Providentia

Casualties of War

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. This only began to change in World War II due to better methods of disease prevention and treatment. The authors suggested that soldier deaths throughout U.S. history can be divided into a Disease Era (1775-1918), during which infectious diseases were the major killer of America's armed forces, and a Trauma Era (1941-present), in which combat-related injuries were the major cause of fatalities. Using the 3,400 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq as a comparison, suicide deaths have become more prevalent than deaths from infectious disease.  Given the rising rate of suicides in U.S. soldiers posted overseas, this trend is not expected to change.

Click here for the abstract.

"My Mom Stabbed Me"

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 years and there was no previous indication of potential danger. The attack occurred at 10:00 am in the office of Ronald Knauss and Associates while the mother was sitting with her son under a nurse's supervision. Without warning, Minardi pulled two long knives from her purse and began stabbing her son. After receiving gashes in his lower abdomen, neck and face, the boy (his name has not been released) managed to get away before collapsing in the lobby. Police reported that the boy was able to say "My mom stabbed me. I don't ever want to see her again" before being taken to hospital. He received emergency surgery at Bayfront Medical Center and is described as being in critical condition.

Celeste Minardi is the ex-wife of attorney, Timothy Driscoll, who had custody of their son since divorcing in 2004.  She has been seeing her son in twice-monthly visits and there is no history of criminal or violent behaviour.  She would not say why she attacked her son and there is little additional information on her mental state. Police have charged her with first-degree attempted murder and carrying a concealed weapon.

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Psychotic Symptoms In The Elderly

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 dementia were excluded leaving 163 subjects for this study) received psychiatric and physical examinations as well as cognitive tests and interviews with close informants. The results indicated that the one-year prevalence of any psychotic symptom was 7.4% overall (hallucinations 6.7% and delusions 0.6% ). Four of the study participants met DSM-III-R criteria for schizophrenia (2.4%). No differences in cognitive functioning were found between individuals with psychotic symptoms and individuals without these symptoms. Individuals with hallucinations and paranoid ideation also had an increased frequency of paranoid personality traits. The authors concluded that there was evidence of a higher than expected prevalence of psychotic symptoms, paranoid ideation, and schizophrenia in the very old.

Click here for the abstract.

Lawyer Seeks Insanity Plea in Microwave Baby Case

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 child and faces a potential life sentence.

According to his attorney, Sam Cammack III, Mauldin has a longstanding history of psychiatric problems including auditory hallucinations and mood swings and has been on medication since the age of 10. Despite concerns about his mental state, his family had accompanied him to Galveston, Texas when he reported hearing a call from God to become a preacher. After they checked into a motel, he was left alone with his daughter, Anna, as the rest of the family went to get food. He reportedly became agitated while feeding her and locked the motel room door. Mauldin then placed the infant in the microwave after first placing her in the motel room safe and refrigerator. Although he removed her immediately afterwards, Anna sustained second and third-degree burns and would later require skin grafts to her face and hands.

Mauldin told conflicting stories to police, hospital staff and Child Protective Services but eventually admitted to placing her in the microwave four days later. While the district attorney is resisting the call for an insanity defence, Mauldin's attorneys are seeking to have him committed to a psychiatric facility. Anna has been placed with relatives.

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Blinded By The Light

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 visions were first reported, a local hospital has examined at least forty-eight cases of patients with damage to their retinas as a result of overexposure to the sun. Dr Annamma James Isaac, ophthalmologist at St. Joseph's ENT and Eye Hospital has reported that the patients have developed " photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun,"

While churches have warned their congregations about the purported miracle and the dangers in staring at the sun, hopeful pilgrims are reportedly still flocking to the area and further cases of eye damage are expected. The hotel owner who had started the craze had reportedly made previous claims of statues of the Virgin Mary in his home that cried tears of honey, perfume and oils. He has since moved away from the area.

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Seeking Refuge

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 January 2008 on 800 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. More than half of the refugees studied reported post-traumatic symptoms such as panic attacks, anger, fatigue, anxiety and sleep disorders. For the 34 per cent of study participants who reported experiencing direct violence, including attacks on themselves or family members, the emotional distress was particularly acute. In addition to the effects of recent trauma, factors relating to their uncertain existence as refugees are sources of added distress. Economic difficulties relating to lack of employment, poor living conditions and limited access to health and social resources and educational opportunities has led to physical expressions of anger and frustration. Domestic violence, behavioural and learning problems in children, and isolation are common experiences in refugee families.

"The level of instability is very high among the refugees. We see humanitarian agencies and governments responding to the basic needs of displaced Iraqis at home and abroad, and we need to see a similar response in dealing with their equally important psychological well-being," said Guglielmo Schinina, head of IOM's psychosocial office in the Middle East.

The study was carried out in partnership with international and non-governmental organizations such as the Iraqi Youth League and the Jordanian Women's Union, as well as UNICEF, which provided financial assistance.

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Surviving the Holocaust

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 70 at baseline and 77 at follow-up) were assessed in the study. Information taken included biographical history of concentration camp internment, exposure to Nazi occupation during World War II, or lack thereof (the control subjects), and 7-year mortality data from the National Death Registry. The results indicated that the 93 survivors of the internment camps and the 129 survivors who experienced the occupation first-hand were more likely to differ from the 236 control subjects in terms of being male, being less educated, and having poorer social support. They were also found to report being less physically active, to experience greater difficulty in activities of daily living, to have poorer self-rated health, and to have greater usage of psychiatric medication. No other differences in health parameters or physical illnesses were found. Holocaust survivors and control subjects had similar rates of deterioration in health issues over the follow-up period, and 7-year mortality rates were identical. The authors conclude that while Holocaust survivors displayed significant psychosocial and functional impairment, there was no evidence found to support the hypothesis that the delayed effects of the trauma of the Holocaust influence physical health or mortality.

Click here for the abstract.

Mitigating Factors Citied in Restaurant Murder

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 a fight broke out at the Bon Mua restaurant and karaoke bar in Richmond, Australia on the night of April 16, 2006. Justice Kevin Bell said in passing sentence that Vo, a father of two with no previous convictions, showed remorse by pleading guilty to the crime. In making his sentencing decision, Justice Bell took account of a psychologist's report that said Vo's violent childhood experiences as a refugee from Vietnam in the mid-1980s could have led him to overreact. He lived for a time in a refugee camp described in court as "violent and dangerous", especially for children. The report also suggested that Vo met many criteria depicting a major depressive episode and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sources state that the fight began within half an hour of Mr Nguyen complaining about the length of time it took for Vo's wife and restaurant co-owner, Vy Huynh, to bring food to his table. After Ms Huynh complained to her husband, Vo recognised Mr Nguyen from a previous occasion in which Mr Nguyen allegedly said he would get a gun and shoot somebody if that person caused him trouble. Following the stabbing, Mr Nguyen was helped from the restaurant but died the next day, Justice Bell said.

Vo has served about 22 months in pre-sentence detention, making him eligible to seek release on parole in 2010.

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After Count Alfred

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 to share the biscuits with the attentive students sitting in the front row. Some of the students took him up on the offer and began to chew on the biscuits along with their lecturer. When asked, the students agreed that the biscuits were tasty. It was at this point that Korzybski tore off the white paper covering the box containing the biscuits to reveal the picture of a dog's head and the title on the box: Dog Cookies. The students who had eaten the biscuits were appalled and two of them ran out of the lecture hall to the washroom to throw up. Korzybski then reportedly said, "You see, ladies and gentlemen. I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."

A Polish count by birth, Alfred Korzybski came to North American in 1916 and later became an American citizen. His first book, Manhood of Humanity, was published in 1921 and introduced readers to what would later be known as the General Semantics movement. Korzybski had a lifelong fascination with the intricacies of human language and the ideological traps that humans fall into with respect to natural language and "common sense" assumptions about the reality around us. He recognized that human beings were limited by their own physical limitations, i.e., the range of their senses, and the structure imposed by language. Two of his most famous sayings: "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory" helped to highlight the human tendency to be bogged down in semantic representations of reality rather than the reality itself. In particular, Korzybski railed against what he termed "Aristotelian" modes of thinking based on Aristotle's logical premises (or more accurately, the overly rigid application of simplistic logical constructs to structure reality). He considered all human knowledge to be based on assumptions which need to be continually revised as circumstances change. Korzybski favoured multi-valued logic systems linked to probability theory and the use of scientific induction to determine truth. He also recognized the human capacity for time-binding (passing information from one generation to the next) which largely separated humans from the other animals.

Korzybski went on to found the Institute of General Semantics in 1938 and, by the time of his death in 1950, his influence on science and literature had become immense. Korzybski's admirers included Gregory Bateson, R. Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, William Burroughs, Robert Heinlein and A.E. van Vogt. As he had written at length on the therapeutic applications of General Semantics, it was only natural that later psychotherapists would draw heavily on Korzybski's writings. Albert Ellis freely recognized Korzybski's influence in the development of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy as did Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman with respect to Gestalt Therapy. Many other pioneers of cognitive psychotherapy drew on Alfred Korzybski's work as well.

Ironically, one of Korzybski's most influential students was L. Ron Hubbard who drew heavily on Korzybski's writings for his own seminal classic Dianetics published in 1950 (some would say to the point of plagiarism). While Hubbard acknowledged Korzbyski's writings in the introduction to his early classic, any pretense at following his logical principles had been completely abandoned by the time Scientology was introduced.

Perhaps it's just as well that Count Alfred never lived to see that.