellers as well. Dr Robert Knox dealt with the (typically anonymous) gossip surrounding his supposed involvement with the West Port Murders with unusual grace and managed to keep it from overshadowing his life.

That can be a major accomplishment in itself.

When Children See Abuse

A study published in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology examines a randomized clinical trial of Project Support, an intervention designed to reduce conduct problems among children exposed to intimate partner violence.  The study participants were 66 families (mothers and children) with at least 1 child exhibiting clinical levels of conduct problems. Families were recruited from domestic violence shelters. The Project Support intervention involves (a) teaching mothers child management skills and (b) providing instrumental and emotional support to mothers. Families were randomly assigned to the Project Support intervention condition or to an existing services comparison condition. They were assessed on 6 occasions over 20 months, following their departure from the shelter. Children in families in the Project Support condition, compared with those in the comparison condition, exhibited greater reductions in conduct problems. Mothers in the Project Support condition, compared with those in the comparison condition, displayed greater reductions in inconsistent and harsh parenting behaviors and psychiatric symptoms. Changes in mothers’ parenting and psychiatric symptoms accounted for a sizable proportion of Project Support’s effects on child conduct problems at the end of treatment. Clinical and policy implications are discussed.

PsycNET - Display Record.

Guilty Plea in Drowning Fetish Case

An 47-year old Uniontown, Ohio man has pleaded guilty to attempting to solicit two young girls to satisfy a bizarre drowning fetish. Jeffrey Doland, a former public school employee, was arrested after traveling to Miami in 2007 to meet a woman he had chatted with on the Internet. The woman, actually an undercover Secret Service agent, had purportedly met Doland to allow him to "dunk both of her preteen daughters underwater until the bubbles stop rising". During Doland's trial, jurors had been shown transcripts of his Internet chat conversations in which he stated that, "I love long hair floating underwater. Cannot wait to see them drowning". The transcripts of Doland's online sessions at the Yahoo chat room fetishes14 also described his intention of wearing "skimpy trunks" while drowning the girls and even of handcuffing them to the bottom of a pool.

According to prosecutors, Doland made arrangements to travel to Miami after telling his wife that he was going diving with a friend. On meeting with the agent in Miami, he slipped her money and suggested buying Velcro straps as he had left his in Ohio due to fear of them being confiscated. While his defense attorneys described him as a "good man who simply went off the deep end" and that he had no intention of carrying out his plans, Doland issued a guilty plea to avoid the potential 90-year sentence that he would have been given if convicted. He agreed to a 20-year prison term with ten years of probation.

 

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After The Halifax Explosion

It's still considered the largest man-made accidental explosion in history.

Even during World War I, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia was one of Canada's busiest ports. As the terminus of the St. Lawrence Seaway, its location made it the third largest port in the British Empire and a natural base of operations for Canada's navy. Thousands of tons of munitions passed through the port regularly with little thought of the potential danger involved. Until...

On December 6, 1917, a French ship, the SS. Mont-Blanc was carrying a heavy load of explosives from New York to Halifax. As the ship was proceeding into the harbour, a Norwegian ship, the S.S. Imo crossed into its path (it was carrying relief supplies). Though both crews attempted to avoid a collision, the Imo struck the Mont-Blanc on its starboard (right) bow.Attempts to disengage the two ships started a fire that the Mont-Blanc's crew was unable to get under control and they quickly abandoned ship under the captain's orders. Although the French-speaking crew attempted to warn authorities of the terrible danger, they were not understood as the burning ship drifted toward shore.

At 9:04:45 AM, the SS Mont-Blanc exploded. Its cargo, including 450,000 pounds of TNT, 2300 tons of picric acid, and 35 tons of benzol, exploded with a force of 3 kilotons of TNT. The Mont-Blanc was instantly destroyed and the resulting fireball rose 1.9 kilometers into the air. Hot metal rained down on the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth and the tsunami triggered by the blast sent the water rising 18 meters above the harbour's high-water mark. The force of the explosion also triggered fires throughout Halifax's North End and entire neighbourhoods were set on fire. The damage from the explosion affected buildings as far as 16 kilometers from the blast epicenter. An estimated 2000 people were killed in the explosion and resulting firestorm and over 9000 people were injured. Only the heroic actions of many of Halifax's emergency personnel and support workers kept the death toll from rising even higher (many of them were killed in the process). All told, more Nova Scotians died in the explosion than were killed in World War I.

To make matters worse, a massive blizzard struck the Halifax area on the day after the explosion, interfering with rescue efforts. Many of the survivors still trapped in wreckage were forced to deal with the severe cold and Halifax emergency crews were swamped trying to build shelters for all those left homeless. With more than 1630 homes being completely destroyed and an additional 12000 being seriously damaged, providing adequate housing was a critical necessity throughout the harsh winter.

Immediately after the disaster, medical relief trains began arriving from across Canada and the United States. The city of Boston provided a relief train that arrived within a day of the explosion (the city of Halifax still provides an annual Christmas tree to Boston in gratitude). Medical facilities were swamped with injured and even first-year medical students were drafted to treat patients.

Though the reconstruction would take decades, the Halifax Explosion represented one of the first modern disasters to be studied from a sociological and psychological perspective. Several years after the explosion, Samuel Henry Prince completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University.  His thesis, titled Catastrophe and Social Change: Based on a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster, represented the first systematic study of relief efforts following a major disaster. As a scholar, pastor, and social activist, Prince's own experience dealing with disaster was considerable. Not only was he part of the rescue effort following the Titanic sinking five years earlier, but he narrowly escaped being injured in the Halifax explosion himself (despite the risk of flying glass, he arrived on the scene just minutes after the blast to help with rescue efforts). After the explosion, Prince helped mobilize international relief efforts and continued to work on behalf of survivors and their families for years afterward.

In his book, Prince described the "shock and disintegration" that followed the explosion as well as the massive relief effort needed and the complex social issues that were linked to aiding survivors. He also emphasized the long-term consequences of the tragedy by stating: "The Halifax Disaster will leave a permanent mark upon the city because so many of the living have been blinded or maimed for life. But it is possible that the disaster may leave a mark of another sort, for it is confidently believed by those who took part in the relief work during the first few weeks that Halifax will gain as well as lose.  The sturdy quality of its citizens will bring "beauty out of ashes""". Prince also stressed the role that disasters can play in bringing about meaningful social change to prevent future loss of life.

Although there had certainly been previous disasters and major relief efforts, Catastrophe and Social Change represents one of the first attempts at studying disasters from a social science perspective and is still considered a classic in the field. While emergency management would eventually become a well-researched topic after World War II, the lessons learned from the Halifax Explosion continue to be applied in rescue efforts around the world.

To download Catastrophe and Social Change

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day

World Suicide Prevention Day is held on September 10th each year as an initiative of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), and is co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). The theme in 2009 is "Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures." Begun in 2003, the purpose of World Suicide Prevention Day is to improve education about suicide, disseminate information, decrease stigmatization and, most importantly, raise awareness that suicide is preventable.

World Suicide Prevention Day 2009, "Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures" provides an opportunity to remind people that suicide is influenced by cultural, religious, legal, historical, philosophical and traditional factors and that these contexts need to be taken into account in considering suicide prevention. Suicide needs to be understood in terms of its cultural background, and, to save lives, suicide prevention programs need to be tailored to different cultural contexts

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Politician's Son to Indian People: "Please Stop Killing Yourselves"

Following the death of an estimated 67 people in India's Andhra Pradesh province after learning of the death of a popular politician, the politician's son appeared on television asking viewers not to kill themselves. Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was killed on September 2 when the helicopter in which he was traveling crashed into a cliff 250 kilometers south of Hyderabad. His charred remains, along with the remains of four others traveling with him, were found by an air force helicopter 24 hours later.

Within hours of the popular politician's death, there has been an outsurge of public grief along with reports of suicides and others simply "dying of shock". Reddy's son, Jaganmohan, in a bid for public calm gave a televised message to prevent further suicides. In his message, he stated that: ""I request you not to commit suicide. I appeal to all of you to be patient and be brave in this hour of tragedy. He wanted to see a smile on the faces of all and if you resort to such things, this will hurt him." Jaganmohan is believed by many to be a leading candidate to succeed his father as chief minister.

While suicides following the suicide of a public figure is a well documented phenomenon, suicides following an accidental death is far more unusual. Whether Jaganmohan's message will be successful in preventing further deaths remains to be seen.

TheStar.com | World | India state 'in deep mourning'.