Tuesday, May 8, 2012

All Things Brain: Click on BrainFacts.org | Women in Prison - Selected Blogs

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via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12

via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12
The Old Senate Chamber during the US Supreme C...The Old Senate Chamber during the US Supreme Court’s residency (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

SOUTH DAKOTA – AG asks US Supreme Court to reject Moeller’s death-row appeal

by claim your innocence
may 7, 2012 source :http://www.mitchellrepublic.com
PIERRE (AP)South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a death row inmate’s plea to overturn his conviction for raping and killing a Sioux Falls girl 22 years ago.
Donald Moeller last month petitioned the court to overturn his conviction based on what he described as incomplete jury instructions. Moeller maintains that the jury that sentenced him to death for the 1990 rape and murder of 9-year-old Becky O’Connell should have been told he would not have been eligible for parole had jurors sentenced him to life in prison. He contends that he might have received the death penalty because jurors falsely thought he could eventually be released on parole if given a life sentence.
Jackley on Monday said that the brief filed by the state in response to Moeller’s claim says jury instructions “fully comply with settled law and constitutional standards.”
Moeller was convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. The state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, and Moeller has lost appeals on both the state and federal levels.
Moeller was convicted of abducting the girl from a convenience store, driving her to a secluded area, then raping and killing her. Her body was found the next day with a slashed throat and stab wounds.
Moeller initially was convicted in 1992 but the state Supreme Court ruled that improper evidence was used at trial and overturned the conviction.
“Two juries of South Dakota citizens have heard the facts of this case and both unanimously decided that Moeller’s crime warranted a death sentence,” Jackley said in a statement. “Twenty-two years and seven appeals to hold Moeller accountable and to await justice for Becky and her family is clearly too long.”
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via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12
http://may2012breakfastbriefing-eorg.eventbrite.com/
please, read there the whole text!

Fixing Lineups: Eyewitness Identification Reforms

Wednesday, May 9, 2012 from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM (PT)

Santa Clara, CA

Fixing Lineups: Eyewitness Identification Reforms


via Observations by Gary Stix on 5/7/12
Dyslexic brainThe Decade of the Brain stretched from 1990 to 1999.
But, in reality, it never ended.
The continuing celebration of all things brain extends, once more, with the unveiling of a mammoth Web site devoted to neuroscience.
Brainfacts.org—funded with $1.53 million project over six years by the Gatsby and Kavli Foundations—amasses basic information from leading organizations, ranging from the National Institutes of Health to the International Brain Research Organization in France, chronicling both how the brain works as well as major brain diseases. The information is intended for parents, educators, students and policymakers. The Society for Neuroscience is the third partner in the collaboration.
When a new discovery emerges, the site, vetted by scientists, will deploy background information about the new findings, in addition to links to media reports. The site, however, is not a news aggregator.
BrainFacts.org has plans to expand its content. In September, neuroscientists will start blogs, which will enable interaction with readers.
Source: BrainFacts.org



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via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12
Reblogged from Solitary Watch:

Today’s Advocate has an excellent article by Andrew Harmon, dissecting the abuses faced by transgender detainees in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. It begins with the story of a transgender woman who spent eight months in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail:
A few days after Christmas last year, Ruby Corado, a longtime transgender activist in Washington, D.C., received a telephone call while watching late-night TV.
Weiterlesen… 1,035 more words

via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12
Reblogged from Faktensucher:
Click to visit the original postWomen in Prison.
As women are sent to prison more than ever before… Women constitute the fastest growing segment of the United States’ prison population. Today, over one million women are under custody in the criminal justice system, representing 7% of inmates. Often these women are incarcerated for low-level, non-violent drug or property offenses and the majority have young children at the time of their conviction.
Weiterlesen… 24 more words

via Death Penalty Information Center by edeleon on 5/7/12
A new study conducted by researchers at Duke University found that the racial composition of jury pools has a profound effect on the probability of a black defendant being convicted. According to the study led by Professor Patrick Bayer of Duke, juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida convicted black defendants 16 percent more often than white defendants. In cases with no black potential jurors in the jury pool, black defendants were convicted 81 percent of the time, while white defendants were convicted 66 percent of the time. When at least one member of the jury pool was black, the conviction rates for white (73%) and black (71%) defendants were nearly identical. Professor Bayer commented, “I think this is the first strong and convincing evidence that the racial composition of the jury pool actually has a major effect on trial outcomes… Simply put, the luck of the draw on the racial composition of the jury pool has a lot to do with whether someone is convicted and that raises obvious concerns about the fairness of our criminal justice system.” The study examined over 700 non-capital felony cases in Sarasota and Lake counties in Florida and was published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Watch a video interview with Professor Bayer.
(S. Hartsoe, "Study: All-White Jury Pools Convict Black Defendants 16 Percent More Often Than Whites," Duke Today, April 17, 2012; posted May 7, 2012; "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," senior author Patrick Bayer, Duke University; Shamena Anwar, Carnegie Mellon University; Randi Hjalmarsson, Queen Mary, University of London. Quarterly Journal of Economics, online April 17, 2012, print in May 2012; DOI number 0.1093/QJE/QJS014).
In April in North Carolina, a Superior Court judge issued a ruling in the first case under the state's Racial Justice Act, finding evidence of intentional bias by the state in selecting juries for death penalty cases. The court held that “race was a materially, practically and statistically significant factor in the decision to exercise peremptory challenges during jury selection by prosecutors” at the time of the defendant's trial. Lawyers had presented findings from a study conducted at Michigan State University that concluded that qualified black jurors in North Carolina were struck from juries at more than twice the rate of qualified white jurors in the state’s 173 capital cases between 1990-2010. The judge said that the disparity was strong enough “to support an inference of intentional discrimination.” The defendant ’s death sentence was reduced to life without parole. See Race. Read more studies on the death penalty. Listen to DPIC's podcast on Race.


via Faktensucher by curi56 on 5/7/12
Pharmaburger reveals a dangerous agenda to turn fast food restaurants into pharmacies by handing out prescription medications for free at fast food restaurants. Created by Mike Adams, the Health Range
viaPharmaburger – Food Investigations episode 1 – NaturalNews.tv.

Battered and Bruised Minds Lead to Homelessness - Selected Blogs

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via Battleland » Military Mental Health by Mark Thompson on 5/8/12
The Department of Veterans Affairs first-ever large-scale study of homeless vets shows that the vast majority of homeless vets have mental disorders. “Majorities of the newly homeless diagnosed with mental disorders…were diagnosed before they became homeless, indicating mental disorders usually occurred before homelessness,” the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general said in a report issued [...]

Newsflash From APA Meeting: DSM 5 Has Flunked Its Reliability Tests | Psychology Today

Newsflash From APA Meeting: DSM 5 Has Flunked Its Reliability Tests | Psychology Today

Newsflash From APA Meeting: DSM 5 Has Flunked Its Reliability Tests | Psychology Today



Newsflash From APA Meeting: DSM 5 Has Flunked Its Reliability Tests | Psychology Today

Allen Frances, M.D.
Allen Frances, M.D., was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force and is currently professor emeritus at Duke.
more...

DSM5 in Distress
The DSM's impact on mental health practice and research.

Newsflash From APA Meeting: DSM 5 Has Flunked Its Reliability Tests

Needs to be kept back for another year.
The whole purpose of having a manual of psychiatric diagnosis is to promote diagnostic agreement. The great value to the field of DSM III was that it established reliability and preserved the credibility of psychiatry at a time when it was becoming irrelevant because it seemed that psychiatrists could not agree on a diagnosis. Everyone knew that the reliability achieved in DSM field testing far exceeds what is possible in clinical practice, but DSM III took the major step of proving that reliability could be achieved at all. Until now, the DSM's have facilitated communication across the clinical/research interface, promoted research, and provide credibility in the court room.
But bad news has just been reported from the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Philadelphia. The hard won credibility of psychiatric diagnosis is compromised by the abysmal results reported by the DSM 5 Field Trials. This failure was clearly predictable from the start: 1) The writing of the DSM 5 criteria sets was far too raw and imprecise to be ready for the rigors of field testing. The ambiguity cried out for expert editing; without which reasonable reliability is impossible; 2) The design of the field trial was byzantine in complexity and could never be done on schedule: 3) Constant delays in starting and completing Stage 1 of the study forced DSM 5 to cancel the planned Stage 2 that was meant to clean up the poorly performing criteria sets identified in the first stage. 4) With stage 2 cancelled without explanation, it looks like even the worst diagnoses are being given a social pass; and, most absurd, 5) The design was totally off point, failing to ask the only question that really counted ( the impact of DSM 5 on rates).
The results of the DSM 5 field trials are a disgrace to the field. For context, in previous DSM's, a diagnosis had to have a kappa reliability of about 0.6 or above to be considered acceptable. A reliability of .2-4 has always been considered completely unacceptable, not much above chance agreement.
DSM DSM. ICD. DSM
5 IV. 10 III
GAD. .2 .65. .30 .72
PTSD. .67 .59. .76 .55
Schizophr. .46 .76. .79 .81
Bipolar 1. .54. .69
MDD. .32 .59. .53 .80
Maj neuro. .78. .6 .91
Mild. ". .50
Alc use. .4. .71. .8
Hoarding. .59
BED. .56
Bipolar 2. .40
MADD. .06
APSS. .46
OCD .31
Antisoc pd. .22
Autis spec. .69 .85. .77. .01
ADHD. .61. .59. .85 .50
DMDD. .50
ODD. .41. .55. .66
Conduct. .48 .57 .78. .61
No predetermined publication date justifies business as usual in the face of these terrible Field Trial results (which are even more striking since they were obtained in academic settings with trained and skilled interviewers, highly selected patients, and no time pressure. The results in real world settings would be much lower). Reliability this low for so many diagnoses gravely undermines the credibility of DSM 5 as a basis for administrative coding, treatment selection, and clinical research.
What can be done to salvage this deplorable mess:
1) DSM 5 has never had anyone on board who could write a clean, consistent, unambiguous criteria set. DSM 5 received either no editing at all or amateur editing. Getting the words right is certain not enough- but If you can't get them right, nothing else can ever be safe.
2) For DSM 5 to retrieve credibility, it complete the second planned stage of its field testing. If doing the job right must delay publication so be it. Public trust must trump private publishing profits and it is self defeating for APA to publish a book no one can trust.
I have been consistently pessimistic and critical about DSM 5 since my first piece on it 3 years ago. The sad thing is I can still be so surprised. Each step of the way I predict it will fail in one or another way. But then I discover that DSM 5 has managed to fail in ways that go beyond my poor imagination. This assault on reliability was predicted, but its scope exceeds even my jaundiced fears and creates a DSM 5 emergency.

Fractured system turns prisons in 'asylums': The nation's first mental-health strategy from the Mental Health Commission of Canada is calling for an overhaul of a system it calls so fractured and under-funded that it's turning prisons and jails into the "asylums of the 21st century"

Sweeping recommendations call for prevention programs, better screening and increased funding

The nation's first mental-health strategy from the Mental Health Com-mission of Canada is calling for an overhaul of a system it calls so fractured and under-funded that it's turning prisons and jails into the "asylums of the 21st century" and leading many community service groups to drop waiting lists to avoid giving people false hope that "eventually their turn will come."
The strategy calls for spending on mental health to increase from seven to nine per cent of total health spending over 10 years, an increase of $3 to 4 billion. According to the commission, the economic impact of mental illness on Canada's economy is "enormous," at least $50 billion annually.
The strategy's 109 recommendations include:
. Creating mentally healthy work-places (an estimated $6 billion is lost every year due to absenteeism and "presenteeism," meaning people who go to work sick, commission staff said);
. More community and school-based mental illness prevention programs targeted at children and youth, especially those most at risk because of poverty, having a parent with a mental-health or addiction problem or family violence, and more support for parents and caregivers;
. Shifting policies and practices toward a "recovery and well being" model;
. Reducing the use of seclusion and restraints in hospitals;
. Improving access to treatments, including publicly funded psychotherapy and medications;
. More screening for mental-health problems and suicide risk, and more support for groups with high overall suicide rates, including older men, first nations and Inuit youth, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. According to the commission, of the 4,000 Canadians who die from suicide each year, the majority were suffering from a mental illness;
. Stopping disclosure in police record checks of instances when police use provisions of a Mental Health Act to apprehend a person who is in cri-sis, information that can be disclosed even when no offence has been com-mitted and no charges laid, making it difficult for people to volunteer or get a job, and;
. More "diversion programs," including mental-health courts and restorative justice programs to keep people living with mental-health illnesses out of prison.
"People living with mental-health problems and illnesses - whatever their age and however severe their mental-health problems or illness - and their families should be able to count on timely access to the full range of options for mental-health services, treatments and supports, just as they would expect if they were confronting heart disease or cancer," states the strategy, Changing Directions, Changing Lives.
The mental-health commission was born from the groundbreaking 2006 Senate committee report Out of the Shadows at Last, the most exhaustive study of mental health in the nation's history.


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Fractured+system+turns+prisons+asylums/6584184/story.html#ixzz1uHG2LYsB

Room for Debate: Women, Weight and Wellness - General Psychiatry News

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via NYT > Health by on 5/7/12
What should be more important to women: A positive body image or a fit physique that is less at risk for diabetes and other health issues?

New Study of Depression Drug - Wall Street Journal - General Psychiatry News

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New Study of Depression Drug
Wall Street Journal
Pfizer said the latest study results—presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association—added to data supporting Pristiq's effectiveness and safety. A study of patients who stopped taking Pristiq abruptly after 24 weeks showed no ...

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Pfizer Inc. PFE +0.31% said its Pristiq extended-release antidepressant showed positive results in a long-term study of adults when compared with a placebo.
In a long-term study, patients who received 50 milligrams a day of Pristiq showed a relapse probability of 14.3% compared with 30.2% for the group taking a placebo at month six.
The drug also showed statistically significant reductions in depression symptoms in an eight-week study of peri- and postmenopausal women, compared with a placebo.
Pfizer and other drug makers have been aiming to expand uses of older drugs as the industry deals with popular drugs coming off patent. Pfizer's blockbuster anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor lost U.S. marketing exclusively in November, leading to weaker corporate results in recent quarters.
Pfizer said the latest study results—presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association—added to data supporting Pristiq's effectiveness and safety.
A study of patients who stopped taking Pristiq abruptly after 24 weeks showed no statistically significant difference in discontinuation symptoms when compared with those who tapered off their use over the course of a week.
Pristiq was approved in the U.S. in 2008 as a treatment for major depressive disorder in adults. The drug also has been approved in some countries outside the U.S., including Mexico, to treat menopausal symptoms. The drug remains on the market for its approved uses.
Pfizer inherited Pristiq with its 2009 acquisition of Wyeth.
A version of this article appeared May 8, 2012, on page D4 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: New Study of Depression Drug.