Disability Rights for the Physically Challenged

DAV - a non-profit organization - Disabled American Veterans

2011-12-07T18:39:00.000-08:00

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve," wrote a Japanese admiral following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

That resolve filled the hearts of the American people, leaving them determined to support the troops in every possible way. As the wounded returned to our shores, they responded through the Disabled American Veterans.

If December 7, 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy,” as President Roosevelt said, its tragedy did unite our troops and our people.

Millions offered their blood and their health in World War II. As “the Greatest Generation” fades, daily pain still haunts the lives of those who bear the scars of all our wars, from 1941 through wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the leadership of the Disabled American Veterans remains crucial in building new lives for these heroes, you can see how our disabled vets still need your partnership in the DAV mission as well.

As a new generation of veterans comes home from Iraq and winds down its mission in Afghanistan, the 10 preceding years of war have led 600,000 younger veterans to apply for VA disability programs.

Several wars have passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Again and again, our forces have fought and bled for you and me.

These brave men and women never lost their resolve, and neither should we. Will you maintain your resolve with your gift of $25 … $50 … $100 or more now?

Remembering Pearl Harbor,

Arthur H. Wilson, National Adjutant
Disabled American Veterans

Bob Calvert and Talking with Heroes

2011-06-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn

Bob Calvert has sent you a message.

Date: 6/26/2011

Subject: NEWS About Our Next Trip with the Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and More

Hello

Thank you for connecting with me/us here on LinkedIN. Many of you are veterans and active duty military and family members. Thank you for your service to our country!!

I am Bob Calvert host of the www.talkingwithheroes.com Program and Editor of the Online News Site www.thankyouforyourservice.us

Please read the following important announcements:

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Makes our Next Trip to Iraq and Afghanistan possible

Thanks to Embry Riddle www.embryriddle.edu for becoming the Main Sponsor of our next trip over to Iraq and Afghanistan with the troops. Thank you to Mark Lyden with www.dothisgethired.com for introducing me to Embry Riddle.

We are heading back over with the troops very soon!

As in my past embeds our troops will share with you and all of America their Progress and Positive Stories that most people back home here are not hearing much about. We do this with interviews with the troops, with local people, on missions, film reconstruction projects, film in local communities and more.

Updates from Iraq and Afghanistan will be posted on our New Facebook LIKE Page

On this next trip Bryon at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University will post my updates on their social networking sites. He will also tweet them on our Talking With Heroes Twitter page and especially on our New Facebook LIKE page.

To see these updates type into the Facebook Search box TALKING WITH HEROES PROGRAM. Then click on LIKE at the top of the page.

Or go directly to:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Talking-With-Heroes-Program/102924686425237

As we post updates with our troops we encourage you to SHARE these updates with your LinkedIN Friends and Groups you are on, Your Facebook, Twitter and other friends, Family and co workers.

The Troops are depending on us to get their mostly unheard Progress Stories out to the American people. We invite you to join with us in this mission. Please help us get these and the stories we bring back from Iraq and Afghanistan out to as many people as you can. If you are a member of a Veterans Organization please let their leadership and posts have this info.

Current News from our Troops in Our Online News Site - Thank You For Your Service

Due to the amount of stories coming in daily from our troops, veterans and more www.ThankYouForYourService.US is now a Weekly Online News Site. Read daily current news that you may not see on other media outlets.

NEW Videos from Atlanta Airport and Columbus Lions Football Game

Watch episodes that we filmed a few weeks ago at the Atlanta Airport with the USO, Troops, Passengers, Airport Employees as Troops are welcomed home. Watch as other troops are thanked who headed back overseas. Watch as they were shown how much we all thank them for their service. You will enjoy these videos. We also take you behind the scenes inside the USO facilities.

On one of the videos you will see me interviewing Ted Liedle and Ron Link.. two Veterans and Videographers who are going with me on this next trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Meet Bill Wischnewsky, his daughter and Barbara Oldham.

Watch these New videos on our NEW Facebook LIKE Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Talking-With-Heroes-Program/102924686425237

While you are on our LIKE page please click on the LIKE at the top of the page. ALL of our updates from Iraq and Afghanistan will be posted on the LIKE page.

These videos are also all going on our Youtube Page www.youtube.com/bobc9246

Please feel free to post a comment to our troops on some of these videos showing how much you support them.

*****Please SHARE these videos with everybody you can*****

Thank You!!

Bob Calvert, Host
www.talkingwithheroes.com
Editor of www.thankyouforyourservice.us
http://twitter.com/#!/talkwithheroes
www.facebook.com/pages/Talking-With-Heroes-Program/102924686425237
www.linkedin.com/in/talkingwithheroes
Email bob@talkingwithheroes.com

View/reply to this message

VA outlines plan to help caregivers of wounded

2011-02-16T19:10:00.001-08:00

VA outlines plan to help caregivers of wounded
(AP) – Feb 9, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — A long-awaited plan to give caregivers of severely wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans some extra help was unveiled Wednesday by the Veterans Affairs Department with few specifics about when it would be fully implemented and potentially fewer families reaping the benefit than expected.

Sarah Wade, who along with her veteran husband, Ted, joined President Barack Obama on May 5 when he signed the law that instructed the VA to provide more support to family caregivers of those hurt in the recent conflicts, is among those wondering whether she will qualify for the extra support. And, if so, when.

Ted Wade, 33, lost his right arm and sustained a traumatic brain injury in a roadside bombing in Iraq in 2004 while serving with the 82nd Airborne Division. Sarah Wade now takes care of him.

She said she'll be watching closely to see how the VA's proposal is written and interpreted.

"If he doesn't qualify, I'm going to be devastated," said Wade, 36, of Chapel Hill, N.C. She said there are very few long-term care options for her husband except for going into an institution. "Year after year after year, I've heard about being patient and how we weren't prepared and we're trying to create programs and we're trying to create benefits. It's been one empty promise for years."

Among the benefits included in the law was a monthly stipend based on average home health aide costs in a veteran's hometown. The law also includes health insurance and mental health help for caregivers. The law for the first time instructed the VA to provide help directly to a veteran's family members.

Under the plan, caregivers for about 10 percent of the critically wounded from the recent conflicts would be eligible, or about 850 veterans, said Katie Roberts, a VA spokeswoman.

But Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said in a statement that the way Congress had written the law, about 3,500 veterans should have a family member who is an eligible.

"Unfortunately the plan they put forward today is simply not good enough. The VA outlined how they intended to limit this benefit to an even smaller group of caregivers than intended by Congress, which is unacceptable," Murray, D-Wash., said.

The VA rolled out the plan under pressure from Murray and some veterans' service organizations frustrated by the VA's pace. The law was supposed to be implemented by the end of January.

Roberts said the VA will be working with them and others in the veterans' community to make it happen, but she didn't offer a timeline.

"While some services will be available right away the others will take thoughtful, deliberate work to make sure the caregivers of our most vulnerable veterans have access to all additional services," Roberts said.

Jeremy Chwat, a spokesman for the Wounded Warrior Project that lobbied for the law, said the lack of information about when the services will be available is unacceptable.

"By VA's own admission the regulatory process is going to be long and the caregivers who have already waited so long are now being told by this administration to wait even longer," Chwat said.

While the enhanced benefits are for the caregivers of the severely disabled veterans from the recent conflicts, the VA said it is improving other existing programs for caregivers of veterans from all eras. It named a caregiver coordinator at each of its medical centers and last week rolled out a caregiver support hotline, which has already received more than 700 calls.

Veterans' service organizations had pushed for more support for all caregivers of veterans, but Congress was not able to come up with enough money to do so. Under the law, the VA must report to Congress within two years about the possibility of providing the enhanced benefits to all caregivers.

The goal is to keep veterans out of nursing homes, said Deborah Amdur, chief consultant for VA social work.

"We know that being able to remain in your home surrounded by family and friends, people do better," Amdur said. "There's no question about that."

VA website for caregivers: http://www.caregiver.va.gov

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges

2010-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

By TRIP GABRIEL
Published: December 19, 2010
The New York Times

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Rushing a student to a psychiatric emergency room is never routine, but when Stony Brook University logged three trips in three days, it did not surprise Jenny Hwang, the director of counseling.

It was deep into the fall semester, a time of mounting stress with finals looming and the holiday break not far off, an anxiety all its own.

On a Thursday afternoon, a freshman who had been scraping bottom academically posted thoughts about suicide on Facebook. If I were gone, he wrote, would anybody notice? An alarmed student told staff members in the dorm, who called Dr. Hwang after hours, who contacted the campus police. Officers escorted the student to the county psychiatric hospital.

There were two more runs over that weekend, including one late Saturday night when a student grew concerned that a friend with a prescription for Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, had swallowed a fistful.

On Sunday, a supervisor of residence halls, Gina Vanacore, sent a BlackBerry update to Dr. Hwang, who has championed programs to train students and staff members to intervene to prevent suicide.

“If you weren’t so good at getting this bystander stuff out there,” Ms. Vanacore wrote in mock exasperation, “we could sleep on the weekends.”

Stony Brook is typical of American colleges and universities these days, where national surveys show that nearly half of the students who visit counseling centers are coping with serious mental illness, more than double the rate a decade ago. More students take psychiatric medication, and there are more emergencies requiring immediate action.

“It’s so different from how people might stereotype the concept of college counseling, or back in the ’70s students coming in with existential crises: who am I?” said Dr. Hwang, whose staff of 29 includes psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers. “Now they’re bringing in life stories involving extensive trauma, a history of serious mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, alcohol and other drug use.”

Experts say the trend is partly linked to effective psychotropic drugs (Wellbutrin for depression, Adderall for attention disorder, Abilify for bipolar disorder) that have allowed students to attend college who otherwise might not have functioned in a campus setting.

There is also greater awareness of traumas scarcely recognized a generation ago and a willingness to seek help for those problems, including bulimia, self-cutting and childhood sexual abuse.

The need to help this troubled population has forced campus mental health centers — whose staffs, on average, have not grown in proportion to student enrollment in 15 years — to take extraordinary measures to make do. Some have hospital-style triage units to rank the acuity of students who cross their thresholds. Others have waiting lists for treatment — sometimes weeks long — and limit the number of therapy sessions.

Some centers have time only to “treat students for a crisis, bandaging them up and sending them out,” said Denise Hayes, the president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors and the director of counseling at the Claremont Colleges in California.

“It’s very stressful for the counselors,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like why you got into college counseling.”

A recent survey by the American College Counseling Association found that a majority of students seek help for normal post-adolescent trouble like romantic heartbreak and identity crises. But 44 percent in counseling have severe psychological disorders, up from 16 percent in 2000, and 24 percent are on psychiatric medication, up from 17 percent a decade ago.

The most common disorders today: depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse, attention disorders, self-injury and eating disorders.

Stony Brook, an academically demanding branch of the State University of New York (its admission rate is 40 percent), faces the mental health challenges typical of a big public university. It has 9,500 resident students and 15,000 who commute from off-campus. The highly diverse student body includes many who are the first in their families to attend college and carry intense pressure to succeed, often in engineering or the sciences. A Black Women and Trauma therapy group last semester included participants from Africa, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from violence in their youth.

Stony Brook has seen a sharp increase in demand for counseling — 1,311 students began treatment during the past academic year, a rise of 21 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, budget pressures from New York State have forced a 15 percent cut in mental health services over three years.

Dr. Hwang, a clinical psychologist who became director in July 2009, has dealt with the squeeze by limiting counseling sessions to 10 per student and referring some, especially those needing long-term treatment for eating disorders or schizophrenia, to off-campus providers.

But she has resisted the pressure to offer only referrals. By managing counselors’ workloads, the center can accept as many as 60 new clients a week in peak demand between October and the winter break.

“By this point in the semester to not lose hope or get jaded about the work, it can be a challenge,” Dr. Hwang said. “By the end of the day, I go home so adrenalized that even though I’m exhausted it will take me hours to fall asleep.”

For relief, she plays with her 2-year-old daughter, and she has taken up the guitar again.

Shifting to Triage

Near the student union in the heart of campus, the Student Health Center building dates from the days when a serious undergraduate health problem was mononucleosis. But the hiring of Judy Esposito, a social worker with experience counseling Sept. 11 widows, to start a triage unit three years ago was a sign of the new reality in student mental health.

(For the rest of this article, please click on the link in this blog post's title above.)

Making Disability Work

2010-12-10T22:18:00.000-08:00

By PETER ORSZAG
Published: December 9, 2010
The New York Times

One of the gravest dangers posed by the weak economy is that the unemployed will become discouraged and give up looking for work, perhaps permanently as their skills atrophy. This would be harmful not only to the workers and their families, but also to the economy as a whole, as those people would no longer contribute to economic growth. The longer the labor market remains sluggish, the more pronounced this risk becomes.

Unfortunately, at this point more than six million people have been unemployed for six months or longer. More than one million have already given up looking for work because they believe no job is available. And a drastic rise in applications for disability insurance suggests we may be headed for more long-lasting trouble. The number of disability applications has reached more than 750,000 a quarter, according to the Social Security Administration, an increase of more than 50 percent from four years ago.

The disability insurance program provides crucial support for people who can no longer work because of a disability. But once someone begins receiving benefits, the likelihood that he will re-enter the work force is almost nonexistent; recipients become permanently dependent on the program.
The result is not only lost economic productivity, but also a fiscal burden for the federal government: disability benefits now cost more than $120 billion a year, and Medicare benefits for those on disability add $70 billion.

The spike in disability insurance applications (and awards) does not reflect a less healthy population. The fraction of working-age adults who report a disability, about one in 10, has remained roughly constant for the past 20 years. (Indeed, it would be surprising if the number of workers with disabilities had risen by 50 percent over the past four years.)

Rather, the weak labor market has driven more people to apply for disability benefits that they qualify for but wouldn’t need if they could find work.

When Congress created the disability insurance program in 1956, it required that recipients be unable to “engage in substantial gainful activity in the U.S. economy.” In other words, they had to be unable to work. That was sensible at the time, when more jobs involved physical labor and technologies to assist people with disabilities were not widely available.

Today, however, many people with disabilities are able to engage in some form of work — even if they can’t admit that and still keep their insurance benefits. Cutting off access to the workplace in this way is both unfortunate and unnecessary — and reinforces the threat that the current downturn could cause a long-term reduction in the share of people who work.

So what should be done?

First, macroeconomic policy. We need more stimulus immediately, and more deficit reduction enacted now to take effect in two or three years. The plan just proposed by the White House in a compromise with Congressional Republicans is encouraging in that it includes a new payroll tax holiday, a helpful stimulus. It does not reduce future deficits, but at least it avoids making the Bush tax cuts permanent, reserving the flexibility to address medium-term deficits down the road.

Even if this plan goes ahead, however, the unemployment rate is likely to remain high for some time. For it to fall by even one percentage point (from 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent) the economy needs to grow by about 4.5 percent a year.

Second, unemployment insurance should be extended, as President Obama’s compromise plan also would do. Unemployment benefits are a form of stimulus: they spur spending and thereby help keep the economy afloat. Just as important, unemployment benefits keep many people from falling back on disability insurance — and unlike disability insurance, which effectively prohibits beneficiaries from seeking work, unemployment insurance requires recipients to keep looking for a job and thus remain connected to the work force.

(To read the rest of this article, please click on the link in this blog post's title above.)

Adult stem cell research brings encouragement to disabled

2010-12-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

By Paul Rendine • December 5, 2010
delmarvanow.com

When I began these wide-ranging weekly articles on various disabilities, my overriding goal has been one in which I've always tried to end each article with a positive something. It could be, for example, a treatment, medication, surgery or whatever, all of which could make any given disability easier to cope with, overcome and live with by that person with a disability.

Imagine, then, my excitement at the actual and achievable recoveries that have been realized in such previously judged as not-recoverable disabilities as cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and strokes, with many of those recoveries being made possible with the use of adult stem cells.

More specifically, an increasing number of researchers working with adult stem cells now seem to agree that such therapies could quickly and significantly improve the recovery of motor function in animal models for the ischemic brain injury, for example, that occurs in about 10 percent of babies with cerebral palsy.

Athersys Inc., a Cleveland-based biopharmaceutical company pursuing cell therapy programs in cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer and other diseases, has recently been funding research in which more than 200,000 adult stem cells provided by Athersys were injected directly into the brain injury sites of test animals of the many researchers they have been funding. According to Athersys, those adult stem cells were taken from the bone marrow of rats for dosing in their now-disabled laboratory rats. This info was reviewed from Athersys' website as of Nov. 23.

Their researchers' lab reports indicate that exactly one week after a brain injury was introduced into each of the tests' lab rats, adult stem cells were injected directly into the brains of each of the 22 test animals. Behavioral tests on each now-disabled lab rat were then administered seven days after the transplants, all of which showed a trend toward recovery, followed by significant recovery, by day 14.

As research projects using adult stem cells increase, the release of public information in an announcement during the week of Oct. 10 discussed one of the first- ever introductions of adult stem cells at the site of a longtime spinal cord injured patient at the Shepherd Institute in Georgia. That announcement also noted that this stem cell therapy was the first-ever use of stem cells at the site of a longtime and older SCI patient with the hoped-for purpose of reversing that patient's paralysis.

(To read the rest of this article, please click on the link in this blog post's title above this blog post.)

King Cobras & a Purple Heart

2010-12-01T07:11:00.001-08:00

By Jim Hall
DAV - Disabled American Veterans

You never know what may result from a discussion with a veteran about a disability claim. National Service Officer John Hansen can vouch for that. King cobras and a Purple Heart Medal were topics of conversation when he sat down with Vietnam veteran Robert McBride and his wife, Barbara, to discuss McBride’s service-connected disability claim.

As a young Army specialist, McBride served with C Company of the 554th Engineers in Cu Chi, South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. According to McBride, his company seemed to come under mortar attack nearly every night. During one of the nightly mortar attacks he suffered shrapnel wounds. He reported the wounds to his commander and was told to report to the medical tent for treatment.

“When I got to the medical tent I saw other soldiers being treated who were worse than me,” McBride said. “There was another soldier there like me. We went back to our position and removed shrapnel from each other, and that was it.”

Actually, that wasn’t it. According to McBride’s medical records, he had previously received first and second degree burns to his left shoulder and right foot during a pre-dawn mortar attack on Jan. 31, 1968. He had been recommended for the Purple Heart but had not been awarded the medal before being honorably discharged in June 1968.

McBride filed a claim for service-connected disability for Agent Orange exposure, and went for a physical evaluation in 1993. The VA denied the claim. He filed another claim on Aug. 16, 2007, for entitlement to service connection for soft tissue sarcoma, bilateral hearing loss and tinnitus. He was denied service connection and filed his Notice of Disagreement directly through the VA regional office.

Still not satisfied with the way things were progressing, McBride decided to contact the DAV National Service Office in Reno, Nev. With that decision, McBride’s luck was about to change.

“My first contact with Mr. McBride was on Sept. 4, 2008, shortly after my assignment to Reno, Nev.” NSO Hansen said. “We discussed a VA letter advising him of a personal hearing with the Decision Review Officer.”

On Nov. 21, 2008, McBride and his wife arrived at the DAV National Service Office to discuss his upcoming hearing with NSO Hansen. McBride was tired of the denials. He wanted the VA to recognize the disabilities he believed were related to his service in Vietnam.

During the conversation, NSO Hansen explained that the cancer condition McBride was being treated for was not a presumptive condition due to herbicide (Agent Orange) exposure. McBride was willing to withdraw his appeal for that condition.

As they continued to talk about McBride’s service, the conversation covered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but since McBride had received no valor awards, NSO Hansen informed McBride that he would need to have a verifiable stressor. That’s when McBride recounted the mortar attacks. Hansen listened closely and asked McBride if he had nightmares. He said he didn’t, but Barbara began to relate about how one night McBride started screaming about snakes in his sleep.

“I never told you about the snakes,” McBride said to his wife. “Why don’t you tell me about the snakes?” NSO Hansen said.

McBride described how there were king cobras in the area where his company was located. One day he saw a cobra going toward another soldier and shot it in the head. The nightmare came from the memory.

In preparation for McBride’s hearing with the Decision Review Officer, NSO Hansen was reviewing McBride’s service medical records when he noted an entry for Jan. 31, 1968. The entry contained the information about the first and second degree burns McBride suffered in a mortar attack. It also recommended McBride for the Purple Heart Medal, but there was no indication the medal had been awarded. McBride said he was unaware of being recommended for it
and had not received the medal.

NSO Hansen went to work to assist McBride in receiving his medal. He contacted Susan Lisagore from Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office for additional assistance. “I explained what I had found in Mr. McBride’s service medical records,” NSO Hansen said. “She asked what the Purple Heart would mean for the veteran, and I explained it would place him in a higher priority group at the VA medical center, and being a valor award, the Purple Heart Medal would support his claim for PTSD.”

Sen. Reid presented the Purple Heart Medal to McBride on April 15, 2009. “This is one tax day I’ll never forget,” McBride said, as NSO Hansen, members of the DAV Department of Nevada, Military Order of the Purple Heart, VA regional office staff, and family and friends looked on.

Prior to receiving his long-overdue medal, McBride won his appeal on April 3, 2009, and was granted service connection
for tinnitus at 10 percent, and bilateral hearing loss at 0 percent. Five days later, his claim for service connection for
PTSD was approved with a rating of 30 percent.

“Working with Mr. McBride was truly a pleasure,” NSO Hansen said. “It reminded me of why I had become a National Service Officer. My father was a World War II Navy veteran who died of a service-connected disability in 1979. He never spoke about his time in the service, but growing up I saw the passion my father had helping his fellow veterans. I feel I am honoring my father’s memory by serving veterans as a National Service Officer. Knowing you have made a difference in the life of a veteran like Mr. McBride is a truly a great feeling.”

“NSO Hansen was very helpful and understanding,” Mc-Bride said. “He’s a good man who treated us with respect.”

“Since I was assisted by the DAV I have talked with other veterans regarding Agent Orange claims, and I always recommend the DAV to them, because they work to get you what you have earned and deserve,” McBride said.

Laura Hershey, 48, championed disability rights

2010-11-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

Laura Hershey, a renowned Colorado disability-rights activist, writer and poet, died Friday after a sudden illness. She was 48.

Hershey, who was born with a form of muscular dystrophy and lived in a wheelchair, was one of the most prominent voices of the disability rights movement.

"She was an intelligent, funny, active writer, activist and mother," Hershey's partner, Robin Stephens, said Saturday.

"She was a genius who lived with disability and lived well."

Hershey was a prolific writer — in books of poems, magazines and online at a number of websites — and much of her works focus on the struggle to maintain personal dignity in a world inclined to see the disabled as pitiable or useless. One of her most famous works is a poem called "You Get Proud By Practicing."

"Remember, you weren't the one/who made you ashamed," the poems reads, "but you are the one/who can make you proud. Just practice,/practice until you get proud, and once you are proud,/keep practicing so you won't forget."

To the broader public, Hershey was perhaps best known for protesting Jerry Lewis's muscular dystrophy telethons. Once a poster child for those campaigns, Hershey grew to believe the telethons create the impression that people with muscular dystrophy have lives that are not worth living.

She was cited for trespassing in 2001 during a protest outside the telethon's local telecast.

"Other organizations," she said at the time, "have found ways to fund-raise without demeaning the people they are trying to serve."

But her family said her activism was much deeper than the protests. She twice attended United Nations conferences on women's rights, one in Nairobi, Kenya, and another in Beijing, her brother, John Hershey, said. She was a tireless advocate for not only the disabled, but also the disadvantaged and anyone who didn't "fit in," John Hershey said.

Her writings were an inspiration to many, John Hershey said, and she has a book of poems called Spark Before Dark that she finished shortly before her death that is scheduled to be published by Finishing Line Press.

Hershey received an honorary doctorate for her work from Colorado College, where she also earned her undergraduate degree. By Saturday night, her Facebook page was flooded with messages of remembrance and appreciation.

"Much of her writing was about needing help," John Hershey said. "But we were thinking tonight that she helped so many more people than helped her."

Hershey's last essay, a blog post for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation finished two days before she died, focuses on gratitude. In it, she talks about a recent trip to California with Stephens and their daughter and about taking joy in life's purest moments. She writes of the joy of watching her daughter's "pure delight at dancing in the ocean for the first time ever."

But, in a passage that exemplifies her work, she also cautions the disabled against being forced to feel grateful for necessities.

"We have to demand the things that are essential to our lives, equality, and quality of life," she wrote. "We must refuse to feel gratitude for these, except the normal level of gratitude that anyone might feel for living in a time and place that still supports human life."

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com.

Celebrating our Disabled Heroes on Veterans Day

2010-11-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we honor the courage of more than 23 million living American veterans, plus countless others who fell in battle or passed away.

Officially, wars begin and end. But for the men and women who bear their scars, war is a lifelong sacrifice. You'll salute the nearly 3 million veterans living with permanent, service-related disabilities when you support the DAV this Veterans Day.

Each time we see the horror of war fall upon another generation, we feel one hope pulling at our hearts: We want this new war to be the last war.

Meet David Riley. A savage infection took all four limbs, ending his years in Coast Guard Rescue.

For him, war has not ceased. But neither has the valor of America's sons and daughters. Their loyalty and courage march across the generations.

On Veterans Day, as you give back to America's heroes through the DAV, you repay their devotion with vital care and assistance.

Like DAV's David Riley, America's veterans are not nameless faces, not just uniforms in a parade, not anonymous figures in camouflage.

They're mothers, fathers, carpenters, business owners, teachers, neighbors, volunteers. Their patriotism is woven into the fabric of America. And for many, their sacrifice never ends.

Reach out to all who sacrificed for our safety and freedom with your Veterans Day gift of $25 ... $50 ... $100 to DAV now!

Please click on the link in this post's title to give to Disabled American Veterans today.

Letter from Disabled American Veterans

2010-10-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Karen,

As a new member of the Disabled American Veterans family, you joined a struggle to solve a highly troubling problem among veterans coming home disabled after defending your freedom and mine.

Thousands of these disabled vets desperately need help from the government they served. They're eligible for that help, but they don't even know how to apply.

Making matters worse, they heard horror stories about veterans waiting years for needed help ... and about the government denying help that was clearly due to veterans who asked.

You help address this problem through the DAV Mobile Service Offices (MSOs) that bring highly trained veterans' benefits experts to communities across the nation.

These DAV National Service Officers (NSOs) provide all the help that's needed to apply for veterans' benefits ... and all the expertise to make sure everything's done right.

By eliminating long trips that veterans in some rural communities would have to take to get to the closest DAV National Service Office, MSOs are able to reach many veterans who would never apply for programs they earned.

Coming up with creative solutions is an American principle, and at DAV, we leave no one behind. Find out when a DAV Mobile Service Office will be in your neighborhood.

With you in reaching out to heroes,

Arthur H. Wilson
National Adjutant,
Disabled American Veterans

P.S. Would you like more information on receiving veterans benefits?

Boxer vs. Fiorina: Friends and Foes of Stem Cell Research and the Disability Community

2010-10-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post
Don C. Reed
Sponsor, California’s Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999
Posted: October 17, 2010

I don't have to tell you how devastating it would be if the United States House and Senate turned against stem cell research--and the disability community-- in November.

It could easily happen, if we let our friends stand alone.

In California, for example, Barbara Boxer (D) is opposed by the massively-funded Carly Fiorina (R) darling of the Tea Party and the Religious Right. (Karl Rove recently authorized another million out-of-state dollars for attack ads against her.)

On stem cells (my key issue) Boxer is a leader and a champion: pushing the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Acts of 2003 and 2007, both of which passed the Senate before being vetoed by President Bush; she also helped prevent passage of several versions of extraordinarily hurtful laws which would literally have put scientists in jail for stem cell research.

Most recently, she and Senator Dianne Feinstein co-authored Senator Arlen Specter's bill, S. 3766, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2010. She is not waiting to see which way the wind is blowing; she is acting now. (She is very right to do so: we need that bill to be passed into law during the "lame duck" session, or risk losing all federal funds for the research we support. Waiting till the next session begins could be fatal to our best hopes for cure.)

Now Barbara Boxer is a fighter for California. Not a headline-grabber, not someone out to get her name put on buildings, but the kind of person who will stand beside you through thick and thin. She figures out the right thing to do, and does it, come Hell or high water. You may not agree with every stand she takes, but you will always know where she stands, and if she gives her word, that's it.

Let me share a brief conversation I had with Senator Boxer, in Sacramento, years ago. A small incident, but as a fingerprint reveals a person, sometimes even a few words can offer a glimpse of character.

She was standing in the hallway of our beautiful capitol building in Sacramento, and I was trying to get her support for the first Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.

She cut me off, mid-sentence--to tell me, first, that OF COURSE she supported the bill.
And then she added something that stuck with me.

"What you really need is a billion dollars for stem cell research--and that is something I cannot get for you, as long as the current administration is in power."

This was before Prop 71 was even a $3 billion gleam in California's eye.

That is typical of Boxer. She did not sugar-coat the message, just said flatly where she stood.

How many politicians are that honest?

And Fiorina?

Carly Fiorina is famous for having been fired, as the head of Hewlett-Packard. The millions she got as her severance package (estimates range from $42-$100 million) is how she became rich.

She does not vote a lot. From 1997 to 2005 she was registered to vote in New Jersey, but did not vote, so was dropped from the polls as "inactive". So democracy has not been super important to her until very recently, when she decided she wanted to take a leadership role.

Where does she stand on stem cell research?

First, remember California supports embryonic stem cell research all the way. In 2004, the state voted to invest serious money in the research. Thanks to Prop 71, California's investment in the future, we are home to what is undoubtedly the greatest stem cell research resource in the world.

With the FDA's long awaited approval of the Geron human trials for embryonic stem cell research, the biomedical industry is on the verge of major growth, pivotal to California's emergence from the world-wide recession.

Lifted by California's success, the biomedical industry is growing stronger every day. Just last quarter, the money invested in these businesses by venture capitalists grew 52%-- despite the tough economy, they have faith in our future.

Fiorina knows this. I doubt she would agree (publicly) with the goal of the pro-life groups which endorsed her--shutting down our research. If Republicans succeed in putting "a ban on all embryonic stem cell research, public and private", California's magnificent stem cell program would be at risk, as would the entire biomedical industry.

So Ms. Fiorina will say "...I'm not an expert", and dance around the issue, soft-pedaling her anti-research stance on one of the most important and beloved issues in the Golden State. There are millions of citizens suffering incurable disease or disability, and we support research for cure.

But look closely at her statements, and it is clear she is against it. She desperately wants the energy of the Religious Right behind her, so she speaks in "code", saying stuff like "I am 100% pro-life; life begins at conception." Those are not lightly chosen words. It is pretty close to an endorsement of the personhood movement, which would grant full citizenship to blastocysts, even in a petri dish. If enacted into law, the personhood philosophy would shut down not only embryonic stem cell research, but also most forms of birth control, and the entire in Vitro Fertility (iVF) procedure, which has brought joy to so many childless families.

Here is some language from her.

(Interviewer) "In the past, Democrats have suggested that pro-life positions on issues like embryonic stem-cell research are 'anti-science."

(Fiorina responds) "It is a cynical political calculation to pit science against the pro-life movement or to try and pit science against morality.

"... scientific advances in embryology, to take one example, are maturing our moral perspective on the sanctity of human life: we're learning that the fetus is viable at a very early stage...
"It's false to suggest that people who are scientifically-oriented must be pro-embryonic stem-cell research and pro-choice. Adult stem-cell research is a perfect example of how science is helping to mature our moral compass. It's probably more viable, more cost-effective and may even have better results--though I'm no expert on this." ~ National Catholic Register, Joan Frawley Desmond, "Ready to go 12 Rounds with Boxer", posted 6/21/10

"Cynical political calculation"? She just compared a fetus (unborn baby in the womb) to embryonic stem cells--dots in a petri dish which can never become a child--to my mind that is a deliberate deception.

Now while I support cure research 100%, I also want our citizens with disabilities to be helped now, so that they can be fully participating citizens, not shunted aside by inadequate accommodation.

Where does Fiorina stand on disability rights? It's hard to tell. We can get a hint, though, from her friends and endorsers.

As the Tea Party candidate, Ms. Fiorina undoubtedly wants to cut the education budget--of which about 20% ($12 billion of the entire $64 billion budget) goes to fund education for disabled k-12 students. And if a disabled person wants help going to college, the Pell Grant ($27 billion) offers scholarships and loans to deserving students with a disability.

Where does Senator Boxer stand on disability issues? That is not hard to find out. I wrote to her office, and asked. They sent me this.

Highlights of the Boxer Record on Issues of Interest to Americans with Disabilities

Senator Boxer is committed to helping Americans with disabilities participate fully in our national life.

Americans with Disabilities Act. Senator Boxer strongly supported the reauthorization of the Americans with Disabilities Act - the landmark legislation that prohibits discrimination against disabled Americans and helps remove barriers to employment and basic services for Americans with disabilities so they can participate more fully in national life.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Senator Boxer believes in the importance of providing schools with the resources they need to serve all of their students, including students with special needs. She strongly supports full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and consistently advocated to increase funding for schools to provide quality special education.

Tax-Exempt Savings Accounts. Senator Boxer has supported the creation of tax-exempt savings accounts to help people with disabilities plan and pay for education, medical care, and job training.

Ed Roberts Campus. During 2004 to 2008, Senator Boxer secured funding to help build the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, CA, a national center on disability and independent living that serves people with disabilities and their families. ERC also advocates for the improvement of accessibility for people with disabilities to health, transportation and other essential services.

Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. Senator Boxer is proud to have voted for health care reform, which created the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program. CLASS is a new voluntary insurance program that will help expand options for people who become disabled and require long-term help.

Rosa's Law. Senator Boxer cosponsored Rosa's Law, which President Obama recently signed into law. This measure will replace the terms "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability" throughout federal health, education and labor statutes.

Folks, Barbara Boxer is a champion for California, for individuals with a disability, and for all who see hope in stem cell research.

I support her 100%.

Now California will almost certainly re-elect Barbara Boxer, no matter how many millions of dollars the opposition spends.

We know her: who she is, what she stands for. She IS California, caring, future-oriented, full of hope and determination, passionate in her convictions, and dedicated to fair play for all.

But not every stem cell research supporting leader is as well-known as she. Also, when she is re-elected, we need to be sure she has friends in the Senate to work with, and in the House of Representatives, so we do not have good bills that the Senate passes and the House blocks, or vice versa.

Accordingly...

Here are 21 stem cell races in the House and Senate, where a friend of the research is at risk, and their opponent is someone against the research.

Find your state, and pick someone to help.

HOUSE RACES:

Friends of research come first, as they should.

CA: Jerry McNerney, vs. David Harmer, District 11

CA: Ami Bera vs. Daniel Lungren District 3

FL: Joe Garcia vs. David Rivera, District 25

IL: Dan Seals vs.Robert Dold, District 10

MN: Tarryl Clark v. Michele Bachmann, District 8

NH: Carol Shea-Porter v. Frank Guinta, District 01

NV: Dina Titus v. Joe Heck, District 3

NY: John Hall v. Nan Hayworth, District 19

OH: Mary Jo Kilroy v. Stivers, District 15

WI: Julie Lassa v. Sean Duffy, District 7

SENATE RACES:

CA: Barbara Boxer vs. Carly Fiorina

CO: Michael Bennet vs. Ken Buck

DE: Chris Coons v.Christine Odonnell

KY: Jack Conway vs. Rand Paul

MO: Robin Carnahan vs. Roy Blunt

NH: Paul Hodes vs. Kelly Ayotte

NV: Harry Reid vs. Sharron Angle

OH: Lee Fisher vs. Rob Portman

PA: Joe Sestak vs. Pat Toomey

WA: Patty Murray vs. Dino Rossi

WI: Russ Feingold vs. Ron Johnson

Remember, sometimes a crucial bill can be decided by a single vote. Pick somebody from that list, and help him or her. Support them financially if you can, lend energy if you cannot: walk door to door for them, send emails to friends, do phone-banking--but help them.

BRING A SIGN-- "Support Stem Cell Research!" to the rallies--make sure everyone knows where your candidate stands on the research for cure.

If you are one of America's 51.2 million citizens with a disability (U.S. Census Bureau statistic) or chronic disease-- or if you love someone who does--be active now.

Or risk losing our best friends for cure.

Follow Don C. Reed on Twitter: www.twitter.com/diverdonreed

EXCLUSIVE At War at Home

2010-09-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

By Stacy Bannerman
The Women's Media Center

The Veteran Affairs Department defines a service-connected disability as “an illness or injury incurred in or aggravated by military service.” As author and advocate Stacy Bannerman argues, the military spouses of those injured are on their own when it comes to treatment.

I was running on a treadmill a few weeks after my husband’s brigade got their orders for a second deployment to Iraq. The military and family life consultant suggested I exercise more and practice deep breathing—it would help reduce stress and anxiety, and provide positive self-care skills for another year of having my husband at war. Maybe I shouldn’t have been doing them at the same time. She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I did ask if she had ever been through a deployment herself. Nope. She was a civilian, had no idea what it was like.

So I run and I breathe, increasing the speed and incline, running for my husband’s life, until I am bawling on the treadmill. And I can’t stop it—any of it. I can’t stop running, or sobbing, or him from being gone again. I can’t stop another endless year of isolation from family, friends, and community. One more year of double- and triple-checking doors I know I locked—something I never did before.

I can’t halt the coming 48 weeks of night recon for strange cars on my street, and how my heart skips a beat when I see a dark, unfamiliar vehicle cruising toward the house. I hate myself for this, all of it: the worry, weakness, and fear—and the anger that the service-related injuries of military spouses are still being ignored.

Suicide, anxiety, severe depression, stress disorders, adjustment disorders, sleep disorders, anger management issues, and potentially life-threatening social isolation, hopelessness, and despair aren’t just for veterans anymore. Welcome to the reality of the 21st century military spouse, nearly half of whom have reported that their mental health suffered during their spouse’s deployment. Here’s what one of them said when she testified before the Oregon State Joint Veteran’s Committees this May:

I wish I could sit here before you today, and tell you that having been in my husbands shoes as a deployed Marine, that this made my personal experience with Stephan’s first deployment easier in some way…but I can’t. Being the family member of a deployed service member is far, far, more difficult than being the one deployed.

At a town hall meeting in June, Deborah Mullen, wife of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed the acute mental health problems affecting military families. Although mental health issues have been well researched and targeted treatments developed for those returning from war, documentation and tailored treatments for military families, particularly spouses, is scarce.

Deborah Mullen said that a lot of the spouses of active-duty personnel tell her they suffer “depression, anxiety, sleeplessness and anger… [and are] literally unable to get up in the morning and get their children to school.”

According to the Preliminary Assessment of Readjustment Needs of Military Personnel, Veterans, and Their Families (National Academy of Sciences, 2010):

[S]tudies have suggested that spouses … appear to develop mental anxiety or trauma as a result of experiences prior to, during, and after the service member’s deployment. (Mansfield, et.al., 2010)… According to both broad and strict screening criteria, spouses and service members reported similar levels of major depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

The military offers on-line counseling, but I am already isolated enough. Pounding out on my keyboard how I feel to someone who, for all I know, could very well be the mental health equivalent of the Psychic Friends Network is not that appealing. But we can get drugs, and a lot of us have. So have our kids. The number of military kids who have sought outpatient mental health counseling has doubled since 2003, and parental distress in the non-deployed spouse is one of the main predictors of depression in military children.

Military spouses are the hub of the military family—we support our soldiers during deployment, take care of the kids, and are the primary advocates and unpaid caregivers of our veterans. Nearly 70 percent of us also hold down jobs. If there’s an Army of One, it’s not the soldier, with all of his tools, troops, training, and support; it’s the military spouse.

I am tired of hearing about the uncanny resilience of the military spouse, as if I, somehow, have failed by not emerging unscathed from seven years of war, and more than three years without my husband. Rubber bands are resilient, too, but with time and use, they lose their ability to hold what they once did. When they are stretched beyond their limits, they snap. And so it has been for the military spouses who have committed or attempted suicide in the past few years.

By all indicators, military spouses are suffering significant service-connected disabilities, but there are few culturally specific programs tailored to meet our needs, and the VA doesn’t have a mandate to serve spouses of veterans.

I got civilian counseling and a prescription, and they gave me a basement, but I had to build my own steps out. I couldn’t find them in any of the booklets, brochures, or PowerPoint presentations that the military provided. Those documents told me what to expect from—and how to care for—my soldier/veteran, but offered very little for dealing with my own service-related injuries. I had to research and learn through trial and error what I needed to live through— the war. Because what I didn’t need was to be running harder and faster all by myself on a treadmill that was taking me nowhere.

The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author alone and do not represent WMC. WMC is a 501(c)(3) organization and does not endorse candidates.

UN: Replace Rhetoric With Action on Disability Rights

2010-09-17T15:21:00.001-07:00

Include Persons With Disabilities in Planning and Implementation

August 31, 2010
Human Rights Watch

(New York) - Governments meeting at the United Nations this week to discuss implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) should focus on effective strategies and good practices that benefit persons with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. The convention went into effect two years ago.

"If governments are serious about their commitment to people with disabilities, they need to turn the laws and policies on paper into meaningful programs and services on the ground," said Shantha Rau Barriga, researcher and advocate on disability rights at Human Rights Watch. "Efforts will fall short unless governments include people with disabilities in planning for these programs and monitoring them."

The issues on the agenda of the meeting, which takes place from September 1-3, 2010, include the right to education and the right to live in the community. Both require comprehensive national plans and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that these rights are realized, Human Rights Watch said.

Also on the agenda is the election of 12 members to the Committee of Experts, the international treaty monitoring body that oversees implementation of the convention and handles individuals' complaints of violations under the treaty. Human Rights Watch calls on all governments to elect candidates based on their qualifications and expertise, instead of making political deals.

"The committee needs experts who understand the real challenges that people with all types of disabilities experience and who have no ties to the government. Independence is key for this committee to do its job well," Barriga said.

As part of the conference, Human Rights Watch is organizing an expert panel on September 1, 2010, on the experiences of women with disabilities in Argentina, India, and Uganda. Speakers include advocates from Human Rights Watch, Shanta Memorial Rehabilitation Centre in India, and BlueLaw International LLP.

Civil society groups, including representatives of disabled persons' organizations from around the world, will attend the three-day meeting. Disabled persons' organizations were involved in drafting the treaty and have an important role in implementing and monitoring it, to ensure that the perspectives of persons with disabilities are included.

Human Rights Watch has done research on disability rights issues in several countries. A forthcoming report shows that thousands of people with intellectual or mental disabilities in Croatia are forced to live in long-term residential institutions that strip residents of privacy and autonomy. The number of institutions in Croatia is growing despite government promises to provide community housing and support services.

A report released last week by Human Rights Watch documents rampant stigma and isolation, sexual and gender-based violence, and lack of necessary medical care for women with disabilities in northern Uganda. The report shows that the government and international humanitarian actors have failed to consider the needs of women with disabilities in reconstruction efforts after the long and brutal conflict in the northern region. Delegates at the UN meeting this week will discuss the protection and safety of persons with disabilities during armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and natural disasters.

Another recent Human Rights Watch report describes how women and girls with disabilities in Argentina do not have access to reproductive health care due to logistical barriers and stigma. The convention specifically requires governments to provide people with disabilities with the same quality and standard of health care, including sexual and reproductive health care, as are available to everyone else.

To date, 90 countries have ratified the CRPD. Human Rights Watch calls on all remaining countries to ratify the treaty and its Optional Protocol, which provides for a mechanism for individuals to submit complaints of treaty violations. The convention includes provisions on the right to be free from discrimination and the rights to liberty, access to justice, education, employment, and equal recognition before the law, among others. It also has specific protections for women and children with disabilities.

Retirement planning and disability

2010-09-17T13:59:00.001-07:00

By Jennie L. Phipps · Bankrate.com
Friday, September 17

Disability throws a wrench into many people's retirement planning. Three in 10 workers will become too disabled to work before they are ready for retirement, the Social Security Administration calculates. A study by Northwestern Mutual, which sells annuities and disability insurance, finds that a two-year disability at the age of 50 can reduce total investment accumulation by 30 percent at the retirement age of 65.

Applications for Social Security Disability payments rose 21 percent in 2008 and 2009 as jobs disappeared, according to Social Security Administration statistics.

Essentially, Social Security Disability expedites a recipient's regular Social Security payments. Once you qualify, you get the payment you would have received had you been full retirement age, 66 for most people not already collecting.

The average amount received is about $1,000 per month. To qualify, you have to prove that you are unable to work at any job for at least one year.

Sheri Abrams, an attorney who specializes in disability law at Needham Mitnick & Pollack in Falls Church, Va., says applying for Social Security Disability is the hardest part. According to figures she provides, nationally, about 75 percent of all applicants are denied initially and about 90 percent are denied at the first appeal stage -- reconsideration. Of those who won't take no for an answer, about 70 percent ultimately get benefits, but the whole process can take as long as four years and that's enough time to blow through all your savings and, maybe, your house.

Having a disability insurance policy other than Social Security is smart. If you are covered by a disability policy at work, that's good. If your employer offers to let you buy a group policy through payroll deductions, it's certainly worth considering. Generally, this is the least expensive self-pay option. If you're self employed, there are many policies available, but shop carefully -- prices and benefits vary greatly.

If you find yourself needing to file for Social Security Disability, many attorneys will take your case on a contingency basis, charging you 25 percent of the accumulated past-due benefit, which will be paid in a lump sum when you are approved. If you don't get good tax advice as well, you also may lose a large part of that lump sum to Uncle Sam.

None of this is good news for anyone's retirement planning, but forewarned is forearmed.

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

2010-09-02T16:24:00.001-07:00

REUTERS
By Michael Holden Michael Holden
Thu Sep 2

LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

What the Geron stem cell trials mean to me

2010-08-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

By Tiffiny Carlson
August 5, 2010
EasyStand Blog

If you’ve glanced at the news lately, it seems the time is nigh for a spinal cord injury (SCI) cure. What’s the world buzzing about? The FDA giving Geron (a bio-med corporation in California) the go-ahead to begin the first ever human trials in the United States using embryonic stem cells. Newly paralyzed individuals (with no longer than 2 week old injuries) will be the first test subjects, and there’s a lot of hope riding on them.

Where do I, someone who’s been paralyzed for 17 years, fit into all of this? Should I be doubling over in excitement, hinging my hope for a better life on whether this first-of-it’s-kind human trial succeeds? I would, if it were 1994 – 1996; those couple years after my injury where all I could do was think about what I had lost and dreaming (sometimes obsessively) of walking (and pirouetting and kicking and skipping…) again; a period where being paralyzed seemed like the worst thing in the world (I was a teen at the time and already suffering from enough teenage angst).

Or should I eschew the human trials altogether and be offended they think I need fixing in the first place? Like one of those people who thank God for their injury? No…that’s not my style. I’m too much of an honest gal to fully get on the “This Ain’t That Bad” train. Quadriplegia is a hard life. I’ll never get used to it and I’ll never prefer it over a fully-functioning body. But that doesn’t mean I still can’t be happy and not obsess about a precarious study happening 1,500 miles away.

After much contemplation, I think the key word here is Balance. Learning how to focus on the here-now (and what I can control) vs. still having hope and not becoming a paralyzed ninny. I’m striving for the perfect combination of being a realist vs. being a dreamer, and I think now more than ever before this two-handed approach is vital.

I still do my range of motion religiously morning and night, and use my standing frame several times a week (Dr. Wise Young recommends 1-2 hrs/day in order to keep your bones in walkable condition), but my chance of being a test subject is slim. Why? My ancient SCI status. I have 17 years worth of scar tissue building up around my injury site. One look at my stats and I’m quite sure I’d be about 500,000th on the list. Personally, I think I’d be a great subject (my body heals, adapts fast), but my opinion on my vitae would be swiftly trumped by the numbers/years card.

If it’s one thing I’ve learned since 1993, it’s that the years go by fast. Damn fast. It’s 2010 and my teens, my 20’s, and even my 30th year are now over. Experiences are flying by left and right and I refuse to miss out just because I can’t walk. Don’t get me wrong, I‘m still thrilled at these exciting research developments. So great! I have hope. It’s vital for the human condition. I hope my birthday party next week rules, I hope to get married one day, and yes, I really really hope Geron succeeds.

I’m just not going to let my grits cool as I wait.

European Citizen Award 2008

2010-07-09T18:48:00.001-07:00

European Citizen Award goes to Stockholm
Laureate is Dr Adolf Ratzka from the Independent Living Institute

One day after Sweden assumed the EU Presidency, Stefan Prystawik, EU Coordinator of the European Anti-Discrimination Council - EAC will come to Stockholm to present the 2008 European Citizen Award to Dr Adolf Ratzka of the Independent Living Institute.

The European Anti-Discrimination Council dedicates its annual European Citizen Award to honor extraordinary achievements with eliminating
discriminatory living conditions over an extended period of time by outstanding members of society. Adolf Ratzka received the award in 2008, honoring his successful initiatives for a self-determined life of persons with disabilities over
many decades.

Silvia Schmidt, Member of the German Parliament and Chargée d’Affaires for Disabled Citizens with the SPD governing coalition
party received the 2007 European Citizen Award. It was also Silvia Schmidt, who originally approached the EAC cabinet, the decision making body on the Citizen Award in London – with the proposal to consider Dr Ratzka for the highest recognition the EAC has to offer.

Following short deliberations it turned out that Dr Ratzka was indeed a European Citizen, in fact a Citizen of the World (although both are not
prerogatives for receiving the award) in short – a person well worth honoring.

Amongst the things he is renowned for, he has been since 1983 Father of the Swedish Independent Living movement by initiating and leading the pilot project on personal assistance which was to become the model for the Swedish Personal Assistance Act of 1994. In recognition of his role in the reform the Minister of Social Affairs at the time, Mr Bengt Westerberg, invited Dr Ratzka to be present in Parliament when the Act was voted into law. Dr Ratzka’s commitment Personal Assistance is the key to Independent Living and 1989 Founding chair of ENIL, the European Network on Independent Living which works for disabled citizens’ personal and political power, for self-determination and against discrimination.

1990-1994 Four years of legal battle, up to the highest court, against the City of Stockholm which refused him and his wife the right to adopt a
child, solely and explicitly on the grounds of his disability. Their victory has been an example and encouragement for dozens of couples in similar circumstances since.

1996-1998 work in the Slovak Republic under a EU PHARE contract for introducing mainstream accessible taxi services and personal assistance in
the country. Both pilot projects impacted the country’s legislation.

1999 recognized by TIME magazine as European visionary for the new millennium mainly for his pioneering work for cash payments replacing
services in kind thereby promoting disabled people’s right to self-determination and freedom of choice.

Since the middle of the 1980s Dr Ratzka has been invited numerous times by organizations, government bodies and universities in over thirty countries in Europe and beyond to lecture, conduct workshops and to cooperate in projects focusing on the requirements for de-institutionalization of persons with disabilities such as accessibility, personal assistance and peer support.

The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday, July 2 2009.

How We're Failing Our Female Veterans

2010-07-02T14:37:00.001-07:00

June Moss, 38, an army veteran who served for a decade and half around the world now suffers from PTSD.

Photograph by Robyn Twomey for TIME

The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010, print and iPad editions of TIME.

June Moss, 39, maneuvered a Humvee around charred corpses and still smoking shrapnel in Iraq in 2003. The Army driver and mechanic once watched a Black Hawk helicopter mow down insurgents a few hundred yards away. But when she called her father to tell him how tough things were, he didn't get it. "He was kind of like, 'Oh, well, you just fix the trucks. You don't have to worry about nothing,' " she recalls. "I don't know where people get the idea that women aren't out there, they don't see anything, they're just support." At home, after she was discharged from the military but before she was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the single mother couldn't find a job that paid enough to support her and two children. In 2005 her house went into foreclosure, and the next year she and her kids became homeless — a predicament made more painful by the fact that of the nearly 500 community homeless shelters funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), only seven provide accommodations specifically for families. That year, Moss tried to kill herself.
(See pictures of June Moss.)

More than 230,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years. Women account for 15% of the active-duty military. But when they arrive back home, become civilians once again and start seeking help for PTSD, musculoskeletal problems, reproductive disorders and other maladies, they are shuffled into a veterans' hospital system that can feel like a relic from World War I, back when the phrases our soldiers and our boys were interchangeable. The number of female veterans being treated by the VA has more than doubled since 2004 and is expected to double again by 2015. The VA, which did not even start providing medical and mental-health services to women until 1988, is struggling to add resources and train its staff to handle the growing case file of female vets.
(See pictures of an Army town coping with PTSD.)

Some of female veterans' health care needs — pap smears, mammograms, etc. — are more obvious than others. Treatment for mental-health issues, autoimmune disorders and even high cholesterol can be hampered by a doctor who is not accustomed to female patients. To increase clinical staff's proficiency in women's health, the VA has trained more than 400 health care providers in the past two years through mini-residencies featuring 2½ days of presentations from women's-health experts. Last year the VA finished installing a full-time women's veteran program manager at each of its 144 hospitals. The VA is also starting to ramp up women-only treatment centers like the one Moss frequents in Menlo Park, Calif., and to add all-female therapy groups, especially for sexual-assault survivors.

A bill spearheaded by Washington Senator Patty Murray — and signed into law in May — goes even further, authorizing, among other things, a report to Congress on the effects the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had on female veterans' physical, mental and reproductive health. "Women veterans have earned their stripes. They have earned their benefits," says Murray. "They shouldn't have to feel like they're asking for a handout."

In July the VA will hold a forum at Arlington National Cemetery to discuss the quality of care for female veterans and ways to improve access. For now, too few women have figured out how to navigate the byzantine system. Moss is one of them. She works in chaplain services at a VA hospital near the clinic where she sees a therapist once a week. She says she no longer feels, as she did when she first got home from Iraq, "like a shell of a person." She hugs her kids again. She enjoys what she calls "me time" at the hairdresser. She's even getting married in August, to a former Marine who, as she puts it, "understands PTSD." "It's not just being brave on the battlefield," she says of being a veteran. "You have to be brave in civilian life too."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2000829,00.html#ixzz0sYzQUF2x

Shop offers motorcyle for disabled riders

2010-07-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Karen Meyer
More: Bio, News Team
ABC 7 News

June 20, 2010 (VILLA PARK, Ill.) (WLS) -- Earlier this year, the first wheelchair-accessible motorcycle was introduced to bike lovers in the Chicago area.

It is a 1200 series BMW with a lot of power and makes a perfect Father's Day gift.

The 'Conquest' is the name of the wheelchair-accessible motorcycle. It can be yours for $57,000.

Villa Park's Mobility Works of Chicago is the only local shop selling the Conquest.

"We've actually got 30 in production," said Robert Baumgartener, the mobility consultant.

"It comes in black and silver. You can even do some custom color so we can match it to your wheelchair or whatever your color preference is," Baumgartener said.

The Conquest is a highly adapted vehicle. It has a ramp that goes up and down for wheelchair access, hand operating gears and push button handbrakes. It's wider and longer than a standard motorcycle but has the same speed options.

Since it is a new product, Mobility Works of Chicago will set up test driving.

"Illinois requires that any bike rider has a motorcycle license. So, they take a standard test; they'll actually even get on a bike and take a test track. Or better yet, if you've never driven a bike and you've wanted to for years, you go to school, and they'll train you on the bike, and you get your license after that. That's the easiest way," said Baumgartener.

Mobility Conquest representative Mark Roberts recommends that drivers have a strong upper body.

"Chances are, they've had an injury from the waist down, but they have a strong upper body and full use of both hands. Interestingly, we're also having people with no disabilities want to buy the motorcycle just because of the way it looks. We also have some older consumers who may have had hip injury or a knee injury and they can't ride their Harley anymore," Roberts said.

"You can get a custom Harley bike, I think, around 42 to 45,000, but you have to have it adapted so you don't shift with your legs. So, this bike is about $10, 000 more than a custom Harley bike that I've seen in some show rooms," said Roberts.

Sergio Lopez became disabled four years ago.

"I was with the U.S. Army in Iraq, and I was attacked by an IED. My vehicle came under attack, and after an IED explosion, I lost both of my legs," Lopez said.

ABC7 was there the first time he ever rode a motorcycle.

"It's awesome. It's an amazing vehicle. It looks like it was put together amazingly well. I get in my chair, I pull myself very effortlessly, and it's pretty much get on and ride. It's pretty simple, and it's very well made," He said.

"I tell people it's not about the product, it's about the passion. We're helping people reconnect with the passion that they have. So, for a cyclist, a motorcycle, a biker, this is their boat. This is their sail boat. This is what they do to get adrenaline and the excitement in their life," Roberts said.

Bike lovers with physical disabilities, your dream has come true.

For more information go to www.mobilityworks.com.

(Copyright ©2010 WLS-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

SPD to use federal grant to help mentally ill people

2010-05-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

By CHRIS GRYGIEL
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Seattle will use a $250,000 federal grant to try to better deal with mentally unstable people on city streets.

"I think we all know this is an issue of concern to residents of our city," Mayor Mike McGinn said Tuesday.

McGinn was joined at a news conference by Interim Police Chief John Diaz. They said the city would use the funds from a Justice Assistance Grant to pay for the two-year program, which would allow the hiring of a mental health professional to work with police. "There are people out there in need," Diaz said.

City police log about 130 contacts per week with people showing signs of mental illness, the city says.

The Crisis Intervention Team an Mental Health Partnership Pilot Project will work to find treatment or other options for certain mentally unstable people outside the criminal justice system, which would help the people in question and perhaps save the city money, McGinn and Diaz said.

"The department will have qualified professionals who will be able to respond," McGinn said. "They'll be able to go out to the scene and intervene....this will give the police another tool."

Click here to read a 2008 story by seattlepi.com reporter Scott Gutierrez about a Seattle police unit that works with the mentally ill.

Chris Grygiel can be reached at 206-448-8363 or chrisgrygiel@seattlepi.com. Follow Chris on Twitter at twitter.com/seattlepolitics.

Yomi Wrong picks up disabled-rights fight

2010-05-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

SFGate
The San Francisco Chronicle
May 9 2010

(05-10) 09:58 PDT BERKELEY -- Yomi Wrong is doing something right. Wrong, 38, recently took over the helm at Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, the birthplace of the disability rights movement, on the eve of its move from a former car dealership on Telegraph Avenue to the swank Ed Roberts Campus across town. A former reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, Wrong has a congenital condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, and uses a wheelchair. She spoke recently to Chronicle reporter Carolyn Jones.

Q: What's the most pressing issue in the disability rights movement these days?

A: State and county budget cuts. People with disabilities and seniors are disproportionately hit the hardest, particularly because of dramatic cuts expected to In Home Support Services, which allows thousands of disabled people to live independently instead of in institutions. Everyone's very concerned about this. I know we're trying to balance a budget, but it shouldn't happen on the backs of the people who can least afford it.

Q: When does the Center for Independent Living move to the Ed Roberts Campus?

A: September, hopefully. It will be wonderful to be in a state-of-the-art, universally designed building. We'll be surrounded by other disability rights organizations, some of which began as CIL programs, and we hope there'll be a lot of collaboration and natural synergy.

Q: What has CIL meant for you personally?

A: I realized very early in life that I've absolutely benefited from the disability rights struggle. The Americans with Disabilities Act passed when I was 18, and suddenly all kinds of doors opened for me. The ones that weren't open I was able to push, to gain access to education, a career and the means to live independently. Somehow I wanted to give back. There's so much work yet to be done.

This article appeared on page C-3 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

A Campaign Shows Signs of Progress Against Polio

2010-04-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: April 12, 2010
The New York Times

JOHANNESBURG — A decade after the world’s original deadline for eradicating polio, the most tenacious bastions of the crippling virus — Nigeria and India — have recently shown remarkable progress in halting its spread, giving even some of the antipolio campaign’s severest doubters hope that it may yet largely achieve its goal.

Health Guide: PoliomyelitisIn Nigeria, Muslim leaders in the north — who had allowed the disease to spread by halting polio vaccinations in 2003-4, based on rumors that the drops were part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls or spread the AIDS virus — now embrace the cause as their own. So far this year, only two children have been paralyzed by wild polio virus in Nigeria, compared with 123 during the same period last year, according to Nigerian and international health officials.

And in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — states that seemed unable to vanquish polio no matter how many times they vaccinated children — for the first time have not had a single case caused by the most virulent polio viral type for four months straight, World Health Organization officials said.

Globally, the number of new polio cases registered so far this year is down to 56 — a 75 percent drop from the same period last year, the W.H.O. said.

“We’ve never had so many things looking so positive across so many areas,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, director of the polio eradication drive for the World Health Organization.

Stephen L. Cochi, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “A 75 percent decline in a year is pretty remarkable and suggests we may be turning the corner.”

Both men were quick to caution that the hopeful developments could come undone, as they have before, and neither thinks polio can be wiped out before 2012.

But even some who had previously said that eradication of the wild polio virus could not be done are now saying it just may be possible. “A lot of progress has been made,” said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who helped conquer smallpox. “There is a chance they might be able to interrupt transmission.” But he cautioned that vaccine-derived polio virus might still be a problem.

The global public health system has a lot staked on the polio eradication drive. Since it began 22 years ago, more than 10 billion doses of vaccine have been dispensed and some $8.2 billion spent. Millions of cases of paralysis and death have been prevented by the vaccination campaigns, which have reduced the incidence of polio more than 99 percent.

The political support in Nigeria and the painstaking progress in India are both compelling turnarounds. In Nigeria, better ties with local leaders, improved management of health programs and a dash of Bill Gates’s celebrity helped the Muslim north adopt the polio cause, while in India viral detective work and a new focus on neglected areas and migrants have yielded results.

More than any other country, Nigeria has been a source of near despair for those devoted to polio eradication. Efforts have been hamstrung by a lack of political will and poorly run campaigns that missed huge numbers of children.

Nigeria has come under pressure from Muslim countries to do better. But international health officials credit much of its progress to the understated but effective leadership of Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, a Muslim who was raised in the north of the country and recruited in 2008 from the World Bank to lead the agency that manages primary health care and polio immunization.

Dr. Pate, whose predecessors were Christians from the south, cultivated a range of political, religious and traditional leaders in the north. He said that their concerns — that health campaigns emphasized polio over other diseases, leading them to suspect ulterior motives — had been neglected. So, he pitched the polio drives as a way to build momentum for broader improvements in public health.

He said he told them, “For whatever we’ve done, we ask for forgiveness.”

Dr. Pate also courted political support from the powerful state governors by deploying Mr. Gates, whose foundation has committed more than $700 million to fight polio globally, to meet them when he visited Nigeria on a polio mission in February 2009. “We could use him and his celebrity status to draw attention to the cause and get the governors to sign on,” Dr. Pate said.

But perhaps the most critical factor has been practical support from the traditional leaders of northern Nigeria. Naveed Sadozai, a medical officer with the World Health Organization, said these traditional structures operate down to the village and ward levels, are often more trusted than politicians, and can deliver results. The government made audio recordings of these leaders endorsing polio campaigns and broadcast them in 2009 on radio, reaching deep into rural areas.

By year’s end, polio cases had plunged. Only 28 of Nigeria’s 388 new cases in 2009 occurred in the last six months of that year, Dr. Pate said.

In India, polio trackers realized that the most persistent strain of the virus was hiding in a vast flood plain fed by the Kosi River in Bihar. After the monsoon rains ended and the waters receded, people flooded in to plant the fertile land. But there were no roads in this inaccessible area — and vaccinators were missing large numbers of children.

Dr. Hamid Jafari, who leads the World Health Organization’s polio effort in India, said the country mounted a complex operation to reach families in more than 200,000 clusters of mud huts there. Polio workers were provided with sleeping bags, water, life jackets and antimalarial bed nets. They traversed the muddy flood plain on foot, by boat and on motorcycles.

The antipolio effort also took aim at the shanties and slums where migrants live, to vaccinate the children of construction workers, farm laborers and other poor people who have journeyed to India’s great metropolises and rich agricultural areas in search of jobs.

Dr. Aylward, who leads the W.H.O. effort, says he is both excited and frustrated now. The effort has regained some of its lost momentum, he says, but it is $1.4 billion short of the $2.6 billion its organizers say is needed through 2012 to finish the job.

“I spend as much time in donor capitals as I do in infected countries,” he said. “We’re cutting corners and taking risks we should not be taking.”

Fighting to Aid the Mentally Ill in Prison

2010-02-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Creativity, innovation, and individuality are are responsible for much that we enjoy in life, from scientific inventions to the arts. However, people are ridiculed, ostracised, and punished - even murdered like Larry Neal was - for being different. Discrimination is prevalent against minorities, GLBT people, foreigners, obviously poor and uneducated people, and just about every new kid in a second grade class. Nothing is allowed except uniformity.

We are to conform. We are to think alike, dress alike, and react alike to all stimuli. Otherwise, we can expect to be punished. That is terribly wrong, because God loves diversity. He showed that throughout His creation by making every single person and thing different. No one even has the same fingerprint on two of her fingers! Diversity is good. But society doesn't tolerate diversity very well. This hurts people, and it hurts weak people worse. Acute mental patients CANNOT conform. Therefore, they are Tasered, gassed, warehoused in prisons sometimes without criminal charges, and some are killed. That is why you and I must STAND for those who cannot stand for themselves. We must SPEAK for those who have no voice, those who are shut away in solitary confinement prison cells because they are deemed to be "unacceptably different." We must share their pain and BE their solution.

Read a success story about CC's son in AIMI's discussions. William could be imprisoned right now just like Jeremy Smith is. Neither of them did any serious crime, but both acted inappropriately due to mental illness. Thank God William's mother was able to find him a good program in North Carolina where he is progressing. Jeremy Smith, on the other hand, is in solitary confinement in a California prison. William's progress - http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=17280&pst=854483 versus Jeremy Smith's regression while suffering in "the hole": Justice 4 Jeremy Petition - Lifelong schizophrenic in CA prison hole - http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/JusticeForJeremy
Thanks to everyone who shows compassion for human suffering.

I cannot tell you what your support for decriminalizing mental illness means to 1.25 million imprisoned psychiatric patients and their families. Please share information about our work at ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL ("AIMI") with your friends, in your blogs, and during your personal conversations at work, parties, and family gatherings. Although we are censored in mainstream media because our work threatens prison profiteers, word-of-mouth is a powerful medium.

Look at my line-up of articles at http://NowPublic.com/duo and at Care2 - http://www.care2.com/news/member/513396753?sort=submitted as well as my blog http://FreeSpeakBlog.blogspot.com and re-publish them in your blogs. Contact your representatives and ask them to support H.R. 619 to fund inpatient treatment for mentally ill people in crisis rather than imprisoning them.

AIMI is an avenue for us to channel our collective voice. Let us use it. Let us say loud and clear, CHANGE how mentally ill people in America are treated. We will NOT stand mute while they are imprisoned rather than treated for having a common, treatable health condition. We will not ignore their cries as they are being destroyed.
Please don't let Larry's death be in vain.

Blessings!
Mary Neal
ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL
http://www.Care2.com/c2c/group/AIMI
Mary Loves Justice, P.O. Box 153, Redan, GA 30074

--
Mary Neal's Google Profile - http://www.google.com/profiles/MaryLovesJustice - Get the RSS feed for my Care2 Sharebook at: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/rss.html/513396753/0/ - Get the RSS feed for my Twitter KOFFIETIME at http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/59790083.rss - Current, urgent justice issues from a laywoman's viewpoint at my primary blog http://FreeSpeakBlog.blogspot.com (the name is a joke, believe me) Recommended articles - http://topsy.com/site/freespeakblog.blogspot.com - Address: MaryLovesJustice, P.O. Box 153, Redan, GA 30074-0153

Revision to the bible of psychiatry, DSM, could introduce new mental disorders

2010-02-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Children who throw too many tantrums could be diagnosed with "temper dysregulation with dysphoria." Teenagers who are particularly eccentric might be candidates for treatment for "psychosis risk syndrome." Men who are just way too interested in sex face being labeled as suffering from "hypersexual disorder."

These are among dozens of proposals being unveiled Wednesday by the American Psychiatric Association in the first complete revision since 1994 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or "DSM" -- the massive tome that has served as the bible for modern psychiatry for more than half a century.

The product of more than a decade of work by hundreds of experts, the proposed revisions are designed to bring the best scientific evidence to bear on psychiatric diagnoses and could have far-reaching implications, including determining who gets diagnosed as mentally ill, who should get powerful psychotropic drugs, and whether and how much insurance companies will pay for care.

"It not only determines how mental disorders are diagnosed, it can impact how people see themselves and how we see each other," said Alan Schatzberg, the association's president. "It influences how research is conducted as well as what is researched. . . . It affects legal matters, industry and government programs."

The proposals will be debated in an intense process over the next two years, with potentially billions of dollars at stake for pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, government health plans, doctors, researchers and patient advocacy groups.

But perhaps more important, the outcome will help shape which emotions, behaviors, thoughts and personality traits society considers part of the natural spectrum of the human persona and which are considered pathological, requiring treatment and possibly even criminal punishment.

Even before being made public, the proposed changes have been the subject of sometimes bitter debate over whether the process was based on solid scientific evidence and was adequately shielded from influence by the pharmaceutical industry, and whether some critics were driven by financial interests in maintaining the old diagnostic criteria.

Supporters argue that the revisions would make diagnoses more accurate, creating more useful and precise definitions and sometimes reducing the number of psychiatric labels. For example, "autistic disorder" and "Asperger's disorder" would be replaced with a new, single category called "autism spectrum disorders." Critics, however, fear the new diagnoses could unnecessarily stigmatize many people and lead to the unnecessary use of psychiatric medications that can sometimes produce serious side effects.

"By massively pathologizing people under these categories, you tend to put them on an automatic path to medication, even if they are experiencing normal distress," said Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor of social work and psychiatry at New York University.

After being posted on the Internet, which of the proposed changes become final will be determined by a public comment period that will last until April 20, studies to validate some of the changes, further review, and votes by the association's Board of Trustees and Assembly. A final version is expected to be released by May 2013.

"We're mindful of the concern that we don't want to overdiagnose," Schatzberg told reporters during a telephone briefing Tuesday. "We want to, in fact, get an accurate assessment of what the degree of psychopathology might be in the culture."

Among the concerns are proposals to create "risk syndromes" in the hopes that early diagnosis and treatment will stave off the full-blown conditions. For example, the proposals would create a "psychosis risk syndrome" for people who have mild symptoms found in psychotic disorders, such as "excessive suspicion, delusions and disorganized speech or behavior."

"There will be adolescents who are a little odd and have funny ideas, and this will label them as pre-psychotic," said Robert Spitzer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the DSM revision process.

Similarly, a proposal to create a new condition for people at risk for dementia could cause unnecessary anxiety, treatment and other harms, critics said.

"These people will never get long-term-care insurance if they have that on their chart," said Michael B. First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.

William Carpenter of the University of Maryland, who chaired the working group that made the risk syndrome recommendation, acknowledged those concerns but said that experts decided that the potential benefits of early intervention warranted the move.

Others expressed concern about the proposals to create new conditions such as "temper dysregulation with dysphoria," or TDD. Supporters say it is intended to counter a huge increase in the number children being treated for bipolar disorder by creating a more specific diagnosis, though critics argued that it would only compound the problem of overtreatment.

"They are close to treating the children like guinea pigs. I think that's appalling and outrageous," said Christopher Lane, author of "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness." "The APA should be moving to prevent such controversial practices, not encouraging them, as it is doing here."

In addition to classifying the symptoms of grief that many people experience after the death of a loved one as "depression," the proposals include adding "binge eating" and "gambling addiction" as bona fide psychiatric conditions; they also raise the possibility of making "Internet addiction" a future diagnosis. Some critics questioned the proposal to create a "hypersexual disorder."

"How many people with just healthy sex drives will be given that label?" First said.

Japan: Mentally ill prisoners face execution-new report

2010-02-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

amnesty.org.uk
10 Sept 2009

* World's longest-serving death row prisoner among those driven into mental illness by extreme prison regime

* Prisoners only find out on the morning that execution is to take place that day

* 'There are lots of ladies in the world, lots of animals ... Elephants, dragons. Everyone is living and feeling something. No way will I die' - Japanese death row prisoner

* Act now for Hakamada Iwao

Numerous prisoners on death row in Japan have been driven into mental illness by extremely harsh conditions yet almost no safeguards exist to prevent them still being executed in contravention of international law, said Amnesty International today (10 September).

Publishing a 72-page report - Hanging By A Thread: Mental Health And The Death Penalty in Japan - Amnesty called on the recently-elected Japanese government to impose an immediate moratorium on all further executions in the country. Japan is one of the few highly industrialised countries in the world still to retain capital punishment and last year it executed 15 prisoners, the highest number in the country for decades and one of the highest anywhere in the world.

102 prisoners are currently facing execution in Japan, with ages ranging from 26 to very elderly inmates (one is 85). Amnesty's report reveals that there is considerable evidence of prisoners succumbing to very serious mental illnesses due to prolonged periods facing execution in extremely harsh conditions. There are very few independent medico-legal assessments of even long-term death row prisoners in Japan and no inmate has ever been taken off death row in Japan for reasons of mental illness.

Death row prisoners in Japan do not know when they will be executed until the actual morning of the execution. Meanwhile prisoners are largely confined to isolation cells - they are not allowed to move around in their cells, but must remain seated at all times - and are prohibited from talking to other inmates or even making eye contact with guards. Televisions are forbidden, visits are limited and often denied, and very little contact with the outside world is permitted.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

'Japan's death row system is driving prisoners into the depths of mental illness but they are still being taken and hanged at only hours' notice in an utterly cruel fashion.

'The mental anguish of not knowing whether each day is to be your last on earth is terrible enough, but Japan's justice system also sees fit to bury its death row prisoners in the most punitive regime of silence, isolation and sheer non-existence imaginable.

'Rather than persist with a shameful capital punishment system the new Japanese government should immediately impose a moratorium on all further executions. Reforms to Japan's deeply flawed police interrogation system are also urgently needed, but halting executions must be the immediate priority.'

Under Japan's legal system criminal suspects may be held without legal representation in police detention (daiyo kangoku) for up to 23 days. In one case highlighted by Amnesty's report, Hakamada Iwao, 73, a former professional boxer who has now been on death row for 41 years (thought to be longer than any other person in the world), was arrested and questioned for 20 days without a lawyer. Mr Hakamada, who has always maintained his innocence - and has even later won support in this by a judge from his original trial - was found guilty of murder based partly on allegedly coerced confessions made during his police detention.

For around 30 years Mr Hakamada has exhibited signs of mental illness on death row. Yet, despite a long history of disordered behaviour, including years of sending letters to his sister described as 'strange weird nonsensical' and also refusing all visits for 12 years, Mr Hakamada was only given short expert medical assessments as recently as 2007 and 2008. In one of these he was asked if he understood what an execution was. He replied:

'The wisdom never dies. On that kind of wisdom, this is wisdom. It never dies. There are lots of ladies in the world, lots of animals. Everyone is living and feeling something. Elephants, dragons. No way will I die ... I won't die. There's no one who will die. Somewhere around God you can live.'

Hakamada has recently been described as suffering from 'institutional psychosis' by one psychiatrist and as being in a 'state of insanity' by another. Other clearly delusional death row prisoners have talked of being dominated by computers and radio waves, of having purple blood, of having killed a 'cyborg' or a 'doll' rather than a human being, and of having received 'prize money' from the Japanese Prime Minister, the US President and 'a famous US film actress'. Another prisoner - Muramatsu Sei-ichiro, who has been on death row since 1985 - has been described by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations as 'suffering from schizophrenia'; the Japanese Justice Ministry has been informed of this yet he remains at risk of execution.

Amnesty's report emphasises that there is 'marked resistance' by the Japanese prison authorities to any measures considered liable to affect an inmate's 'calm state of mind'. This rationale is used to justify a wide range of draconian restrictions, including not telling prisoners about their execution dates and denying visits from lawyers, independent psychiatrists and NGOs. Earlier this year Amnesty was itself denied permission to visit Hakamada Iwao on death row in the Tokyo Detention House.

Alistair Carmichael MP, who chairs the parliamentary group for the abolition of the death penalty and has campaigned on Mr Hakamada's case and visited Japan as part of an Amnesty delegation to the country, said:

'Having been to Japan to see for myself the destructive effects of its incredibly secretive capital punishment system I feel strongly that the British government should now press for a death penalty moratorium from the newly-installed Japanese administration. The time is surely right for a change on this in Japan.

'In the case of Hakamada Iwao, meeting one of his former trial judges convinced me of Mr Hakamada's likely innocence and meeting his sister brought home to me the calamitous effect of death row on Mr Hakamada's mental health. There is no way on earth Japan should ever execute this man.

'Hakamada Iwao needs expert medical treatment, not further mental torture on death row.'

Read the full report: 'Hanging by a thread: Mental health and the death penalty in Japan' (PDF)

Fish oil supplements 'beat psychotic mental illness'

2010-02-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

BBC News
Tues Feb 2, 2010

Taking a daily fish oil capsule can stave off mental illness in those at highest risk, trial findings suggest.

A three-month course of the supplement appeared to be as effective as drugs, cutting the rate of psychotic illness like schizophrenia by a quarter.

The researchers believe it is the omega-3 in fish oil - already hailed for promoting healthy hearts - that has beneficial effects in the brain.

A "natural" remedy would be welcomed, Archives of General Psychiatry says.

"The finding that treatment with a natural substance may prevent, or at least delay, the onset of psychotic disorder gives hope that there may be alternatives to antipsychotic drugs," the study authors said.

Antipsychotic drugs are potent and can have serious side effects, which puts some people off taking them.

Fish oil supplements, on the other hand, are generally well tolerated and easy to take, say the scientists.

The international team from Austria, Australia and Switzerland tested the treatment in 81 people deemed to be at particularly high risk of developing psychosis.

Natural choice

Their high risk was down to a strong family history of schizophrenia, or similar disorders, or them already showing mild symptoms of these conditions themselves.

For the test, half of the individuals took fish oil supplements (1.2 grams of omega-3 fatty acids) for 12 weeks, while the other half took only a dummy pill. Neither group knew which treatment they were receiving.

Dr Paul Amminger and his team followed the groups for a year to see how many, if any, went on to develop illness.

Two in the fish oil group developed a psychotic disorder compared to 11 in the placebo group.

Based on the results, the investigators estimate that one high-risk adult could be protected from developing psychosis for every four treated over a year.

They believe the omega-3 fatty acids found in the supplements may alter brain signalling in the brain with beneficial effects.

Alison Cobb, of the mental health charity Mind, said: "If young people can be treated successfully with fish oils, this is hugely preferable to treating them with antipsychotics, which come with a range of problems from weight gain to sexual dysfunction, whereas omega-3s are actually beneficial to their general state of health.

"These are promising results and more research is needed to show if omega-3s could be an alternative to antipsychotics in the long term."

Ambidextrous kids more prone to mental issues

2010-01-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

Ease with both hands also tied to language, academic problems, study says.

By Jeanna Bryner
MSNBC News
January 25 2010

Children who are ambidextrous, using either hand with the same ease, may be more likely to have mental health, language and academic problems than their peers, according to a new study.

The researchers say the findings may help teachers and health professionals identify children who are particularly at risk of developing these problems.

The researchers aren't sure what is behind this link, though they suggest differences in the brain between ambidextrous individuals and those who have a dominant hand may play a role. In fact, scientists aren't sure why some people can use both hands equally well (with no dominant hand), a skill also known as mixed-handedness.

They also warn that since the phenomenon is rare, with just one out of every 100 people being mixed-handed, the study only focused on a small group of these individuals.

"But our results are statistically and clinically significant," said lead researcher Alina Rodriguez of the Imperial College London. "That said, our results should not be taken to mean that all children who are mixed-handed will have problems at school or develop ADHD. We found that mixed-handed children and adolescents were at a higher risk of having certain problems, but we'd like to stress that most of the mixed-handed children we followed didn't have any of these difficulties."

The study is detailed in the most recent issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Handedness and language
The study involved nearly 8,000 children in Northern Finland, 87 of whom were mixed-handed, who completed questionnaires at ages 7 and 8, and again at 15 and 16. Since 90 percent of the population is right-handed, they compared both ambidextrous and left-handed individuals to this norm — right-handedness.

Parents and teachers also completed questionnaires regarding the 8-year-olds' language abilities, scholastic performance and behavior. Teachers specifically reported whether children had problems with reading, writing or mathematics, and rated academic performance as below average, average or above average.

For all variables except math, left-handed individuals showed no problems compared with their right-handed peers. For math, at ages 7 and 8, left-handers were 30 percent more likely to have problems compared with right-handers. And ambidextrous children were nearly 90 percent more likely than right-handers to have these math problems.

Results also showed the ambidextrous 7 and 8-olds were twice as likely as their right-handed peers to have language difficulties and to perform poorly in school.

By age 15 or 16, mixed-handed adolescents were also at twice the risk of having symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). And those ambidextrous teens with ADHD had more severe symptoms than their right-handed counterparts.

The mixed-handed teens reported having greater difficulties with language than left- or right-handed peers.

Brain hemisphere in charge
Here's how the link might work: Scientists know handedness is linked to the hemispheres of the brain. For instance, studies have shown that in right-handed individuals, the brain's left hemisphere is more dominant.

"Handedness is seen as a proxy for how the brain is functioning, and it's not a perfect measurement. A more accurate method would be to use fMRI [magnetic resonance imaging] scanning, but this isn't possible in a large-scale study," Rodriguez told LiveScience.

"All we can say from this is that they have an atypical brain lateralization; that just means the brain circuitry and function is likely to differ from the normal pattern," seen in right-handed individuals, she said.

And the right hemisphere, for instance, might not function in the same way for ambidextrous individuals as it does for right-handed individuals, Rodriguez said. That could explain the association with ADHD, as one study has shown that those with ADHD have difficulties processing information normally processed in the right hemisphere of the brain.

The results would likely extend beyond Finland, the researchers say. "There is no reason to believe that American children would behave in any other way as the children in this study," Rodriguez said.

The research was funded by the Academy of Finland, the Sigrid Juselius Foundation, Thule Institute, University of Oulu, and the National Institute of Mental Health. Rodriguez received support from VINNMER.

Americans with Disabilities Act

2010-01-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

The American Cancer Society does not offer legal advice. This information is given only to provide general background in this area of the law.

What is the Americans with Disabilities Act?

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) gives civil rights protections to people with disabilities. It can help people with disabilities gain equal opportunity in:

employment
public accommodations
transportation
state and local government services
telecommunications
What is a disability under ADA?

The Americans with Disabilities Act may apply to you if:

You have a physical or mental problem that substantially limits one or more of your "major life activities"
You have a record of having had such a problem in the past.
Other people think you have such a problem, even if you do not actually have it.

On January 1, 2009, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 went into effect. This new Act made some major changes to the way the definition of disability has been interpreted under ADA in the past.

Some of the "major life activities" covered by ADA include but are not limited to caring for yourself, doing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working.

The 2008 amendment also includes major body functions, including but not limited to functions of the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, bowel, bladder, neurological, brain, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, and reproductive functions. This change can help people with cancer, since they often had a hard time meeting the definition of disability.

Questions and answers about employment discrimination

The next part of this document deals only with employment discrimination, a potential problem for people who have had cancer. The section of the ADA that applies to your job is called Title I. After the discussion of jobs, this document has information about the ADA in settings and situations other than your job. The sections of the ADA that apply to these different settings and situations are Titles II through V.

Does the ADA apply to my employer?

The law applies to employers with 15 or more employees. Job discrimination against people with disabilities by these employers is not legal if practiced by:

private employers
state and local governments
employment agencies
labor organizations
labor management committees

Employees of the U.S. government are not covered under the ADA. But they have the same protections under a different law, which is enforced by the Office of Federal Operations of the EEOC. To file a complaint, the federal employee must first contact an equal employment opportunity counselor at the agency in which they believe the discrimination took place. You can read more about these protections at: www.eeoc.gov/federal/employees.html.

Whom does the ADA cover?

In order to be protected by the ADA at work, you must be qualified and able to perform the "essential functions" of the job. See the section, "What are the essential functions of a job under ADA?"

Although the ADA defines the term disability, it does not include a list of conditions that are always considered disabilities. Instead, each case must be looked at on its own merits.

According to the United States Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), cancer is not always considered a disability. The ADA can help protect you when your cancer prevents or severely restricts you from doing the many tasks required for most people's daily lives, such as household chores, bathing, and brushing your teeth. But this kind of disability must be permanent or long-term.

The ADA also protects you if you had cancer in the past, but are doing well now. An employer may not discriminate against you because you used to be sick. The ADA prevents an employer from discriminating against you if he or she thinks you are sick, even if you aren't.

Which employment practices does the ADA cover?

If you have a disability and are qualified for a job, the ADA makes it unlawful for the employers noted above to discriminate in employment practices, such as:

recruiting and advertising for job openings
job application and hiring
training
job assignments
tenure
promotions
pay
benefits
leave
firing
lay off
all other employment-related activities, terms, conditions, and privileges

It is unlawful for an employer to take action against you because you ask for your rights under the ADA. The Act also protects you if you are discriminated against because of your family, business, social, or other type of relationship or association with a person who has a disability. That means an employer cannot discriminate against you because, say, your spouse has cancer.

Still, the ADA does not completely protect your job just because you have a disability and are qualified for the job. The employer can still fire or lay off (terminate) an employee with a disability for legitimate business reasons. For instance, a disabled worker would not be protected during downsizing.

What are the essential functions of a job under ADA?

If you have a disability, you must be qualified to perform the essential functions of a job in order to be protected from job discrimination by the ADA. Essential functions are the fundamental duties required by the job itself. An employer cannot refuse to hire you because your disability prevents you from performing duties that are not essential to the job.

But you must satisfy the employer's job requirements such as education, employment experience, skills, or licenses. Employers are not required to lower their job standards to accommodate someone with a disability. Nor do they have to provide personal-use items such as glasses or hearing aids.

You also must be able to perform the essential functions of the job either on your own or with reasonable accommodation (see definition in the next paragraph.)

What is reasonable accommodation under ADA?

Reasonable accommodation is how an employer adapts so that a disabled person can work. It usually refers to any change or adjustment to a job that lets an employee with a disability perform the essential functions of that job. It may also be a change in procedure that allows a qualified person to apply for a job. Finally, reasonable accommodation can be a change that allows a disabled person to enjoy benefits and privileges of employment the same as those enjoyed by employees without disabilities. Examples of reasonable accommodations may include:

providing equipment or devices, or adapting them so the person with a disability can use them
restructuring a job
changing work schedules
reassigning the employee to a vacant position
adjusting or modifying tests, training materials, or policies
providing readers and/or interpreters
making the workplace easy to get into and use by people with disabilities

An employer must accommodate a qualified applicant or employee with a disability unless the employer can show that making the accommodation would not be reasonable. That means that the accommodation would be very difficult or expensive (an "undue hardship" or unreasonable). These factors include the type and cost of the accommodation in relation to the size, resources, nature, and structure of the employer's operation.

In general, a larger employer would be expected to make accommodations requiring greater effort or expense than would be required of a smaller employer. A 2006 survey by the University of Iowa's Law, Health Policy, and Disability Center and reported by the Job Accommodation Network found that more than half of accommodations involved no cost at all. Of those that cost money, the average amount spent by the employer is around $500.

The facts of your case will help determine whether an accommodation will make it possible for you to do the job and, if so, what kind of accommodation is needed. Employers do not have to know about every kind of disability to know whether or how to make a reasonable accommodation. They are required to accommodate only those disabilities they know about and that do not cause too much hardship for the employer. The requirement is usually triggered by a request from a person with a disability, who often can suggest a workable accommodation.

Accommodations must be made on case-by-case basis because the type and extent of a disability and the requirements of the job will vary in each case. If you do not ask for an accommodation, the employer is not required to provide one. If you ask for an accommodation, but cannot suggest one that will work for you, you and the employer should work together to identify one. There are also many public and private resources that can provide help without cost. See the "Additional resources" section for some places to start.

What are employers allowed to ask job applicants with disabilities under ADA?

When you apply for a job, employers can't ask you if you are disabled. They also cannot ask about what type or how severe a disability you have. Employers also may not ask you if you have or have ever had cancer. But they can ask you about your ability to perform certain job tasks. An employer can ask you to describe or to show them how, with or without reasonable accommodation, you will perform the duties of the job.

If all new employees in similar jobs are required to have a medical exam, you may be offered a job conditionally, pending the results of a medical exam. The medical exams must be related to the job and in line with the employer's business needs. But an employer cannot reject you because of information the medical exam reveals about your disability unless the reasons for rejection are related to the job and necessary to conduct the employer's business. The results of all medical exams must be kept confidential. Medical files must be kept separate from work or personnel files.

Should I tell my employer I have a disability?

If you think you will need accommodation in order to apply for a job or to perform essential job functions, you should tell the employer that you have a disability. Employers are only required to provide reasonable accommodation if they know about the disability. Generally, the employee is the person who must tell the employer that an accommodation is needed. But you are not required to offer information about having cancer or another disability when you apply for a job.

Does my employer have to provide any accommodation I request?

No. There is some flexibility built into the reasonable accommodation requirement under the ADA. For example:

Employers can choose among effective accommodation options and do not always have to provide the accommodation that the employee requests.
Employers do not have to provide accommodations that pose an undue hardship for them.

Employers do not have to provide personal use items that are needed for daily activities both on and off the job.

Employers do not have to make an accommodation for a person who is not otherwise qualified for a position.

Employers do not have to remove essential functions, create new jobs, or lower production standards to accommodate a disabled employee.

Under ADA, does the employer have to hire a qualified applicant with a disability over other qualified applicants?

No. The ADA does not require an employer to hire a person with a disability over other applicants because the person has a disability. The ADA only prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. It makes it unlawful to refuse to hire a qualified applicant with a disability just because he or she is disabled. It's also unlawful to refuse to hire the qualified person because a reasonable accommodation is required to make it possible for this person to perform essential job functions.

Do I have to pay for it if I need reasonable accommodation under ADA?

Generally, no. The ADA requires the employer to provide the accommodation unless doing so would cause an undue hardship on the employer's business. If the cost of providing the needed accommodation would be too much, you must be given the choice of

providing the accommodation yourself, or
paying for the portion of the accommodation that causes the undue hardship.

An employer cannot make up the cost of providing a reasonable accommodation by lowering your salary or paying you less than other employees in similar jobs.

Under ADA, can an employer offer a health insurance policy that excludes coverage for pre-existing conditions?

Yes. The ADA does not affect pre-existing condition clauses in health insurance policies, even though such clauses may harm employees with disabilities more than other employees. But other laws may limit the employer's use of pre-existing condition exclusions for employees in group health plans. See our document, What is HIPAA? for more information.

If the health insurance offered by my employer does not cover all medical expenses related to my disability, does the company have to get extra coverage for me under ADA?

No. The ADA only requires an employer to provide employees with disabilities equal access to whatever health insurance coverage is offered to other employees. The same is true for employees with cancer or for employees who have family members with cancer or a history of cancer.

Under ADA, does an employer have to make non-work areas used by employees, such as cafeterias, lounges, or employer-provided transportation, accessible to people with disabilities?

Yes, unless making these changes would pose an undue hardship on the employer. Employers must accommodate the disabled person for all services, programs, and non-work facilities they provide, if the changes are reasonable. If making an existing facility accessible would be an undue hardship, the employer can provide a comparable facility that will enable a person with a disability to enjoy the same benefits and privileges of employment as those enjoyed by other employees, unless doing so also would be an undue hardship.

What agency enforces ADA job protections?

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), along with state and local civil rights enforcement agencies, enforces the part of the ADA that covers employment protection. Between 1992 and September 2008, 2.6% of the charges filed and resolved under the ADA involved people with cancer. More than 7,000 people with cancer have contacted the EEOC with complaints about disability-related discrimination and had their cases resolved.

What should I do if I think I'm being discriminated against in a work situation because of my disability?

If you think you have been discriminated against in an employment practice because of a disability, you can file a complaint with an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) field office located in certain cities throughout the United States. See the "Additional resources" section at the end of this document for contact information. If your employer is a state or local government, you should contact the U.S. Department of Justice (read on for more details).

A discrimination charge generally must be filed with the EEOC within 180 days of the action that you believe to be discriminatory. If a state or local law covers discrimination on the basis of disability, the charge must be filed with the proper state or local fair employment practice agency within 300 days of the discriminatory action. EEOC field offices can refer you to the agencies that enforce those laws (see "Additional resources" section). But to protect your rights, it is best to contact the EEOC right away if you suspect discrimination, at 1-800-669-4000. If you work for the U.S. government, you have only 45 days to contact your agency EEOC officer, and the process is somewhat different from that for private employers. See the section "Does the ADA apply to my employer?"

If the EEOC decides that you have been discriminated against, you are entitled to a remedy that will place you in the position you would have been in if the discrimination had never occurred. You may be entitled to hiring, promotion, reinstatement, back pay, or reasonable accommodation, including reassignment. You also may be entitled to payment of your legal fees. Keep in mind that these decisions may take a long time depending on the nature of the claim and how it is resolved.

If the EEOC does not believe discrimination has occurred, or when attempts to resolve the problem have failed and the EEOC decides not to sue on your behalf, you can request a "right to sue" letter from the EEOC 180 days after filing your complaint. After you get this notice of right to sue, you have 90 days to file the suit. If you sue, you may want to hire a private attorney to represent you.

How the ADA can help in settings besides work

This section deals only with discrimination in settings other than work.

What are "public accommodations" as defined by ADA?

Places of public accommodation include places that are generally open to everyone, such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, doctors' offices, drug stores, retail stores, museums, libraries, parks, private schools, and day care centers.

The ADA requires the property administrators of these kinds of public places to remove barriers when it is "readily achievable" to do so. This means that it must be fairly easy to do without much trouble or expense. Examples of removing barriers would include making a simple ramp over a few steps or other modest adjustments to parts of a public place's physical structure that may impose barriers for people with disabilities.

Private clubs and religious organizations are not required to meet the ADA's requirements for public accommodations.

The United States Department of Justice enforces the ADA requirements in 3 areas:

Title I: Employment practices by units of state and local government (remember that the EEOC enforces most work-related practices.)
Title II: Programs, services, and activities of state and local government, including public transportation
Title III: Public accommodations and commercial facilities (private businesses and non-profit service providers). This can include privately-owned or privately-run transportation, movie theaters, restaurants, stores, doctors' offices, fitness centers, zoos, convention centers, private schools, day care centers, homeless shelters, funeral homes, and more.
Title IV of the ADA covers people with hearing and speech problems, and is enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC). See the "Additional resources" section for more on those rules, or visit http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/title4.html. Title V of the ADA covers a handful of related aspects such as how the law is enforced and its interaction with other laws.

Where can I find information about discrimination in areas other than employment?

The U.S. Department of Justice has a toll-free ADA Information Line (see "Additional resources," below.) This service permits businesses, state and local government officials, or others to call and ask questions about general or specific ADA requirements, including questions about the ADA Standards for Accessible Design.

ADA specialists are available Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. (Eastern Time) except on Thursdays, when the hours are 12:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. A Spanish language service is also available.

Additional resources

More information from your American Cancer Society

The following related information may also be helpful to you. These materials may be ordered from our toll-free number, 1-800-ACS-2345.

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
Financial Guidance for Cancer Survivors and Their Families: In Treatment (also available in Spanish
A Message of Hope: Coping with Cancer in Everyday Life (also available in Spanish)
What is HIPAA? (also available in Spanish)
National organizations and Web sites*

In addition to the American Cancer Society, other sources of patient information and support include the following, which have more specific information about ADA requirements affecting employment:

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
For information, publications, and how to find EEOC offices in your area, call
Toll-free number: 1-800-669-4000 (voice)
TDD: 1-800-669-6820
Web site: www.eeoc.gov
Questions and Answers About Cancer in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has special information for people with cancer. It can be found on the EEOC Web site at www.eeoc.gov/facts/cancer.html

Job Accommodation Network (a free service of the US Department of Labor)
Toll-free number: 1-800-526-7234 in the United States (or call 1-800-ADA-WORK)
TTY: 1-877-781-9403 in the United States
1-304-293-7186 Worldwide
Calls are answered from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Machines answer after-hours calls.
Web site: www.jan.wvu.edu
E-mail: jan@jan.wvu.edu

For more information about the Americans with Disabilities Act:

ADA Information Line
Toll-free number: 1-800-514-0301 (voice)
TDD: 1-800-514-0383
Web site: www.ada.gov

At this number or Web site, you can obtain general information about the Americans with Disabilities Act, answers to specific technical questions, free ADA materials, or information about filing a complaint. Selected ADA materials are listed below, although many more are available from the ADA:

ADA Questions and Answers. A 31-page booklet giving an overview of the ADA's requirements for ensuring equal opportunity for people with disabilities in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation, and requiring the establishment of TDD/telephone relay services. (Spanish, Cambodian, Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese editions are also available from the ADA Information Line.)

A Guide to Disability Rights Laws. A 21-page booklet that gives a brief overview of 11 federal laws that protect the rights of people with disabilities and information about the federal agencies to contact for more information on specific requirements. (Spanish, Cambodian, Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese editions are also available from the ADA Information Line.) ADA Tax Incentive Packet for Businesses. A packet of information to help businesses understand and take advantage of the tax credit and deduction available for complying with the ADA.

A Guide for People with Disabilities Seeking Employment. A 2-page pamphlet for people with disabilities that gives a general explanation of the employment provisions of the ADA and how to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (A Spanish edition is available from the ADA Information Line.)

Ten Small Business Mistakes video. This 13-minute streaming video identifies common mistakes that small businesses make in trying to comply with the ADA. The video features statements by store owners expressing doubts or misunderstandings about the ADA followed by responses that explain the law in common-sense terms.

The ADA and City Governments: Common Problems. A 9-page document that contains a sampling of common problems shared by city governments of all sizes, gives examples of common deficiencies and explains how these problems affect persons with disabilities.

For more specific information about ADA requirements affecting services provided by state and local governments, including programs, services, and public transportation, contact the following:

Office on the Americans with Disabilities
Act U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Civil Rights Division Disability Rights Section - NYAV
Washington, D.C. 20530
Toll-free number: 1-800-514-0301 (voice)
TTY: 1-800-514-0383
Fax: 1-202-307-1198
Web site: www.ada.gov

For information on public transportation only, contact the following:

Federal Transit Administration
Toll-free number: 1-888-446-4511 (voice/relay) FTA ADA Assistance Line
Web site: www.fta.dot.gov/civilrights/civil_rights_2360.html

For more specific information about accessible transportation, contact:

Easter Seals Project ACTION
Toll-free number: 1-800-659-6428 (voice) 1-202-347-3066 (voice)
TTY: 1-202-347-7385
Web site: www.projectaction.org

For more specific information about requirements for accessible design in new construction and alterations, contact:

Access Board or Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
Toll-free number: 1-800-872-2253 (voice)
TTY: 1-800-993-2822
Web site: www.access-board.gov

For technical assistance on ADA telephone service requirements (Telephone Relay Systems), contact the following:

Federal Communications Commission
TRS Publications and Questions
Toll-free number: 1-888-225-5322 (voice) (1-888-CALL-FCC)
TTY: 1-888-835-5322 (1-888-TELL-FCC)
Web site: www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/trs.html
For Social Security Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income information (if you cannot work):

Social Security Administration
Toll-free number: 1-800-772-1213
TTY: 1-800-325-0778
Web site: www.socialsecurity.gov

*Inclusion on this list does not imply endorsement by the American Cancer Society.

No matter who you are, we can help. Contact us anytime, day or night, for information and support. Call us at 1-800-ACS-2345 or visit cancer.org.

References

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ADA Charge Data by Impairment/Bases - Resolutions FY 1997 - FY 2008. Available at: http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/ada-resolutions.html. Accessed March 20, 2009.

Job Accommodation Network. Available at: www.jan.wvu.edu. Accessed March 3, 2008.

Job Accommodation Network Fact Sheet Series. Workplace Accommodations: Low Cost, High Impact. Available at: http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/LowCostHighImpact.doc. Accessed March 6, 2008.

Job Accommodation Network. Accommodation and Compliance Series: The ADA Amendments Act of 2008. Accessed at: www.jan.wvu.edu/bulletins/adaaa1.htm on March 20, 2009.

US Department of Justice. Americans with Disabilities Act Information and Technical Assistance, rev. 12/17/04. Available at: www.ada.gov. Accessed March 3, 2008.

US Department of Justice. A Guide to Disability Rights Laws, September 2005. Accessed at: http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm on March 24, 2009.

US Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy. Employment rights: Who has them and who enforces them. Accessed at www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/rights.htm on March 23, 2009.

Last Medical Review: 04/10/2009
Last Revised: 04/10/2009

Technology to Improve Care for Seniors With Cognitive Impairment

2010-01-21T17:25:00.000-08:00

The Center for Technology and Aging Helps VNSNY Harness the Power of the Electronic Health Record and Test Cutting-Edge Solutions to Dangerous Medication-Related Problems.

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) Center for Home Health Care Policy & Research, the only research center focused on studying home health care in the U.S., has received funding from The Center for Technology and Aging to test state-of-the art information technology (IT) strategies designed to help elderly patients with cognitive impairment and their caregivers safely manage multiple medications.

Half of home care patients require assistance in administering their medications and half of home care patients have some level of functional impairment. The average home care patient takes six to eight medications, with 20 percent taking nine or more. Poor medication management has been identified as one of the most frequent risk factors leading to unplanned hospitalizations and emergency room visits.

The project will implement and evaluate a multi-faceted information technology (IT) based intervention designed to better support nurses, as well as cognitively impaired patients and their caregivers, in the challenging process of managing multiple medications in patients with multiple chronic illnesses. The study will introduce automated clinical alerts and educational tactics for home care nurses and family caregivers who are supervising long-term medication management of cognitively impaired at-risk seniors.

"Cognitive impairment in relation to adverse drug events is seriously under-studied, and for older patients with complex chronic illnesses, that could mean preventable emergency department visits," said Penny Hollander Feldman, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study and director of VNSNY's Center for Home Care Policy and Research. "The new technology being funded in this project provides our home care nurses with cutting edge tools to help keep patients safer and improve management and adherence to complicated medication regimens. In addition, this funding is particularly meaningful because it lays the foundation for a nationwide rollout of these tools as the study continues."

The randomized, controlled trial, known as IMPACT-CI (Improving Medication Management Practices and Care Transitions through Technology -- Focus on the Cognitively Impaired), uses existing computer modules housed on special tablet computers carried by all VNSNY nurses, to identify patients at risk of a potentially serious medication problem and help nurses efficiently direct their time and energy. By integrating a computer algorithm into the VNSNY IT system, a medication regimen complexity index (MRCI) score for each patient takes into account dosing frequency, delivery (orally, inhalant, injection) and special instructions such as "take with meals," "dissolve," or "take on alternate days." This MRCI score allows for a highly nuanced indicator of complexity and potential for adverse effects.

Additionally, a decision support tool has been integrated into the nurses' tablet systems, providing guidance for a thorough medication reconciliation and medication adherence assessment, along with strategies for communicating with the patient's primary care physician in an effort to simplify the regimen.

"With this project, VNSNY and the Center for Home Care Policy & Research will be demonstrating how an important technology can make a significant difference in the quality of life for older adults who rely on medications to manage chronic conditions," said David Lindeman, Ph.D., director of the Center for Technology and Aging. "This project will help speed the adoption of important technologies across the country."

The Center for Technology and Aging medication optimization diffusion grants program is designed to expand use of technologies that help improve medication use in older adults with chronic health conditions. A detailed summary of projects and the Medication Optimization Position Paper are available on the Center's Web site (www.techandaging.org).

"Proven, cost-effective information and communication strategies to improve medication management in the home health care setting are sorely lacking," said Dr. Feldman. "Findings from the IMPACT-CI study will accelerate progress toward filling a critical knowledge gap and help us introduce new and better measures for preventing medication-related adverse events."

This initiative allows the Center to leverage a three-year IMPACT study that has been made possible with a $1.2 million grant from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), a federal agency committed to helping the nation improve its health care system, by expanding the scope to include the cognitively impaired population and their caregivers. The study is being conducted through the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the largest not-for-profit home care organization in the United States.

About VNSNY Center for Home Care Policy & Research

Established in 1993 by the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the Center for Home Care Policy & Research has become recognized as the pre-eminent research center for home care and is the only one of its kind in the nation. The agency conducts scientifically rigorous research to promote the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective care in the home and community and support informed decision making by policy makers, payers, managers, practitioners, and consumers of home-and community-based services. For more information, please visit www.vnsny.org/research.

The Center for Technology and Aging promotes diffusion of proven technologies that improve home and community-based care for older adults. Through research, grants, public policy involvement and development of practical implementation tools, the Center serves as a resource for improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of long-term care services. It was established in 2009 with a generous grant from The SCAN Foundation (www.thescanfoundation.org) and is located at the Public Health Institute (www.phi.org) in Oakland, CA.

By Visiting Nurse Service of New York - Jan 21, 2010 4:47:05 PM

Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy Restores Walking Ability In Rats With Neck Injuries

2009-11-14T14:27:00.001-08:00

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2009) — The first human embryonic stem cell treatment approved by the FDA for human testing has been shown to restore limb function in rats with neck spinal cord injuries -- a finding that could expand the clinical trial to include people with cervical damage.

In January, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration gave Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., permission to test the UC Irvine treatment in individuals with thoracic spinal cord injuries, which occur below the neck. However, trying it in those with cervical damage wasn't approved because preclinical testing with rats hadn't been completed.

Results of the cervical study currently appear online in the journal Stem Cells. UCI scientist Hans Keirstead hopes the data will prompt the FDA to authorize clinical testing of the treatment in people with both types of spinal cord damage. About 52 percent of spinal cord injuries are cervical and 48 percent thoracic.

"People with cervical damage often have lost or impaired limb movement and bowel, bladder or sexual function, and currently there's no effective treatment. It's a challenging existence," said Keirstead, a primary author of the study. "What our therapy did to injured rodents is phenomenal. If we see even a fraction of that benefit in humans, it will be nothing short of a home run."

A week after test rats with 100 percent walking ability suffered neck spinal cord injuries, some received the stem cell treatment. The walking ability of those that didn't degraded to 38 percent. Treated rats' ability, however, was restored to 97 percent.

UCI's therapy utilizes human embryonic stem cells destined to become spinal cord cells called oligodendrocytes. These are the building blocks of myelin, the biological insulation for nerve fibers that's critical to proper functioning of the central nervous system. When myelin is stripped away through injury or disease, paralysis can occur.

Lead author and doctoral student Jason Sharp, Keirstead and colleagues discovered that the stem cells not only rebuilt myelin but prevented tissue death and triggered nerve fiber regrowth. They also suppressed the immune response, causing an increase in anti-inflammatory molecules.

"The transplant created a healing environment in the spinal cord," said Keirstead, who is co-director of the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center and on the faculty of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center -- named for late actor Christopher Reeve, who became a quadriplegic after a cervical spinal cord injury.

In addition to Keirstead and Sharp, Jennifer Frame, Monica Siegenthaler and Dr. Gabriel Nistor of UCI worked on the study, which was supported by Geron Corp., a University of California Discovery Grant, the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Fund of California, Research for Cure, and individual donations to the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.

Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Irvine.

Fairness of 100-year prison sentence questioned

2009-11-14T14:25:00.001-08:00

June 12th, 2009

Teen with IQ of 47 was convicted of child sex abuse..

By Emily Ramshaw in the Dallas Morning News, AP/Fox News:

Attorneys and advocates are challenging the fairness of a hundred-year prison sentence for an 18-year-old with profound mental disabilities who pleaded guilty to a single incident of child sex abuse.

They say the case of first-time offender Aaron Hart, who has an IQ of 47, raises grave questions about the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities by the Texas criminal justice system. Repeat child molesters and rapists routinely receive lesser sentences than Hart’s.

… at issue is Hart’s trial. His defense attorney hardly questioned his client’s competency to stand trial, his appellate lawyer said. And though both the judge and jurors say they would have preferred not to send Hart to prison, state care facilities and group homes for disabled offenders were never presented as options.

… “Aaron is 18, never committed a felony, had no violent record. He couldn’t understand the seriousness of what he did,” said his father, Robert Hart. “I never dreamed they would think about sending him to prison. When they said 100 years – it was terror, pure terror to me.”

10 Common Myths About Clinical Depression

2009-11-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

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Almost every mental illness ends up accompanied by a barrage of myths, misunderstandings, and misconceptions that cloud the minds of the populace and ultimately produces muddied opinions of the true threat.

Unfortunately, one of the most marginalized and ridiculed conditions is also one of the most common. An estimated 17 million Americans suffer from some form of clinical depression a year, most of whom end up never seeking psychological assistance due to feeling undermined and discouraged by the perceptions of society at large. Because those suffering from depression run a much higher risk of committing suicide or acts of self-mutilation than their comparatively healthier peers, it is absolutely integral to understand the complexities and widespread influence of the disease. Only by making an earnest effort to combat these negative and patently false perceptions can the depressed begin to realize that no shame or weakness lay in their situation, thereby removing many of the stigmas and reservations still undeservedly attached to entering into therapy.

1. Depressives are ingrates who lack empathy for real suffering.

One of the most isolating and unjustly prevailing myths regarding clinical depression is that the victims suffer more from a lack of perception rather than a recognized and very serious mental illness. It is not uncommon to hear the depressed speak of instances where friends, family, or another peer try to snap them out of a low point with admonitions like “Just be grateful you don’t have a terminal disease,” and “Maybe if you saw how people lived in third would countries you’d realize you have nothing to complain about.” These statements actually actively harm those suffering from clinical depression far more than they help. Trivializing their very real and very overwhelming struggles serves only to perpetuate already heightened feelings of guilt, shame, and seclusion. Depression’s true nature does not inherently involve a dismissal or ignorance of suffering elsewhere in society, and the implication that victims do not understand the world around them may potentially discourage them to pursue much-needed solace and support. Many of them are eventually led to believe that their anxieties and emotional issues do not matter when stacked up with genocide and cancer and other ills when the truth is that all suffering – no matter the level of severity – must be addressed and quelled if humanity hopes to move forward.

2. Depression is not an illness.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision lists three depressive disorders – dysthymic disorder, major depressive disorder, and depressive disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS. Major depressive disorder is further subdivided into recurrent and single episode, and from there categorized by level of severity. Along with bipolar disorder, the depressive disorders are lumped under the major heading of mood disorders. Because depression is recognized in an official medical and psychological publication used to diagnose and treat patients, it is considered an illness.

3. Depression is nothing more than sustained sadness.

As a mood disorder, one of the major hallmarks of depression is a persistent sense of sadness, hopelessness, guilt, apathy, and anxiety. However, many physiological symptoms also manifest themselves when suffering from depression. Nausea, headaches, general aches and pains, insomnia or oversleeping, exhaustion, fatigue, and over- or under-eating are all commonly associated with depression. Not surprisingly, these symptoms can lead to major health concerns later on in life if left unchecked. Likewise, more severe instances of depression may result in suicide attempts as a means of finally sloughing off the emotional, mental, and physical torment as well as escaping the judgmental scrutiny of friends, families, and contemporaries.

4. Depression can disappear by just thinking happy thoughts.

The old cliché about terminal illness states, “I always thought it was something that happened to other people.” This statement also sums up how depressives generally understand sustained happiness – it is an emotion exclusively rewarded to everyone else, but forever teasingly dangled in front of them as a metaphorical carrot on a stick. Only the most severe cases of depression do not involve small spurts and instances of joy, of course, but the illness includes far too many emotional, mental, and physical complexities to merely disintegrate with the simple act of thinking positively. Many mistake depression for a case of the more common and temporary “blues” and attempt to approach it as such. Though well-intentioned, this mindset carries the same inevitable side effects as the one which pegs depressives as whiny ingrates. It only addresses one aspect of a much broader issue, thus reinforcing the victim’s lonely feelings of being misunderstood. The best way for a concerned family member or friend to tackle the subject with a loved one is to provide support by encouraging them to speak with a professional therapist. Counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists are all qualified and equipped with the tools necessary to understand and combat depression. If positivity were the only cure, there would be no need to spend the time, money, and resources to train any of them in how to combat the issue.

5. Depression only affects women.

Due to brain chemistry and hormone balances, women are twice as likely to experience depression as men, though men are more likely to commit suicide or develop substance abuse issues as a coping mechanism. By feminizing depression, society stigmatizes men suffering from the illness as somehow weak or less masculine. As if depression did not carry enough unfounded shame along with it, men with the disorder end up facing double the pressure. With a supposedly enlightened society still clinging to archaic ideals that males ought to display stoicism and women stand as emotional pillars, men with depression oftentimes end up ostracized by peers who do not fully comprehend the true nature of the illness. Externally perceived as effeminate and pathetic, depressive men are far less likely to seek therapy and end up self-medicating with drugs, alcohol, or other addictions to curb the anxiety instead. In more extreme cases, some men turn to physical abuse or suicide as an outlet. While stereotypes of masculine and feminine behavior do have a foundation in biochemistry, labeling emotion as solely the domain of women is the root cause of many serious issues regarding men and depression. Breaking down gender barriers as well as promoting an awareness of how the illness manifests itself remains the only real solution to this overarching problem.

6. Depression is a choice.

Like other mental illnesses, those suffering from depression never chose to live their lives swarmed with the mental, physical, and emotional stresses associated with it. This myth forms from similar stock as the ones regarding depression as an ingrate’s condition and belief that a cure lay in only thinking happy thoughts. All three of these falsehoods vastly oversimplify the issue at hand, reducing depression to little more than whining, sadness, and negativity when the reality of the disease is far more intricate and nuanced. The decision over whether or not to pursue psychological treatment is the only choice that victims can actually make for themselves, but the initial onset of the disorder remains entirely beyond their sphere of control.

7. If a parent or grandparent suffers from depression, their kids will too.

No professionals will deny that both nature and nurture play a role in the development of a depressed individual. Genetics does factor into depression, as does body chemistry, environment, and an individual’s psychological profile. Not surprisingly, depressives with parents or grandparents who suffer from the disease as well are far more likely to succumb to it. However, this is not always the case. A child born into a family with a history of depression may not always end up with it. Likewise, a child born into a family free of depression may end up developing the illness later on. Genetics is only one of the many possible causes of depression – its absence or presence does not always indicate that an individual will inevitably display the symptoms later on in life.

8. Suicide attempts are just a plea for attention.

All suicide threats and attempts ought to be regarded with the utmost seriousness. If an individual makes reference to how he or she plans to die by his or her own hand, dial 911 immediately. Statements such as these are not to be taken as petty ploys for attention, but rather as grim cries for help – a signifier that the victim feels so very desperate to free themselves from the bonds of depression that death seems the only viable option. Callously casting aside the suicidal as merely resorting to extreme measures for the sake of a little attention completely belittles and underestimates the true gravity of the issue. They need intense therapy, not pity or eye-rolling condescension. As symptomatic of a much larger problem, suicide attempts must be fully addressed and taken seriously rather than dismissed as little more than histrionics.

9. Depression is a psychosis.

Society as a whole seems to regard all mental illnesses as some level of psychosis, with therapy that both saves and improves lives stigmatized as the resort of the feeble-minded and insane. As per its diagnostic criteria, depression is not considered an inherently psychotic disorder. It is labeled as a corruption of moods, but not always a signifier of mental instability or a detachment from reality. While depression does occasionally operate as a symptom of a serious psychotic disorder, its presence does not always mean the victim fits the psychological profile of an individual with psychosis. Depression usually ends at depression. If a sufferer does not display any other indicators of psychosis, then he or she cannot be considered psychotic.

10. Depression is a result of personality flaws and weakness.

Depression is a result of numerous biochemical, genetic, environmental, and psychological factors entirely beyond the control of the victim. This myth ties in with those touting depression as a convenient excuse for whiny ingrates, the histrionic, and psychotics. Many highly functioning, successful individuals suffer from depression and enter into therapy, become active in raising awareness of the issue, and/or create works of art, literature, and music in order to alleviate the pain. It weakens, but self-control prevents it from becoming a weakness. Like addiction and other mental illnesses, the surest sign of strength and integrity is admitting that there is a problem and actively pursuing healthy treatment. Weakness lay not at all in the diagnosis, but rather in how the victim handles the issues he or she has been given.

In spite of existing as one of the most common mental illnesses in America and beyond, the reality of just how serious clinical depression is remains obscured by the dozens of myths, misunderstandings, and lies permeating society. Spreading the word of the true challenges, setbacks, and struggles that depressives face on a daily basis is the only way to put cracks in these potentially dangerous mindsets. Like all people – mentally ill or not – victims of depression need compassion and understanding if they ever hope to combat their disease. The perpetuation of ignorance and misunderstanding only furthers their symptoms and nurtures shame and guilt far more than it inspires them to seek professional help.

Planning Class Action Lawsuit for Psychiatric Parity Under the Law

2009-11-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

PLEASE NOTE AT CARE2 NEWS NETWORK
http://www.care2.com/news/member/513396753/1300380

Friends, please note. Thanks. Spread the word that we may file suit to bust the mentally ill out of jail and get damages for those who were wrongly imprisoned for a common, treatable health condition. Reganomics closing mental hospitals did not save taxpayers one dime, but it delivered patients into a cruel environment, and many died homeless on the street.

NOTICE: Prisoner activists and mental health advocates are discussing a class action lawsuit by people incarcerated for mental illness or their relatives and next friends on their behalf. Mental illness is the only disability treated legally, not medically. If a diabetic man blacks out at the wheel and injures or kills commuters, he goes to the hospital. If a psychiatric patient kills or injures, he goes to prison. If a woman has a heart attack in the china store, falls and breaks plates, she goes to the hospital. If a bipolar sufferer has a crisis and breaks plates, she goes to prison. The suit will be for PSYCHIATRIC PARITY UNDER THE LAW. People who opt in will need to pay a nominal fee to help raise the legal retainer.

We will demand that mentally ill people who are imprisoned for violent offenses go to hospitals for their entire sentences and that nonviolent offenders are released under Kendra's law (mandatory treatment and subsistence assistance in their communities).

Making this change - decriminalizing mental illness - will save billions every year off America's prison budget by putting mental illness back into the health care system where it was before Reganomics. Taxpayers have not saved a dime by imprisoning our neighbors with mental illness, but many people have suffered inhumane prison sentences for having a common, treatable health condition. Treating mental illness is cheaper, more humane, and it promotes community safety. No longer will the mentally ill be left untreated until they PROVE (by smoking guns and dripping knives) to be a danger to self and others.

Half of U.S. inmates are mentally ill. In fact, there are 1.25 million incarcerated mental patients, so this will be a large class. Give me your thoughts. We're in the planning stage and talking with other prisoner activists. Invite friends who have mentally ill relatives who are or were imprisoned to eMail me at MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com or call 770 559 4690.

Time to Do the Right Thing!

Time for Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill!

Mary Neal
http://WrongfulDeathOfLarryNeal.com

Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill
http://www.Care2.com/c2c/group/AIMI

JAIL IS THE LAST THING THAT MENTAL PATIENTS NEED, AND TOO OFTEN, IT IS THE VERY LAST THING THEY EXPERIENCE. Please join our effort to decriminalize mental illness. No one deserves to be punished for having a disability.

Patricia E Bauer News & Commentary on Disability Issues

2009-11-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

Columnist: ‘Hateful’ language can spur violence against disabled
November 7th, 2009

When did people with disabilities cease to matter in the battle against bigotry?’

Writing in the [UK] Independent, columnist Ian Birrell says society widely prohibits the use of “crude stereotyping” and “hateful words” when directed against other minority groups, yet accepts the same behavior when directed against those with disabilities.

This duality, he argues, reinforces the exclusion of people with disabilities from the rest of society, and gives tacit permission for acts of violence. The father of a girl with multiple disabilities, Birrell sees a link between the widespread use of disability-related insults like “retard” by celebrities and politicians, and acts of violence against people with disabilities. An excerpt:

Hate crime is the most extreme articulation of the prejudice that disabled people endure on a daily basis. Its roots lie in contempt, fertilized by misguided feelings of superiority. So will anything really change while retard is an acceptable term of abuse, and autism is used to denigrate political rivals?

… We are retreating in the fight to offer respect and inclusion to more than one million of our fellow citizens … And as the struggle for inclusion in society gets harder, the stares get more pronounced, the insults more widely heard, the harassment worse – and more and more people with disabilities will abandon their personal battles and withdraw to their ghettos.

Is this really what we want? Or should we at the very least start to mind our language?

See also: Robert Redford calls Utah leaders ‘retarded’ — Denver Post

And an earlier column: How a disabled child changed my politics — and those of David Cameron; by Ian Birrell, [UK] Independent

Conference on Stopping the Psychiatric Abuse of Children

2009-09-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

From: Huffpost online
The Huffington Post
September 30, 2009

Millions of our children are being labeled with false and stigmatizing psychiatric diagnoses. Then their brains are being blunted and disabled by psychiatric drugs.

Want to find a way to do something about the plight of our children at the hands of drug companies and misguided mental health professionals? Want to learn more about what our children really need from us?

In less than two weeks, you can attend the annual meeting of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Renaissance Syracuse Hotel. The two-day conference takes place on Friday and Saturday, October 9-10, 2009 in Syracuse, New York. It features international experts on the adverse of effects of psychiatric drugs and better ways of helping children and families.

The public is welcome. For the sake of our children, please attend.

This year's conference comes at a tragic turning point in the psychiatric abuse of children. In the past, the main threat has come from the widespread use of stimulant drugs like Ritalin, Dexedrine, Adderall, Focalin, and Concerta for children labeled with ADHD. These drugs work by crushing spontaneous behavior. Frequently this leads to depression, as well as insomnia, anxiety and psychosis. The stimulants suppress the growth of children, cause abnormalities in their brains, induce sudden cardiac death, and predispose children to cocaine abuse in young adulthood.

As bad as this is, the situation of our children has recently become even more desperate. In the past year, the FDA has unleashed a crisis of epidemic proportions by approving lobotomizing antipsychotic drugs for the control of behavior in children. Diabetes. Pancreatitis. Pathological obesity. The abnormal growth of breast tissue and even lactation in young boys and girls. Heart disease. Permanently disfiguring tics and other abnormal movements (tardive dyskinesia). Agonizing muscle spasms that also defy treatment and last indefinitely (tardive dystonia). These are a few of the drastic disorders caused by antipsychotic drugs such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon, and Invega.

The antipsychotic drugs work by flattening the emotions and causing docility, so that the children no longer make trouble, at least for a while. With their frontal lobe function suppressed, the kids become more robotic in their behavior, and their mental and emotional growth is stunted. Often these drugs will turn them into lifelong mental patients whose enslaved brains will continue to deteriorate under toxic assault.

Great speakers and workshop presenters will cover these and many other subjects about psychiatry and about how to help children and families in distress with caring and effective psychological, education, and social approaches.

Stephen A. Sheller is one of the lead attorneys in two of the largest billion-dollar settlements ever made as a result of civil and criminal actions brought by the federal government against drug companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly. Both legal actions involved psychiatric drugs. I will be honored to introduce attorney Sheller at the conference.

As the Founder Emeritus of ICSPP (I've passed the mantle onto younger professionals), I will be making two presentations, one on how to inspire the psychiatric reform movement and another on better approaches to helping children and families.

Attorney James Gottstein from Alaska is the world's most active civil rights attorney on behalf of psychiatricaly abused children and adults.

Graham Dukes, a physician and a lawyer, is a leading expert on international drug regulation.

Critiques of ADHD and better approaches to children and families will be presented by many experts in psychiatry, pediatrics, psychology, and education.

Registration can be made on-line or at the meeting at the Syracuse Renaissance Hotel, Friday and Saturday, October 9-10, 2009. Tickets are available for one or both days. For hotel reservations, call 315-479-7000.

If you care about our children, this is the place for you to be. It's always a great and inspiring conference. Even if you don't know anyone else at the conference, you will feel at home. You will meet many new friends with similar concerns.

Our children need our protection and support in these dire times.

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York. The observations made in this column are scientifically documented in his medical book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition (2008) as well as his popular book, Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Crime and Suicide (2008). Dr. Breggin's website, loaded with scientific information and interesting radio and TV reports, is www.breggin.com.

On Dr. Breggin's website you can purchase a bonus edition of ICSPP's new book, The Conscience of Psychiatry: The Reform Work of Peter R. Breggin, MD (2009).

Judge dismisses inmate's suit against CCA

2009-08-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

By Kate Howard • THE TENNESSEAN • August 26, 2009

A federal judge has ruled in favor of the Corrections Corporation of America by dismissing a claim that a mentally ill inmate kept in solitary confinement for nine months was harmed by the experience.

The lawsuit was filed by Mary Braswell on behalf of her grandson, Frank Horton, who was being held in the Metro Davidson County Detention Facility operated by CCA for parole violations and assault charges.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge John T. Nixon dismissed the lawsuit because Horton was never physically injured by the solitary confinement, and because he didn’t file any grievances with the jail operator about his lack of access to mental health care.
The lawsuit alleged that Horton was incoherent, spoke in gibberish and refused to leave his cell for showers during the nine months he was held there.

He was incapable of complaining about his treatment between November 2007 and July 2008 because he was unable to communicate, the suit said.

Nixon ruled that to have a case under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, Horton would have needed to try to file a grievance as soon as he was able to communicate again.

Horton, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, had already left CCA after being transferred to a state special needs facility when he became coherent again, his family and attorneys have said.

John R. Clemmons, Braswell’s attorney, said he plans to appeal the federal ruling and file additional suits in state court.

“The (rules for federal inmate lawsuits are) a high hurdle for any inmate bringing a lawsuit in federal court to clear,” Clemmons said.

Federal law requires physical harm to an inmate and that the internal grievance process was followed before a lawsuit.

“The federal court appeared to say … we didn’t clear that hurdle,” Clemmons said. “Whether or not Frank’s case should’ve fit into one of the exceptions is certainly an issue which may be appealed.”

Steve Owen, spokesman for CCA, said he would not comment given the indication that the decision would be appealed.

Horton has since been released from custody and is living at home with his family, Clemmons said. He is receiving mental health treatment and is on medication, but he has not yet been able to return to a job.

“He has a great immediate family unit and a great support system,” Clemmons said.

Disabled Students Are Spanked More

2009-08-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

By SAM DILLON
Published: August 10, 2009
The New York Times

More than 200,000 schoolchildren are paddled, spanked or subjected to other physical punishment each year, and disabled students get a disproportionate share of the treatment, according to a new study.

Most states prohibit corporal punishment in public schools, but 20 do not. The two watchdog groups that collaborated on the report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, are urging federal and state lawmakers to extend the ban nationwide and enact an immediate moratorium on physical punishment of students with disabilities.

“Corporal punishment is just not an effective method of punishment, especially for disabled children, who may not even understand why they’re being hit,” said Alice Farmer, who wrote the report.

The report, based on federal Department of Education data, said that of the 223,190 public school students nationwide who were paddled during the 2006-7 school year, at least 41,972, or about 19 percent, were students with disabilities, who make up 14 percent of all students.

As recently as the 1970s, only two states had laws banning corporal punishment, but 28 others have since passed similar legislation. Corporal punishment is still permitted in some form in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

The most recent state to enact a ban was Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland last month signed into law a measure including a such a prohibition.

In states that do not have bans, some school districts do. In Louisiana, about 56 districts allow corporal punishment, while about 14 prohibit it. Last month the Education Committee of the Louisiana Legislature voted 8 to 6 to reject a proposed ban.

Roy McCoy, principal of Beekman Junior High School in Bastrop, La., testified against the bill. Classroom discipline has been an increasing problem, Mr. McCoy told lawmakers. In an interview, he said paddling is no cure-all, “but when other means of correcting behavior have failed to produce the desired improvement, it could be a viable option.”

“My view is that this should be a decision made by each local school board,” Mr. McCoy said.

Among the cases cited in the report was that of a 6-year-old, first-grade boy with autism, who was paddled at his Mississippi elementary school. An assistant principal who the report described as weighing 300 pounds “picked up an inch-thick paddle and paddled him” on the buttocks, the report said.

“It just devastated him,” the report cited the boy’s grandmother as saying. “When a child with autism has something like that happen, they don’t forget it. It’s always fresh in their minds.”

Alan Richard, a former journalist who is the spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, said he once surveyed attitudes in Southern districts.

“One principal said, ‘I was whipped as a child, so it’s fine with me,’ ” Mr. Richard recalled. “Others said, ‘We don’t do that anymore.’ It varied by community.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 11, 2009, on page A10 of the New York edition.

Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System

2009-08-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
The New York Times

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio — The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state’s most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities.

The Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility in Delaware, Ohio, added therapy programs to address inmates’ self-mutilation.

The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking and entering. Although he had received diagnoses for psychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder, a judge decided that Donald would get better care in the state correctional system than he could get anywhere in his county.

That was two years ago.

Donald’s confinement has been repeatedly extended because of his violent outbursts. This year he assaulted a guard here at the prison, the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, and was charged anew, with assault. His fists and forearms are striped with scars where he gouged himself with pencils and the bones of a bird he caught and dismembered.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple — and powerful — psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.

In California’s state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year — a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.

In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.

“I’m hearing from a lot of judges saying, ‘I’m sorry I’m sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he’ll get the treatment he can’t get in his community,’ ” Mr. Stickrath said.

But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.

George, 17, an inmate at Ohio River Valley, detailed his daily cocktail of psychiatric medications, including Abilify and Seroquel. In addition to having bipolar disorder, he is a sex offender and is H.I.V. positive — severe stigmas in prison.

“I be getting punked,” he said, using prison slang to describe how gang youths routinely humiliate him. He blinked, and his leg shook uncontrollably. “They take my food, they hit me, they make me do things.”

Demetrius, 16, another inmate there, said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Officials said he has psychotic episodes and attacks other inmates. In an interview in June, he said he was receiving no mental health counseling or medications. Andrea Kruse, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stickrath, said that since July 1, he has had more than 20 counseling sessions.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.

Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.”

Lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas have criticized juvenile corrections systems for failing to meet their obligation to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.

Despite downsizing to about 1,650 juvenile inmates from about 10,000 youth offenders in 1996, California’s state system remains under a 2004 federal mandate to improve conditions, including mental health services — the result of a class-action lawsuit that documented the systematic physical and sexual abuse of wards.

Under a plan to reduce the state juvenile inmate population, many youths who once would have been held by the state are now detained by the Los Angeles County juvenile detention system. Los Angeles County is also under a federal mandate to improve psychiatric services for juvenile inmates, especially at the six camps at its Challenger Memorial Youth Center, which holds most of the county’s medium- and high-risk offenders and most of its mentally ill ones...(if you want to read the rest of this article, please click on the link in the title above.)

Economy hits disabled workers particularly hard

2009-08-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

NewsOK by the Oklahoman - the State's Most Trusted News
By: Matt FranckSteve Giegerich
Published: July 26, 2009

It was just about a year ago that disheartened Lambert International Airport bag handler Terry Tinnon, fundamentally incapable of writing a report on a work-related incident, walked away from his job.

Despite a learning disability, Tinnon, 41, had to that point been steadily employed at a variety of jobs throughout his adult life.

He believed his work ethic would quickly earn him another opportunity to support himself.

Eleven months later, he continues to collect unemployment.

“He got frustrated, quit and thought he could find another job — and he can’t,” said Laurie Tochtrop, executive director of Jobs and Employment Support Services, an agency that has assisted the disabled navigate the job market since 1979.

Among disabled Americans, Tinnon is far from unique.

According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nationwide unemployment rate in June for people with disabilities, 14.3 percent, was nearly 5 percentage points higher than the overall national jobless rate.

Allsup Inc. of Belleville tracks employment trends among the disabled via the distribution of Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare benefits.

In the 12 months starting in the second quarter of 2008, the company said, first-time applications for disability benefits jumped 22 percent.

“When the economy goes down, we generally see an upswing in the number of people applying for (Social Security Disability Insurance),” said Paul Gada, personal financial planning director for Allsup.

Moreover, once disabled individuals leave a job, they generally have more difficulty landing another.

“The (disabled) are just not what employers are looking for right now,” said Guan Hollins, director of College for Living and Employment Services at Paraquad, an agency has served the disabled in the St. Louis region since the 1970s. “As much as (employers) say (a disability) doesn’t matter, I believe it really does.”

In 2008, Hollins said, Paraquad placed from five to six clients in jobs each month.

This year, he notes, that number has dropped by half, to two to three placements every 30 days.

The wall of Tochtrop’s office at JESS has a grid with the names of 34 clients, all in the agency’s training programs, on it.

None has a job.

“Until six months ago, we could usually find them the entry-level positions, like janitorial jobs, that the guys from Chrysler didn’t want,” said Tochtrop. “Well, guess what? The Chrysler guys want those jobs now.”

The days are also gone, Tochtrop and Hollins say, when the disabled compete for jobs almost solely with displaced blue-collar workers.

“Look at some of the résumés out there” for entry-level jobs, said Hollins. “Accountants, people with management experience.”

In a tough job market, he continued, employers “lean to one of those people rather than a person with a disability.”

Technically, the disabled are protected by equal employment opportunity laws meant to put job applicants and employees alike on equal footing. Employers that want to weed out employees, however, know how to exploit “nuances” in the fairness doctrines, Gada said.

Employers have been known, he explained, to change job descriptions or move unqualified workers into positions outside their skill levels.

Disabled workers are often more vulnerable in those situations, Gada said, because special accommodations for their needs are often viewed as an unnecessary expense by employers. Tinnon, for instance, said the request to complete an incident report ignored the fact that “my weak spot is writing.”

Tochtrop said disabled workers quitting in a huff over what they perceive as insensitive behavior from supervisors is all too common.

But before the recession, she said, an employer might have been more inclined to overlook minor infractions or reached out to a disabled employee who failed to show up for work in the wake of a misunderstanding.

“Before, they would have looked the other way,” she said. “Not anymore.”

Since leaving his $7.05 per hour job last summer, Tinnon has come to JESS’ offices in south St. Louis nearly every day to meet with counselors and review job listings on the agency’s computers.

He has had about five interviews for entry positions at nursing homes, restaurants and the like.

None has panned out.

“It’s the same old thing,” he said. “They say, ‘We’ll call you, we’ll be in touch.’ They never call. They’re never in touch.”

Had they called back, Tochtrop points out, the employers would have been eligible for up to $2,500 in tax credits available to businesses that employ disabled workers.

More than the incentives, Hollins says, employers stand to gain from the intangibles the disabled bring to their jobs.

“People with disabilities tend to be very loyal to their employers,” he noted.

It’s a trait that Tochtrop believes will transcend the recession.

“The minute the economy recovers, they (employees without disabilities) are out of there,” she said. “Our people won’t be.”

Turkey Company Pays Disabled Workers $0.44 an Hour

2009-08-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

by Amanda Kloer
Change.org
Published March 12, 2009

My colleague Kristina who writes about autism and mental disability has another take on this story.

Texas-based company Henry's Turkey Service is currently being investigated for the alleged exploitation of dozens of employees with mental disabilities, who were paid a mere $0.44 per hour at an Iowa meat processing plant. This horrific abuse went on for more than 30 years!

The men lived in a 106-year-old bunkhouse, which was deemed unsafe by the state. There has been no word yet as to whether the men were forced to live in the bunkhouse or prevented from leaving, but given the duration of the abuse and their mental disabilities, I would not be surprised if this violation rises to the legal level of human trafficking. (Yes, people can still be trafficking victims, even if they are paid.) Senator Tim Harkin expressed his dismay,

How could it be that for going on 30 years they had this situation like this bunkhouse here - this abandoned school where these people lived - and no one from DOL [Department of Labor] would ever check? How could that just go on year after year after year? Wouldn't something pop up someplace? Wouldn't there be an inspection?

John McKeon, deputy administrator of the Department of Labor’s wage-and-hour division, said that DOL has half the number of wage-and-hour investigators it had in the 1970s, which means employers who are authorized to pay less than the minimum wage may never be checked for this sort of exploitation and trafficking.

And the sad fact is that companies who abuse workers with mental disabilities like this are rarely asked to pay anything other than the wages owed to employees. No fines, no damages, no jail time. Do we think so little of workers with disabilities in this country that we won't protect them from such abuses or punish those who would try and use their labor for free? We need better penalties for those who exploit workers with disabilities.

The Independent Living Movement and the Physically Challenged II

2009-07-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

A series of four articles

Part Three:
The Physically Challenged I

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 1,200

Do you think if you knew your life was short, you would bother to help others? At the most, your place would not be there - ere long. If such “places” were even available, as their beds are often full, you personally might be forced back into whatever disabled and for the handicapped institutions you had left behind, to try for independent living at Center Park. How would you know if it would be worthwhile to live or work there?

One’s place helping others is the one where they get jobs out of keeping you sane and whole, in hospitals, institutions, and finally, in your own apartments. The place I recall with the most welcoming atmosphere in it, due to human evolution, had a laundry room, was made out of heat retentive cinder blocks, which kept it warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and was easygoing to live in. Its sole problem was lack of purpose.

That’s one of the reasons people there were suicidal, but most were unable to complete the act. They had a few places to dally, such as a common room, partial to elderly lady gossips and no one else, and an arts and crafts center, much the same as at your basic undefended mental institution, but when the excrement hit the fan, there was nothing much doing but watching TV. I would hope for your patient understanding about the mental institution reference; there was usually a long line downstairs during the day which was called “the medications line,” and many of the people were on mental health medications. I myself am forced to take two, one for anxiety, and one for sleep.

Seattle, Washington has been called the most livable city on the face of the planet, but to some extent, there have been disabled people who were forced to only die there. The Legend of Center Park was the man in a manual wheelchair who had managed to hump his way up to the locked door to the roof, pick the lock somehow by using his teeth and a bobby hairpin, and who wheeled off the roof in his wheelchair, seven stories up, and successfully died. That’s because in those days, there was no such Internet. Now those disabled people have the World Wide Web, and most of them with only lower body impairment, or with the aid of special devices such as mouth adjusted motor controls, can now have something doable at their disposal. They can go on the Internet and breathe.

I suppose from what I’ve been told that the Legend of Center Park had no sex life, which was “the thing” before the WWW’s Internet took over. The pencil necked geek with the pocket protectors won. And nowadays on Yahoo! they have a Malcolm Shabazz “Showbiz” X version of a Black People “geek” icon going, which is pretty cute in a peculiar way. Meanwhile, “the Disabled” can lead fuller lives, with something real to do other than researching weird sex or having new families - or be white racist pricks with nothing to do but be “impressive” to colored people, or vice versa.

Taking care of handicapped people with no lives was once a specialty of mine, really, my day job. The fact of the matter is that it was a terrific career oriented towards nursing that I worked - while being a struggling, mostly politically based hack writer - who only really cared about Center Park, the first apartment building built in the entire country, possibly the world, specifically for people in wheelchairs. That fact somehow blew my mind. It may have been fear of success on my part, but how can one comprehend it? I was in the first building of its kind in the entire country, and maybe – the planet.

They at least had elevators, and a radical hero there who kept tabs on everyone via the telephone. That was John Tyler, who was six feet tall if he had been able to walk, and he liked to do what he could to push laws allowing wheelchair access, which was one of the main issues at the time for disabled wheelchair using people. The other major issue I recall was where such people could live, in affordable wheelchair accessible housing.

Nobody in Center Park wants to live in “a rest home,” because apparently people die too easily in there. Actually, they do, because they put them on psychiatric medications, and those are hard drugs which can kill you with their side affects. Getting them in Center Park was another “attempt away” at being poisoned to death with the little pills. Sad to say, their side effects are well known, and it’s hard to get people to stop taking them, even when they totally wreck up people’s systems. Some are harsher than others. But they’re mostly not good for you, and can even make you look to get “high” taking them.

I unfortunately am one of the people currently stuck taking them, mainly for sleep. I had a rocky pregnancy and need medication to get me through the night. I hate psychiatry, but I love my psychiatrist. He stopped me from committing suicide over the fact that he loves and serves humanity, and he has to dole out poison for a living. I see the little pill line in my mind; there it is at Center Park - for when you give up trying, is what I originally was forced to think. It is there mainly for suicide risks. I did try to kill myself once - and nearly died because of it; now I am adjusted on my medications and am fairly happy with my life, without the added worry of wondering what is happening to my body.

At least I myself, a victim of minor depression and post traumatic stress disorder, can now take my small amount of medication at home. I live in my own apartment, no longer within the auspices of Center Park, but I often think of the times with friends, “enemies” and colleagues that I have spent there, working towards civil rights for the entire human race, which is often emblemized in Seattle as through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the many programs started by the American Civil Rights Movement.

I have a small amount of physical challenge - which does not encumber me too severely, involving some left side spasticity. It does not affect my abilities to edit and write pieces such as the freelance writing, copy editing and ghost writing I normally do, and this four part article series, which I am hoping will enable people to better understand the realms of the physically and mentally disabled and handicapped.

Basic human legal and civil rights, the Independent Living Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and all such needed movements for change in a hostile world all demarcate continuous social and political changes that are needed in today’s local and widespread economies - and the whole entire world. Let’s hear it for everyone’s human rights, no matter what form of tangible “human” they may inevitably involve.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Part Four:
The Physically Challenged II

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 1,000

I and my husband once worked as nurse aides at the first apartment building in the nation built specifically for people in wheelchairs, Center Park, which shares the same initials as cerebral palsy, one of the world’s most common severe physical disabilities.

There is a huge United Cerebral Palsy Residential Center in Seattle, WA, and many people with cerebral palsy live in the Central Area at Center Park on Rainier Ave. S. It’s right next door to the Lighthouse for the Blind, and some blind people live in Center Park as well.

The legend of Center Park was the guy who made it up the stairwell in his manual wheelchair, got onto the roof, and jumped off and successfully died. Really, there was nothing to do at Center Park, except for gossip mongering and television. The most exciting weekly event was when the old ladies left on the communal charter bus to go get their ancient hair done at the beauty parlor, or once a week working in the arts and crafts room, needing to allow several days for your project to harden and dry.

Nowadays, thank God, disabled people have the Internet within easy reach. A life of contemplating suicide is no real life, don’t you think? That major problem with spending one’s time is now relatively resolved. But there are surely other such Civil Rights Movement problems to conquer, including renaming the entire thing something weird, like the Independent Living Movement. Actually, I’m just kidding; those are two separate movements. Black People don’t think in terms of their being disabled like “we” are, they consider themselves able and challenged only by social rituals such as being or not being hired and other such sociological problems. It is an entirely different thing, but there are certainly disabled African-Americans who need access to both of those movements. Learning disabilities - for one - are prevalent in every community in the United States. At Center Park, there was some discussion that I recall about this. Learning disabilities can preclude your being able to compete on the same level for a job, whether you live at Center Park or anywhere else. Life in there included many such learning challenges.

There’s still the most beautiful Adam and Eve garden you ever saw, which was focused on your being able to circumnavigate it in a wheelchair with ease. But they probably won’t let you smoke at Center Park nowadays, except for right outside the building’s perimeter. Smoking was “not allowed” - back in the 1980s. I’m sure they still let them smoke outside. The wondrous garden, a fairytale paradise of sorts, was looped around the building, and it but now lurks in my mind’s eye – it’s where two almost ex-heroes met, namely, my husband and me. I had saved a Black family once, and he had rescued thousands of people during his stint as a medic in the Viet Nam War.

We had both several times tossed our lives away to serve other people – and we both had completely forgotten that. He and I were personal care attendants, me in the home, and he in the hospital system. We were finally villains for a change with each other, and we “dumped” Center Park to get married and have an able bodied child. I went quite overboard to make sure she would be safe. So I am one of the “escapees” of Center Park, although I was never one of the residents. At the time I lived there, I wasn’t yet physically or mentally challenged. That would come later, when I was put on medication for depression, which did some bad things to my physical system and caused severe spasming and disability, most of which has now abated with me. Reggie has a bad back and some other minor physical problems, but he’s now semi-retired, and he can still perform his beloved landscaping and gardening without any real problems.

What you need to learn from this article is that even autobiographical stuff can make one very happy and content person happen. Anyway, this is really about Social Politics, and the way of the world is that even disabled people must suffer from losing one or more attendants at a time. Then, they get replaced by other ones. What truth this becomes is there is a job in politics awaiting you if you care for caring for other people. In short, disabled people need attendants, and this article advertises for the job. You can find it in the newspapers and on the Internet under “home health care aides” - and other such titles.

You don’t have to think of it as politics so much anymore because of the Internet. Also, it’s a nursing oriented job that can lead to wonderful factionalism among the compadres who gather and create new things that make absolutely this entire world into a wonderful place. Meanwhile, I know this is true, because I am now disabled physically - where I wasn’t before; it was going to happen anyway, and yes, I am now a professional writer. You too can do such terrific things with your life, such as writing for pay, and now all of we who are physically challenged have the WWW Internet at our polite disposal.

Isn’t life great, whether you’re disabled, handicapped, physically or mentally challenged, or not, when you have something to do? For example, although I have a minor physical disability and some minor mental difficulties, I am quite capable of being a freelance writer, copy editor, rewriter, ghost writer, author and illustrator on an ongoing professional basis. Therefore, you should consider my services, if you have a book manuscript or are preparing one for publication.

Thus ends my series of articles about our local Independent Living Movement and the physically and mentally challenged people of Center Park in Seattle, Washington - the USA.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

The Independent Living Movement and the Physically Challenged I

2009-07-16T12:54:00.001-07:00

A series of four articles

Part One:
The Independent Living Movement I

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 1,500

I will start off by informing you that there is no real difference between the words “disabled” and “handicapped,” except for the linguistic ones. They both refer to physically challenged people - who often need special living accommodations.

Center Park of Seattle, Washington, USA was founded by Ida May Daly, who had a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. While suffering from this debilitating illness she managed to get enough public and private donations to buy a huge square block of land near downtown Seattle. She then managed to set it up so that people in wheelchairs would have a place to actually thrive and live, instead of one in which to waste away and die. She didn’t like what institutionalized living does to people in reality and how such places preach a religious afterlife. It’s because this generally involves how you have to die in this lifetime to achieve it.

Nowadays, many of those Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, private enterprise or whatever institutions in America are united along liberally political lines. This is somewhat due to the efforts of various black people civil rights aficionados. Via coincidence of circumstances, Center Park is located in what in the 1980s was an African-American neighborhood. That was how the property values were low enough for Ida May Daly to be enabled to purchase the land in that neighborhood. It used to be white and Catholic, earlier on. There still are some people from that time frame who live there, as I attended their major church once, and hostilities and frictions that are probably entirely gone by now. However, I suspect the most poverty stricken of people still live there. I remember this one small store that sold a particularly spicy brand of barbecue sauce. The old fellows sat out on the store’s tiny porch, jawing away all day.

In the 80s, I worked at Center Park in that neighborhood. I wondered deeply about life itself, being a somewhat “newbie” professional writer and artist working a “day job” helping the disabled. I was a live-in personal care attendant doing daily activities with physically and mentally challenged people, mostly white ones before the days of the Internet. Back then, they also had Christian study groups to pass the slow time, and involvement in local and national politics - which was more to my “in crowd’s” liking. I wasn’t much for Christian studies, being too Jewish influenced to ever see myself that way.

As I was deeply involved with fragile people having distinctively human lives and bodies, ones which were not spiritually suited for an afterlife, I used to be sad at how for many long years Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to keep up a “preachy” attitude of going on to another place to get rid of such a fallacy. He said he was heading for “the Promised Land,” which everyone disabled or handicapped I have ever met up here in the Pacific Northwest seems to think is indeed - Canada.

Dr. King himself, an African-American of great social standing and a pastor cum reverend at Ebenezer Baptist Church, far away from where we lived at Center Park, had performed many of his duties far down in the American South - while we of this article were located in the American Northwest. Therefore I figured he probably meant something else by his catch phrase of “the Promised Land,” such as eternal peace; but many of the disabled I’ve met in the Pacific Northwest would like to live in Canada. It was kind of an ongoing jest that “we” would all have to move up to the Promised Land in this era of global warming.

The melting back of the glaciers up north does mean the expansion of the Northwest Territories, and it would be wonderful indeed to slowly be moving northward. The Great Seal of King County, as of 1986, sports the fine but somewhat overweight head of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in support of all the many things he did for civil rights. This includes work on behalf of the handicapped and disabled, although strangely enough we have yet to see much of a united effort on the part of people of color and the physically challenged, especially on the Internet. It’s odd enough; it’s as though one movement is led by colored people, and the other movement is led by white people. There is thus the Civil Rights Movement, and the Independent Living Movement.

The former group is simply being led by other types of people than the latter group. It seems due to efforts on the part of both the left wing and the right wing of political participants, and so the disabled are led significantly by white men in wheelchairs at this point in time, in the year 2007. Dr. King’s face on the Great Seal doesn’t seem to have changed this any, although all of the city buses are now wheelchair accessible. Also, the days when the bus was “demarcated” for black people to be forced to ride in the back of the bus, with brown outlined windows signifying this, are over, as Mayor Norm Rice of Seattle went ahead and repainted the bus windows about a decade ago.

We had our usual struggles between racial groups, typical of what you may have seen before, and now the buses are almost fully together when it comes to human rights. There are still some odd issues involving Native American rights – there are municipal and county buses where an area is demarcated for “red” skinned people. I don’t know if anyone is ever going to change that, but I do know no one is forcing aboriginal people to ride in the backs of the buses – there are simply red outlined windows in the far back which are obviously more than a mere coincidence. No “Indians” are forced to sit back there, and I doubt much farther will be done about the bus painting arrangement.

Chief Sealth, a Native American or aboriginal, was the brown of color man our Emerald City of Seattle in Washington State was named after, and he resides currently in a grave near an aboriginal people’s reservation. He was the leader of a tribe hereabouts, the name of which I have forgotten. He gave a wonderful “final” speech where he handed over his tribal lands, possibly the Duwamish were involved, and he asserted in a noble and peaceful way that “we” who now live here might be able to handle the privilege. I myself keep hoping someone will do something about those “red” demarcated bus windows. I’m sure Chief Sealth would not like his people to be stuck with such a set of circumstances.

But who is the true Chief of Seattle; is it the Mayor, or someone else? Many communities exist here in our lovely area, led by many an interested party or person. But what makes a person such a being of involvement? Is it his or her heart, or brains, or beaucoup bucks that do this, or the fact there must be someone for greatness to be thrust upon? What is “greatness” really – is it something that is simply there for certain people, in a certified and given time, in a definite and realistic way? And is greatness something achievable by just anyone, or is it only for specific people, ones who know what they are doing?

Someone – everyone needs to be “a somebody,” like Jesse Jackson, one of Dr. King’s own men in their times, once put it; he said that you really should become that somebody. In a way, that will always be my John Tyler, part Indian or Native American, part white man, who ruled one floor of a multi-story apartment building as a radical who fought for the rights and freedoms of the underprivileged handicapped American. He was ably assisted by one Jewish liberal named Ronald Gary Schwarz, who had been a staunch Republican before he became disabled and who when disabled “did a 180,” turning himself around. He had finally found his life’s purpose was to assist those in wheelchairs to enable themselves to live their lives. These two “Men in Wheelchairs” were my elder mentors and close friends when we stayed at Center Park, there situated in the mostly Black People area of town, the Central Area.

John Tyler helped get the proper lifts onto the Metro buses, and Ron Schwarz assisted him, as well as eventually marrying me and taking very good care of my needs as I helped him with Assisted Living for some three years before he died. John also died, after making sure all the Metro buses were lift equipped, and Ron left this Earth after helping me with my writing career. Oddly enough, he died of multiple sclerosis, the same exact disease as that of Ida May Daly, the founder of one of the most interesting and astonishing living quarters for the disabled or the handicapped in the United States - the wheelchair accessible Center Park.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Part Two:
The Independent Living Movement II

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 1,300

What is the Independent Living Movement in Seattle, WA, the USA about? It and the aspects of it with which I was involved have changed, somewhat, from what I saw when there at Center Park.

Center Park was the first apartment building built in the entire country for disabled people in wheelchairs. It got flooded by every other type of handicapped people who could find a way into it. The “laundry list” - meaning, the applications made out of paper in those times - was one hundred blocks long to get in. It looped around the block, which mind you, was more like a downtown office city block than a neighborhood one.

The office was run by “ABs,” or in other words able-bodieds. It was thought that if you did the tiniest thing wrong when you reported on anything to the obvious “lesbians” - or overweight, underpaid white women with no sense of humor who also smiled these abysmally evil grimaces all the livelong day - you would be destined to “go places.” This was namely to a mental ward, or another form of The Poor House, as they used to put it in the Charles Dickens Dickensian days of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Whichever place least suited; there you would then be stuck, waiting for your typical early demise - as it was then for the disabled folk. The office ladies actually had their own lives, and weren’t that out to “get” people, probably; but in many cases, they did stick their noses into private people’s affairs.

As power corrupts, and as absolute power corrupts absolutely, those ladies ruled the office in Center Park with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and you didn’t want to mess with them. Mark Twain, alias Samuel Langhorne Clemens, had warned me about the existence of such seeming Christian and God Fearing ladies, and how merciless they were, when it comes to putting you in “your place,” and Center Park of the doldrums was sufficiently depressing in and of itself, as I said, back in the Precambrian Times. Meanwhile, the black ladies of the neighborhood were often hired for live out jobs at Center Park, doing the same thing I was doing; working for the disabled and helping them keep clean and neat apartments, handling both nursing and maid duties for them. We were all a kind of mixed bag of nurse aides and attendants, not all of one racial group, who worked there. I was white with freckles, and there were black, brown and white people, mostly women, who worked both live in and live out at Center Park, for some very low wages.

This “palace” for the disabled and handicapped back then was also thought of as the hospital - or Death’s Door - by many. There was an available office with a nurse on duty there day and night seven days a week, the one with the medications line in front of it during the day. And there was an office run by the disabled people who lived there, where you were supposed to have input, with a “President of the Center Park Council” who sat in it daily when I was there, answering questions of anyone who came in. I remember the President being a disabled white man who had been “normal” and then gotten involved in a hydroplane boating accident at Green Lake in Seattle.

Nowadays they also have an “in-house” newsletter, produced by the disabled people there. The privacy realm was greater, however, than in the average institution - and it was indeed an apartment building with surrounding gardened grounds, as many such better apartment complexes have nowadays. God’s verdant Land of Oz was accessible outside, in a marvelous garden that led around half the perimeter of Center Park, and it was as lush as the Garden of Eden, the home of Adam and Eve. But the very thought of sex, unavoidable by all of the disabled handicapped and nearly incapable of having sex people of Center Park, made it a “nasty” life for one isolated person’s place in the scheme of things. Nonetheless, I met a number of people trying to explore sexual avenues, some of whom were women trying to check into a motel repeatedly in order to have the odd “tryst” with anyone able enough to have sex with them. There were the usual love affairs and marriages as among the so-called “normal” population, but sex was something trickier - when it came to various people’s real disabilities.

So what exactly is the palace or place of each person, so physically challenged, you might wonder, given the fact your life before the Internet involved television zombie status or only wandering around outside, waiting for a life you could lead? Perhaps if you weren’t too disabled, you could find a job of work. In those days, the days before Section 504 of the Washington State Code was put through and enforced, it was spectacularly hard for a disabled or handicapped person to get work. Once that law was put through, it made it easier for a soul in a wheelchair or whatever to find work, given they were thus to be judged on the same basis as an able-bodied person. That’s the law as of the 80s: if you could compete and turn in substantially similar work, you could be hired, even though disabled. Getting rid of affirmative action laws in the 90s probably cut into that, as the type of law involved was that sort of thing, but I guess it’s still in effect.

It was kind of an affirmative action program, the sort of thing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only dreaming of in the 1960s. His dreams were to ensure white, brown and black people could get by in the same environments as each other inhabited, and not be racially segregated. Center Park was not racially segregated, and those three different types of people did indeed live there, although they didn’t necessarily interact much. There, I met a man who knew about his place in the scheme of things was similar to Dr. King’s and his name was John Tyler – he was the “radical” of Center Park, and he had a succinctly short death sentence of polio and sleep apnea hanging over his head while he did his level best to get rights for the disabled going. It was what he thought of as his place, along with a handful of other disabled handicapped persons who knew it was.

The goal of the Independent Living Movement was to “normalize” the lives of the physically and mentally challenged, and as John’s attendant, I was able to help him strive to fulfill this noteworthy and helpful goal. We all were pulling for the disabled to lead lives out of “physically and mentally segregated” institutions - and for them to move out into the general Seattle and surrounding environs and communities. The idea was to help the disabled and the handicapped lead fuller, richer, and more worthwhile lives. The ILM was and is the movement for these people to become more human and less cut off from able people, and so become able to become happier and more productive world citizens.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Simple Rules for Personal Health and Hygiene

2009-07-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Simple Rules for Personal Health and Hygiene

By Karen Cole
Word count: 1,600

Have you been following a plan for your own personal hygiene, or do you get up in the morning, take a bath, brush and blow dry your hair, use the bathroom through the day, and go to bed at night? If you only do the latter, you need to put more planning and preparation into your personal care and grooming.
Cleanliness is seen nowadays as next to Godliness, and neglect of your own personal hygiene may cause health and social problems of which you are not even aware. Bad breath, for example, is a common problem--the perpetrator is often accused of it, but he or she may not be attending to it. Problems such as dandruff are forgivable, but good looks are usually the result of great care and attention paid to personal grooming. You should put some time and effort into it if you want to feel and look your best every day.
All external parts of the body need time and attention. Below is a partial list of the body parts which you should be taking care of with your grooming plan. Here are some tips as to how to attend to your most common and ordinary daily grooming needs.
HAIR
First of all, keep your hair at a length and style which you can properly maintain in a cleanly manner at all times. Wash your crowning glory at least twice per week, using a mild shampoo devoid of borax or alkalis. It is not a good idea to use soap, as it can leave a fine film of stickiness in your hair. Shampoo is meant to wash totally out of your hair. Be sure and carefully towel dry your hair after you wash it, and be cautious with the blow dryer. You don’t want your hair to become too dry and brittle. Especially if you have long or thick hair, brush it three to four times per day, using a soft bristled brush or wide toothed comb. Be sure to wash your hair grooming tools every time you wash your hair. And oil your scalp with grooming oil once per week, preferably one hour before you wash it. A hot oil treatment is fine--if you know exactly what you are doing.
Hair coloring or dye is not recommended, as no current dyes have been found to be completely safe for long term use. They contain chemicals which can seep into your scalp and even cause premature hair loss. So we recommend not using hair dye if possible. Also, try not to wear a hat for a very long period of time. Wearing hats has also been shown to cause premature hair loss. Redheads need to be particularly concerned, as they are subject to early hair loss.
SKIN
A good bath once or twice per day is essential for cleanliness and good grooming. You should always bathe after any strenuous physical activity. Mild soaps are best, and you don’t need to use a germicidal or antiseptic soap unless you have a medical or “smelliness” problem. Bath brushes, bath sponges, and mildly abrasive scrubbers are recommended. You must also pay special attention to your genitals and anal area, as lack of care paid to these can lead to serious infections--as well as an inadequate sex life. Rinse yourself thoroughly after washing, and be sure to use a dry and clean towel to properly dry yourself. Don’t ever share towels, try not to share bathing equipment, and wash all of your equipment after each bath. Putting a teaspoonful of bleach in one gallon of warm water, rinse your bathing equipment in the water, and then under warm running water. And always change into completely clean underwear after each bath.
It’s good to use a fine organic moisturizing oil or cream every day, especially as you get older. Put it on at night to avoid that sticky feeling, and so as to not attract dust and filmy dirt throughout the day.
TEETH
Brush your teeth two to three times every day, or after meals or snacks as needed. It’s important especially to brush right before bedtime. Pay attention to getting rid of the food particles stuck between your teeth. Flossing is highly recommended over toothpicks for this. You only need about a pea sized dab of toothpaste on your toothbrush. When brushing, brush down on the upper teeth and brush up on the lower teeth, using a circular motion. Also, brush the inner as well as the outer surface of your teeth, and before you brush each time, carefully brush your tongue.
Your toothbrush should never be shared with anyone. It should have resilient bristles, and it should be well rinsed and left somewhere completely sanitary to dry after each usage. Try to use organic toothpaste, one that’s completely safe and free of harsh abrasives or strong antiseptics. Baking soda has been found to be a very effective substitute for toothpaste, if you don’t mind its strong flavor.
HANDS
You should always be washing your hands. There’s no such thing as too often. Use a good hand cream if they become dry. Pay attention to your fingernails when you wash your hands. A good nail brush placed near your bathroom sink is a sound investment. Use soap every time you wash, and always wash before and after meals--and after you go to the bathroom. Many infections such as E. coli are caused every day by people who don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom. You should also keep washing your hands while preparing meals.
NAILS
Your fingernails completely replace themselves every five to six months. You need to keep them well trimmed, and preferably buffed and polished too. Men can buff their nails and use a nail shining tool instead of polish to give their nails a healthy glow. Women may of course polish their nails with beautiful colors, which can hide the discoloration that comes with age. Clip your nails to the length you want them, but don’t ever trim too close to the skin. If your nails chip easily, consider adding more protein to your diet, as finger and toenails are all made of protein. Eating gelatin can work for this.
Very brittle, highly yellow or discolored nails can be a sign of a serious health problem. Please see your doctor immediately if you have this. Also, do not always keep your nails painted with polish. This can lead to stripping of the natural keratin of the nails. Also, either go out or give yourself a home manicure and a pedicure once every couple of weeks. Be sure and buy a very good manicure kit for this purpose.
FEET
Many people take no care whatsoever of their own feet, usually to their detriment. Always keep your toenails clipped, shaping the nails but not cutting too close to the skin. Always give your feet a good scrubbing with a pumice stone or mildly abrasive brush when taking a bath, and before you put on your socks, dry carefully between your toes. Try wearing a clean pair of cotton socks every day; this will pamper your feet and keep them dry and not smelly. Powder your feet after you take a bath. Try not to wear the same pair of shoes every day, and alternate wearing your shoe pairs. And make sure you wear comfortable shoes. Comfort and safety should come before stylishness. High heels can lead to the shortening of important calf muscles.
DEODORANT
Your underarms don’t emit an odor until you hit your preteens. That’s when your apocrine glands, which are located under your arms and around your genitals, begin to function, producing a milky, oily type of perspiration. Bacteria then thrive in this sweat, causing the familiar underarm odor.
To control strong odor, you can wash daily with an antibacterial soap such as Lever 2000. You should always wear clean clothes that are free of staining and sweat. Use a deodorant that is also an antiperspirant, which will dry up moisture in the armpits. Cut back on your caffeine intake—it puts your apocrine glands into overdrive. After a bath, dust yourself liberally with a fine talcum powder. Always drink plenty of water, both to flush your system of toxins and to regulate your bowels. This alone may end some problems you may have with “smelliness.”
TANNING
Getting a “healthy tan” is not considered to be healthy anymore. Now doctors are telling us that you shouldn’t mind your pale skin. Skin cancer, which is often deadly, is not a fair trade for good looks. When sunning, protect your fair skin with an at least SPF 30 sunscreen lotion. Keep your skin oiled and moisturized during the summer, and don’t bother with the “bronze look.”
BODY HAIR
Around puberty, your hair follicles respond to hormones raging in your body. You can end up with hair around your belly button, on your back, near your breasts and for both women and men, on your upper lip. If it’s especially coarse, show your doctor, as you may have a treatable hormonal imbalance. Some such “peach fuzz” is normal for girls, and if it seems unsightly to you, you can try bleaching or removing it. Nair is known to be a gentle permanent hair remover.
We hope you found these simple rules to be helpful to you. If you follow your own careful grooming and personal care plan, you will feel better, look more attractive, and probably live a longer, happier and more fulfilling life.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Nature of Diabetes – Article One

2009-07-16T12:46:00.000-07:00

Nature of Diabetes – Article One

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 700 words

What is diabetes? Why is it a health problem?

There are basically two types of diabetes: childhood or type one, which is early onset, and adult onset or type two diabetes. Type one is usually inherited and type two is usually caused by poor diet and other health difficulties in later life. Called diabetes mellitus, this condition is a physically based illness, caused by the pancreas not producing enough insulin or the cells not responding to the insulin that is already produced. This makes the blood glucose unable to be absorbed by the cells, causing diabetes. The symptoms of this physical illness include frequent urination, continuous lethargy, blurred vision, faintness, excessive thirst and unusual hunger. The disease is chronic, and it causes serious health complications such as renal or kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and blindness.

About 17 million Americans have either type one or type two diabetes, but more than half of them are completely unaware that they have it, putting down their general tiredness and other symptoms as due to weight problems, excessive indolence, or simply getting older. But treatment for this disorder can be as simple as moderate changes in diet, some safe oral medications, and in the most severe cases, a series of daily oral injections of insulin. Diabetes can also be monitored on a moment to moment basis through the use of special hand held devices which check the blood glucose levels, through pricking the skin either on the fingers or on the arm. And when glucose levels are too low or too high, preventive measures can be taken to ensure the continued health and good feelings of the patient.

Why does diabetes exist? What exactly causes it?

All our body cells need energy in order to perform their various functions, and the body’s primary energy source is glucose or blood sugar. This is a simple sugar which comes from digestion of carbohydrate laden foods, such as sugars and starches, and the glucose from this process circulates in the blood. This makes for an immediate energy source for all the cells, body tissues and organs.

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas, an organ located on the back side of the stomach. This chemical stimulator bonds to receptor sites on the outside of cells, acting like a key to open the door into the cell. Glucose thus enters the cells, and some of it can be converted to concentrated energy sources such as glycogen or fatty acids. This saves the glucose for later energy usage. But when not enough insulin is produced, or when the “doorway” no longer recognizes the “key,” the glucose lingers in the blood instead of entering the cells.

Your body then tries to dilute the resulting higher levels of blood glucose, which causes hyperglycemia as the water is drawn out of the cells and into the bloodstream. This is all in an effort to dilute blood sugars and excrete them into the urine. People with undiagnosed diabetes are thus typically constantly thirsty and drink large amounts of fluids such as water, urinating frequently in an attempt to get rid of excess glucose. You can check for large levels of glucose in the urine, a key sign of diabetes, by doing a simple urinalysis test. This is mainly how doctors determine whether or not you have diabetes.

While the body is trying to rid itself of excess glucose in the blood, the cells are now starving for glucose, triggering your body to grow hungry and to eat more food. The body will also provide energy for the starving cells by converting your available fats and proteins to glucose. This breakdown of fats and proteins for the sake of gaining energy causes acid compounds called ketones to form in the blood, which will also be excreted in the urine. Ketoacidosis occurs when too many ketones build up in the blood, and this condition can be life threatening, if left untreated.

Fortunately, there are nowadays many different ways to treat the signs and symptoms of diabetes, including ketoacidosis, through making minor to major lifestyle changes. Diabetes, though a serious illness, does not have to mean the end of your life; rather, it points to the beginning of how to treat yourself for the rest of your life, in order to ensure your continuing good health, productivity and general well being.

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Karate is an Excellent Sport

2009-07-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Karate is an Excellent Sport

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 750

The sport of karate masters the soul, causing it to be more perfect and disciplined. It not only teaches you how to fight; it teaches you how to think, behave and act as well. My husband is a seventh degree black belt, among his other martial arts proclivities, and in six months I made it as far as a blue belt.

In my life, I have basically used my karate training twice in my real life. I used it to halt a black bear attack in the mountains of Washington State, and to foil two house burglars. For that, my husband has given me an honorary fourth degree black belt, primarily because I was also able to demonstrate a very good flying kick as well after some practice. He took only six months to get his seventh degree black belt, which also required that he actually catch in his hand an arrow as it was fired only one hundred feet away from him.

He and I survived, and you will too if you go ahead and take karate and other martial arts. Like I said, they can be useful in real life. For example, in the case of the bear attack, I used the “wall” stance they teach you in class. Maybe I should tell you about class first.

You enter a large room called a “dojo” with the other karate students. Next, a teacher or several teachers, called “sensei,” may confront you. They taught me the wall right away, for example, by being a wall of power that kii-iid (yelled loudly) at me. It frightened me - but got me more used to the concept of becoming what they described as “a potential killing machine.” I decided right away to never use my karate to hurt others, unless I was severely under attack and could get away with it without hurting any innocent parties (such as myself). You don’t have to be heroic - I’m quite the physical coward myself.

The sensei really put me through my paces, and when I learned “the wall,” I learned how to spread my legs and plant my feet with my knees over them, so that I became an invincible wall, with no one being able to push me over. This worked great during the bear attack. I used it to communicate a firmness of purpose, which the bear listened to. Then he demonstrated back that he was tougher than me. So I then signaled him that I wouldn’t fight him in a respectful manner. Being intelligent, this black bear then simply turned and walked away satisfied that he had won the argument. So he didn’t run down the cliff further and attack anyone else. We both won that day thanks to karate, and nobody was hurt.

In the case of the house burglary, karate gave me the strength of mental purpose and character to confront the burglars with what they were really doing and how they were terrorizing the home owner at whose house they were caught. The two burglars were astonished that I had any such courage to confront them. I only yelled at them and never used any real karate, and thus nobody was injured. The two burglars left and didn’t come back to bother the home owner. Karate had won the day - once again.

In my husband’s case, he was the proverbial 98 pound weakling until he learned a wide variety of martial arts, including karate, from a single master who personally trained him. The next time he was in a fight, after his training, he laid a bully who was menacing his life completely low. Nobody has ever taken him down in a fight since, even though he has been threatened with both guns and knives – nobody.

Therefore, you should learn karate or martial arts, which contains as wide of a variety of styles as the countries they now come from: aikido, kung fu or gung fu, karate, judo, kendo, and hundreds if not thousands of schools from Japan, China, Korea and Brazil. Pick a style, any style, see what’s at your local dojo, and once you take up this wonderful sport - practice, practice, practice. It will teach you great discipline and knowledge of your own power. Try it and see, and you won’t be sorry about the results. Like me and my husband, it might even save your life someday.

I Wish It Could Have Been Otherwise

2009-07-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

I Wish It Could Have Been Otherwise

By Karen Cole

Word count: 1,500

As far back as I can remember I have been hearing voices. It started when I was just three months old. I remember lying on my back in a cold sweat, undergoing nicotine withdrawal (as I found out decades later) as my smoking mother had switched from breast-feeding to bottled formula. Gasping for breath, I heard my father yelling at my sister in the next room. She was wetting the bed every night, and my father was extremely upset. I couldn’t understand at all, and was preparing to scream aloud.

Suddenly a voice went off in my head, saying “If you scream, something very bad will happen to you.” Since I was only a baby, it wasn’t in words, but I could hear the voice. I screamed anyway, and my mother came in, swooping me out of the crib into her loving arms. I heard my father’s yelling increase, and the sounds of my sister being spanked. It was so awful I can recall it even now, though I know that seems utterly impossible.

I grew up clumsy, anti-social, unable to communicate well. And the voices continued. I was watching TV once, “The Green Hornet” show, and I felt something spit very hard between my legs, going straight up my private parts. It was horrible. But I never told my parents about any of these things, keeping it all quietly to myself as the other kids taunted me, making fun of how weird and unusual I was, unable to keep up with them except in my schoolwork. There, I excelled. But for many years I spoke to no one, crying to myself even in the classroom, my body twisting up into awkward shapes uncontrollably. My mother noticed this, but we never saw a doctor about it. Instead, she sought out psychological counseling for me when I entered my teens. This did me no real good.

One day, a nice lady coach who had seen me jogging around the high school track asked me to join the girl’s track team. I did, and this began a partial recovery from my disabilities and social awkwardness. I made friends, and even came in second in one of our races. By the time I entered college I was pretty much normal, though often subject to strange feelings and occurrences, and occasional voices in my head. But still disturbed and given to crying fits, I dropped out of college, taking off hitch-hiking to blindly find my own haphazard way of living. I ended up in Washington State, where I found work as an attendant for the disabled. I met John Tyler, a most amazing man with polio who taught me that disability is not the end of your life, but the beginning, and I made friends with other disabled people.

For the first time in my life, I was happy; I blossomed with joy, no longer alone and afraid. I even married the most wonderful man in the world, Ron Schwarz, the son of Austrian Jews who had fled Hitler’s Holocaust; he had severe multiple sclerosis and used an electric wheelchair. We could not consummate our marriage, but we were deeply in love just the same. We all lived happily at Center Park, the first major apartment building in the country built specifically for people in wheelchairs and for all kinds of disabled people to abide within its beautiful walls independently. I met every sort of disabled person imaginable, including the deaf/blind, learning all about the various disabilities. But my sweet husband Ron finally died of cancer in February of 1985, two short months after my dearest friend John Tyler, my mentor and savior, unhappily succumbed to pneumonia.

Working just a few more years for the disabled, I stressed out, unable to work anymore. In the middle of this I had an incident where I tried to stop a neighbor’s house burglary by jumping off a window ledge, ending up hospitalized and on several mental health medications. Previously in 1982 I had been diagnosed as depressed, but had not stayed on medication. Later, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis I have since accepted. However, I went on struggling for years until I met Remigio, my present husband, in a certified nursing class in 1990. I went back to work for a disabled lady, Carrie, again at Center Park. Remigio and I lived with her there until she gave up her battle to live independently and moved to a nursing home, where she died.

I and Remigio, constantly arguing due to my mental disability, married and moved into our own apartment. As he couldn’t take the constant quarreling, he took me to a psychiatrist friend of his, and once again I was put on strong medications, this time for bipolar disorder combined with post-traumatic stress disorder. These hurt me physically, and in 1997 I finally came down with a physical disability, chronic dystonia/dyskinesia of my left arm and neck. We are presently treating this by reducing my psychiatric medications and using natural therapeutics. But I still constantly turn to the left, having to struggle to right myself at all times; my left arm sticks straight out, and it’s very difficult to bend it, or even type.

Yet I had already set myself up years ago in business as a freelance writer, copy editor, copy writer, ghost writer and website designer under the name Rainbow Writing, Inc. I have my own website, several of them in fact, and am listed within several Internet writing agencies. I work ten to twelve hours a day, almost seven days a week, getting there by taking frequent breaks. I am starting to make some money at this, and I also farm work out to professional writers on my Rainbow Writing, Inc. outsource team. Daily, I’m involved in projects related to publishing books and making novels into movies. It’s incredibly fun and life-fulfilling.

On the other hand, it’s a daily struggle, and my left arm feels like it’s going to break off my body at the end of my challenging day. But it keeps me busy, and I truly love my work. Many people have said I am blessed with extraordinary skill and talent, and I try to go a little further and learn a little more each day. My main diagnosis of bipolar disorder in under control due to a combination of mild doses of medication and vitamins, plus exercise and keeping up a daily pattern of “feeling good” about myself.

Remigio, a former psychiatric aide, certified nurse aide, and Doctor of Osteopathy, is a Godsend. I love him as much as I loved Ron, in spite of my mental problems, which are starting to finally alleviate under Remigio’s constant care and loving support. And in 1994, we were blessed during Christmas, the same season that John Tyler died, with a beautiful little daughter, our sweet and loving Angela. Due to my disability, she suffered some psychological trauma, such as during the times I attempted suicide, but she is healing and pulling through, excelling academically and socially in ways I never was able to learn. She is a dream come true.

If I could have written something for my parents, or told them something when I was growing up, I would have told them to not fear my special challenges. I would have asked them to read about people with disabilities, which my mother did a little, reading about an anti-social little boy when she sent me to counseling. I did not even know about disabilities when I was growing up, so I would have asked them to have taken a greater role in my upbringing, as they were often rather aloof and distant. They didn’t seem to realize that my problems were not all my own fault, but the fault of fate and my unknown, undiagnosed, untreated mental, social and physical problems.

I would tell the parents of children with similar disabilities to mine to pay more attention to their children, never blaming them for their problems, listening to them carefully and never comparing them to normal children, which shames them and only makes matters worse. I would tell them to read books about children with disabilities, and to enter any organizations for such children, exposing their own kids to other similarly-burdened children so they would have a peer group, which I did not have until late in adulthood.

I believe they would feel more accepted and normal that way, and a lot happier than I ever was. It would be a much more fun, healthy, and productive life for them to be surrounded with other disabled children, and to develop a healthier, more normal attitude about themselves and their disabilities. Above all, it would help to stress their abilities and cultivate their happiness, both within their families and in society at large, as they learn and grow.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Eat Your Carbs, They’re Good for You

2009-07-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

Eat Your Carbs, They’re Good for You

By Karen Cole
Word count: 1000

This article covers how carbohydrates take cover in your system, intertwine with proteins, and otherwise hobnob with your insides, making sure that you will avoid the tendency to handle only proteins.

You may think after all of the talk lately about carb reduction that you need to avoid eating carbohydrates. But the exact opposite is the case. The kinds of carbohydrates you get from fruits and vegetables are a necessary basis of your daily diet. Instead of helping you “pack on the pounds,” they actually help you to burn fat. They are also a major source of fuel for your body, especially your muscles, brain and nervous system.

Carbs occur in two types: simple and complex. They are broken down into glucose, or blood sugar, which is metabolized by your body for energy. Glucose not immediately used by you is stored in your muscles as glycogen, but if your body has an excess of glycogen, it is converted into fat. However, because carbs prime your metabolism, you need them in order to burn fat. This is one of the major reasons you must not starve yourself and eat too few carbs. You must eat a good intake of complex carbs, such as those found in fruits and veggies.

Simple carbs, such as those found in candies and sweets, and also fruit, are turned into glucose quickly. These are the kind which can add to your weight problem. Complex carbs, such as those found in brown rice, veggies, legumes (peas, beans and lentils), and whole grains breads and cereals are digested and thus used at a much slower rate, giving your body time to prime its metabolism.

There are four calories in each and every gram of carbohydrate. Nutritionists say that 50% of your diet should consist of complex carbs. Simple carbs are high in calories but low in vitamins and minerals. These are the so-called “empty calories” that you find in sodas, deserts and other such sweets, and to some extent in fruits -- especially fruit juices and fruit juice drinks. You should be getting your major carb intake from whole fruits, whole grains and vegetables.

Good high carb veggies are peas, peppers, pumpkin, radishes, spinach, squash, succotash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and turnips. Succotash, sweet potatoes and green cooked peas are the highest in carbs. You need several servings per day of complex carb foods such as these to maintain your energy levels and keep you from getting those “sluggish” feelings that make you feel sick and tired.

By eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables every day, you will be boosting your health through better carb consumption. The National Cancer Institute recommends that you have fruit juice -- or better yet fresh fruit – every day for breakfast. You should have a fresh fruit or vegetable snack every day. You need to stock up on dried, frozen and canned fruits and veggies. You must make these foods visible and easy to access throughout your daily routine. And you have to “sample the delicious spectrum” when it comes to the many different colors and varieties of fruits and vegetables.

You will get your “five a day” if you eat one cup of dark, leafy greens, one half cup of red tomatoes, one half cup of yellow peppers, six ounces of orange juice and one half cup of blueberries. This is only one example of how you can consume “five a day” of fruits and vegetables to keep your complex carb ratio up. Please notice this includes only one serving of fruit juice. Various nutrition experts state that you should eat whole, fresh fruits more often than drinking fruit juice, which keeps those simple sugars from adding to your weight problem.

This is because simple sugars are more concentrated in fruit juices than in whole fruits. You should eat at least two cups of fruit a day, in a variety of fresh choices, such as one small banana, one large orange and one quarter cup of fresh or canned apricots or peaches. Also, eating fresh fruit adds more fiber to your diet and helps flush toxins from your system better than only drinking fruit juice does.

You should also eat plenty of dark, leafy green veggies, which are among the best foods for you. Eat broccoli and kale, as well as mustard greens and spinach. Also, you should eat “orange” veggies such as carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and winter squash. For peas and beans, among the best are pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, split peas and lentils. Foods such as these are extremely healthy, low in fat, and terrific for raising your energy levels.

Eating fruits and veggies will also greater lower your risk for cancer. Researchers at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University have made “top ten” lists of the best antioxidant (anti-cancer) fruits and vegetables. Here are some of the most antioxidant members of the fruit and vegetable families of foods:

1) Fruits: prunes, raisins, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, plums, oranges, red grapes and cherries
2) Veggies: kale, spinach, Brussels sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, broccoli, beets, red bell peppers, onions, corn and eggplant

While the average American seldom gets as much as two servings of these good foods per day, nutrition experts say that five to seven servings a day need to become a staple of the ordinary American diet. You can easily sneak these into your family’s eating patterns. Try serving raw veggies at every meal, and take advantage of packaged, prepared veggies. Put veggies into your breakfast and lunch, and start each family dinner with a mixed green salad. Serve a salad entrée dish once per week, fill your spaghetti sauce with vegetables, and begin ordering a weekly pizza – with an extra serving of healthy vegetables.

If we were to eat more veggies and fewer processed foods, we as a country would lose weight, clean out our clogged arteries, balance our blood sugar and shut down a large number of hospitals in the process. This would roughly solve America’s growing health and obesity problems – in a nutshell.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Chief Sealth and the Independent Living Movement

2009-07-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

Chief Sealth and the Independent Living Movement

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 2,500

OUR Center Park of the City of Seattle, named after local Native American leader Chief Sealth, was founded by “Our Lady” Ida May Daly. This wheelchair using soul had a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, or MS.

While dying of a devastating illness, Ida Daly procured enough public and private donations to buy a large square city block of land. It was located in an undervalued black and Catholic neighborhood five miles south of downtown metropolitan Seattle. She then had a huge seven story brick and concrete apartment building, including a generous parking garage, erected onsite, which at the time was incredibly cheap land.

She carefully built it to be completely wheelchair accessible, so that disabled people, especially those in wheelchairs, would have a place to actually thrive and live, instead of one in which to slowly die. She didn’t like what institutionalized living does to people, and how most institutions preach about an afterlife, mainly involving how you have to die to achieve it. She wanted disabled people to live longer lives.

I used to be sad about how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to keep up a “preachy” attitude of going somewhere else when he died, probably meaning the grave, perhaps only to get rid of the fallacy of Hell for complex “sinners” - such as his politically active self. He would speak of “The Promised Land,” which most of the disabled I’ve met seem to think is somewhere up in Canada. I wouldn’t know myself, though.

Center Park, while not “The Promised Land,” is a dual winged red brick and white mortar concrete building containing some two hundred separate one and two bedroom apartment units. Made mostly of cinderblocks, it’s well insulated, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The residents have few complaints, except for those about Christians with overly religious attitudes who think they can get wheelchair people to “get up and walk.”

Via a strange coincidence of circumstances, Center Park is located in what in the eighties was still an African-American neighborhood that used to be white and mostly Catholic. There still are some people from those times who live there, as I have attended their major church once or twice, but the racial frictions are probably mostly gone by now. In the eighties I lived and worked there, and wondered deeply about life, the universe and everything. I was a trained professional writer and artist working a day job helping physically challenged people do their personal care and transfers.

Some of these people and their attendants were white and also partly descendants of local Native Americans, such as John Tyler, the man I started out working for, and his aide Virginia Jarvis. I happen to be part Cherokee Indian, of the “Trail of Tears” tribes. Chief Sealth was the Native American dignitary our Emerald City was named after, and he resides currently in a grave near an aboriginal people’s reservation. He was the leader of a tribe hereabouts, possibly the Duwamish. He gave a wonderful “final” speech where he handed over his tribal lands, the Duwamish were involved, and he asserted in a noble and peaceful way that “we” white people might be able to handle the wonderful privileges of living here.

But who is the true Chief of Seattle; is it the Mayor, or someone else? Many communities exist in our lovely area, led by many an interested tribe, party or person. But what makes a person such a being of involvement? Is it his or her heart, or brains, or beaucoup bucks, or the fact there must be someone important - for greatness to be thrust upon him or her?

Everyone needs to be a Somebody, like Jesse Jackson put it, saying that you really should become that somebody. To my memory that will always be John Tyler, who presided over one floor of Center Park as a disabled radical, fighting for the rights and freedoms of able-disabled Americans. He was a major force for getting the wheelchair lifts put on the city buses.

He was ably assisted by a Jewish Republican-cum-Democrat named Ronald Gary Schwarz, who “did a 180 degree left turn” politically when he entered a wheelchair, going from a ruthless Republican background into a bleeding heart liberal one. When he became disabled from MS, he finally found his life’s purpose, helping those who needed it by also being one of the people responsible for getting the lifts put on the buses. He lived down the hall on the same floor as John, and I worked live-in for both of them.

Life, however, has changed surely from what I saw at Center Park. It was the first apartment building built in the entire country for disabled people in wheelchairs. It got flooded by every other type of handicapped people who could find a way into it. The “laundry list” - meaning the applications, made out of paper in those times - was one thousand or more names long to get in. It looped ten times around the block, which mind you was more like a downtown office city block than a neighborhood one.

The office was run by ABs, in other words able-bodieds, and it was thought that if you did anything wrong when you reported problems to the office “lesbians” who ruled the building, you would be kicked out or sent to a mental ward. These women were overworked, overweight and underpaid, with no sense of humor, but who nonetheless smiled abysmally evil grimaces all the livelong day - and looked for excuses to kick you out or send you to another form of “The Poor House,” as they used to put it in the Dickensian days of author Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” and “A Christmas Carol.” Whichever place least suited; there you would most surely be stuck, if you didn’t mind your p’s and q’s.

As power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, those ladies ruled Center Park with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Mark Twain, alias Samuel Langhorne Clemens, had warned readers like me about the existence of such seeming Christian and God fearing ladies. He went on at great length about how merciless they were, when it comes to putting you in “your place;” I was finally forced to believe him. The office at Center Park of the Doldrums was sufficiently depressing in and of itself, as I said, back in the Precambrian Times.

This “precious pretty palace” for the handicapped back then - in spite of good intentions and its excellent reputation - was thought of as the hospital - or Death’s Door - by many. God’s verdant Land of Oz, an ode to our Emerald City, was however fully accessible outside, in a marvelous garden that led around half the perimeter of Center Park. It had a wide flat pathway twined around it, and it was as lush as the Garden of Eden, the temporary home of Adam and Eve. At the thought of sex, unavoidable by all of the disabled, you couldn’t go here to “get some.” But you could check into a nearby motel, which many disabled people there often did. They told me of their misadventures, which usually involved trying to talk someone able bodied of the opposite sex into a motel tryst, and then being left flat on one’s back on a motel room bed, unable to get up.

So what exactly is the place of each person, so physically challenged, you might wonder, given the fact disabled life before the Internet involved mostly only television zombie status - or wandering around for a stroll in your wheelchair outside, waiting for a life you could lead? Perhaps if you weren’t too disabled, you could find a small “job of work.” In those days, before Section 504 of the Washington State Code was put through, it was spectacularly hard for a disabled person to get work. Once that law was put through, it made it easier for a soul in a wheelchair or with any other disability or handicap to find work, given they were to be judged on the same basis as an able-bodied person.

It was kind of an affirmative action program, the sort of thing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dreaming of in the sixties. But John Tyler, the radical I spoke of before, most seemed to know about his place in the scheme of things being similar to Dr. King’s, albeit he didn’t always get along with black people. He also had a succinctly short death sentence of polio and sleep apnea hanging over his head while he did his level best to get rights for the disabled going. It was what he thought of as his place, along with a handful of other disabled, both men and women, who knew it was.

Do you think if you knew your life was short, you would bother to help others? At the most, your place would not be here - ere long. The place known as Center Park had a laundry room, was made out of heat retentive cinder blocks, which kept it warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and was fairly easygoing to live in, if you could avoid the office “mavens.” But during the eighties, before the days of the Internet, there was virtually nothing to do there but watch television and overeat. A lot of disabled people at Center Park gave up to smoking, drinking and drug doing, which was readily supplied by downtown Seattle denizens.

That’s one of the reasons people there were suicidal, but most were unable to complete the act. They had a few places to dally, such as a common room, partial to elderly lady gossips and no one else, and an arts and crafts center, much the same as at your basic under funded mental institution, but when the excrement hit the fan, there was nothing much doing but watching TV and shooting the breeze downstairs with your friends. I would hope for your understanding about the mental institution reference; there was usually a long line downstairs, called “the medications line,” and many of the disabled people at Center Park were on mental health medications.

Seattle and its neighboring town of Bremerton have been called the most livable cities in the world, but to some extent, there have been disabled people forced to only die there, pretty much out of sickness combined with utter boredom. Before Section 504 was put through, there wasn’t much in the way of jobs available to pass the time, so people got pretty bored, as their SSI (Social Security Income) didn’t afford much money for a good time out on the town. There was a small chess club going when I was there, but not much else, except for minor sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.

While it was unknown whether he’d truly existed, the Legend of Center Park was the unknown savant in a manual wheelchair who managed to hump up one of the stairwells the entire seven stories, pick the roof’s lock by using a bobby pin, and push himself over the edge to his death on the street below. He purportedly did this solely out of sheer unadulterated boredom. Now Center Park has a nice monthly newsletter, run by “the Bushman,” Jim Bush, a friend of John Tyler’s - and the Internet. It may keep people in there out of nursing homes - for awhile at least.

Nobody in Center Park wants to live in “a rest home,’ because they kill people in there. Actually, they do, because they put them on psychiatric medications, and those eventually kill you. They’re horrible, and they even can make you high, which can make them hideously attractive. I see the pill line in my mind; there it is at Center Park when you give up trying. Pills are not a good thing to try to keep alive on. I would avoid them if I were you.

There’s still the most beautiful Adam and Eve garden you ever saw outside on the grounds of Center Park, which was really there. But they probably won’t let you smoke except for outside. Smoking was “not allowed” there back in the eighties. But the wondrous fairytale garden, a minor paradise of sorts, was looped around the building, and it but now lurks in my mind’s eye – it’s where two attendants of the disabled trysted, namely, me and my husband, Reggie Peralta. He and I were both personal care attendants, me in the home, and he in the hospital system. He and I dumped Center Park to get married and have children. We successfully had one daughter.

Anyway, the way of the world is that even disabled people must suffer from losing one attendant at a time, and have to retrain the new ones. There is a job involving Movement politics, the Independent Living Movement at least, awaiting you - if you care for caring for other people. In short, many of the disabled and handicapped people need attendants, and this article is yet another attempt to advertise for this job. You can find it in newspapers and on the Internet under “home health care aide” - and other such titles.

You don’t have to think of it as politics so much anymore because of the Internet. Also, it’s a nursing oriented job that can lead to wonderful factionalism among the compadres who gather and create new things that make this entire “Brave New World” (a spurious reference to a famous book by Aldus Huxley) into a wonderful place. Meanwhile, I know this is true, because I am now disabled physically where I wasn’t before. It’s due to some nasty medication for depression, which I do not ever recommend, and it was going to happen anyway. Nonetheless, I am still a professional book author, ghost writer, copy editor, proof reader, manuscript rewriter, coauthor, graphics and CAD artist, publishing helper, and website developer, with my own international services corporation.

You too can do terrific things with your life, such as writing for pay; all you need to do is apply with our company. We have years of experience and the entire world and much of the known universe at our disposal, thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web. Who needs to be a suicidal “legend” – when you can live your life fully instead - in spite of major or minor physical and/or mental challenges? There’s writing to be done. . .

Isn’t life great?

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Arthritis - Can it be Prevented?

2009-07-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Arthritis - Can it be Prevented?

By Karen Cole
Word count: 700

This article is about how arthritis affects people’s lives. It bends them, it twists them and shapes their bodies into articulations of hideous pain. It’s now on the news, and it’s more serious than hell on Earth.

Overview of Arthritis

Effective help is currently available for people to proactively manage arthritis and enjoy life to the fullest. But the actual prevention of arthritis itself is yet another story.

With rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the membranes or tissues lining the joints become inflamed. There is no known way to prevent any form of this disease, including osteoarthritis, adult-onset arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The exact causes of all these conditions are unknown.

It's very important for people who fear they are at risk of rheumatoid arthritis to realize that at this time there are no medications to take or lifestyle modifications to make that can completely prevent this crippling disease. However, by making changes to your weight and diet and engaging in moderate exercise, you may be able to slow or even halt the disease's onset and progress.

But you can only really take the measures needed to control arthritis after it is diagnosed. Until it is known for sure if certain bacteria or viruses trigger the disease, contact with people suffering from it will not change your risk of developing it.

Traditionally, medications and physical therapy have been used to manage the disease. A massive amount of nutrient research has also shown the effect diet and supplements have on the body's healing processes. Lifestyle changes can also make a big difference.

Causes of the Disease

Joint injuries caused by accidents or overuse increase the occurrence of some types of arthritis. You can also inherit certain genes that may increase your risk. More research is needed to find out how to reduce the disease's onset from these factors.

Some individuals have an inborn tendency to degenerative joint disease because they have changes in the structure of the important protein-building blocks of the articular cartilage which covers the surface of their joints. These seemingly small but significant abnormalities predispose their joints to wear and degeneration. In other cases, joint injuries may contribute to the development of DJD.

No foods have been definitively shown to cause or exacerbate arthritis in most individuals. A variety of diets and "hand-me-down" information exists about certain foods and arthritis, in particular the night shade plants, but none of it has been proven.

There is a rare form of arthritis called Spure which is caused by allergies to wheat products. Avoiding those will eliminate this disease. Associated features include weight loss, diarrhea and osteoporosis. Consult your health care provider if this is a concern.

There are things you can do to reduce your risk for getting certain types of arthritis or to reduce disability if you already have arthritis.

Overweight and obese people have a higher frequency of arthritis. Excess weight increases risk for developing osteoarthritis in the knees, and possibly in the hips and hands. Women are at special risk. In men, excess weight increases the risk for developing gout. It's important to maintain your recommended weight, especially as you get older.

Arthritis Prevention Programs

The Center for Disease Control has implemented programs in several states to reduce the onset and consequences of arthritis. The National Arthritis Action Plan: A Public Health Strategy delineates the actions necessary to better understand the arthritis burden in the USA and helps to fully apply known and effective interventions.

This document represents the combined efforts of nearly 90 organizations, such as the Arthritis Foundation, government agencies and many other groups and individuals with an interest in arthritis prevention and control.

The NAAP proposes a nationally coordinated effort for reducing the occurrence of arthritis and its accompanying disability by focusing on these three areas:

1. Surveillance, epidemiology and prevention research to strengthen the science base.

2. Communications and education to increase awareness and provide accurate information about arthritis.

3. Programs, policies, and systems promoting increased quality of life for people with arthritis and facilitating arthritis prevention measures.

The CDC continues to accumulate scientific knowledge on the benefits of physical activity. Because healthy eating reduces a person's risk of becoming overweight, good nutrition plays an important role in preventing knee osteoarthritis. In addition, moderate physical activity is essential for maintaining the health of joints.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

A Disabled Little Girl

2009-07-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

A Disabled Little Girl

By Karen Cole
Word count: 2,000

This is a different horror story, not like any you've read...

There once was a little girl, in her twenties and in a wheelchair. She was pretty. So very, very pretty. But as she was disabled, young and old, handsome and otherwise men with no prospects in life would apply for the job of taking care of her - and cruelly abuse her. They usually couldn't resist her helplessness and her great beauty. Because she was pretty. So very, very pretty.

Do you really think she was diabolical? No, she was not. She was extremely pretty. And so, she was the nicest, sweetest, goodiest person in the world. And she absolutely positulely, couldn’t ever walk? No, she could not. In fact, she was quite helpless, and unfortunately she was also very attractive. So very pretty.

So the men would come in to take the job to take care of her. She was very simple care, easy to get along with - and she only had a few of those minor little human impulses that are not so pretty, so very pretty. Hardly any. And some of the men were nice to her, and took care of her. But they had a sad tendency to leave for better jobs and lives of their own. Because the pay was so low, with her.

Do you really think she was faking it and could walk? Good for you, Handsome.

Anyway, one day, her veriest Prince Charming showed up. This old scruffy bearded guy, a chronic longtime boozer, with no income again. There was next to no income in working for her. Do you now sympathize with the guy, oh you Handsome Stud you? Oh how wonderful of you - how very, very wonderful.

Because she was pretty. So very, very pretty. In her very own way.

She was a human being, b’gosh! And you can hurt a vulnerable human being's deepest feelings, and get away with it, right? Well, not hers. Because her feelings didn’t hurt all that easily. She just kept it bottled up inside her a lot because she thought that all women are disabled next to a big ol’ macho man. But she forgot about all those little scrunched up guys who couldn’t get a kid either. She forgot about all of those other people. One strange day. In her very own way, which was of course very pretty.

So that day came. Along came a big ol’ macho old drunk man who was kinda scrunched up. He was attractive. But as usual, he was bossy. So he raped her. He very, very cruelly raped her. In his own special way. He was the first one to take it that far, although others had hurt her before when they were supposed to be working for her. He was supposed to be working for her, too. He kept saying that he loved her. That he really really loved her. And he plunked her down on the bed and began fiddling with her vulnerable doohickey and made her wonder about that. That wasn’t the right guy, though. This old guy finally drank himself to death, and died, right in the middle of the pretty girl needing him to take care of her.

The real guy who got her undivided attention in this shows up later, you see. He’s very handsome, and even young. But he has no income whatsoever, and he really thinks he needs to show off at someone who's worse off than he is. He somehow knows he’s got some other broad somewhere, somewhere in his upstairs, who’s blonde and pretty and is his total mommy. In fact, maybe it was his mommy, his mental picture of her anyway. He really thinks he deserves that perfect woman, and he never went to look for anyone else. He seems really normal to everyone else. He’s been around. He married someone, and she split after years of pain and suffering and hardship. So it goes.

But she was pretty, so very very pretty. The girl in the wheelchair, that is. She was even prettier than his wife had been. But you see, he couldn’t get the woman in his head out of his mind. It was his mental picture of how subservient to him his mother was supposed to be. She was supposed to be all “blondey and blued eyed” - you know, eye die could become the next big thing, and really blind people - and he couldn’t accept anything less out of life. She was supposed to be all perfectly able bodied and able to bear sixty thousand live young. Every day. Of the week. To fend off his imaginary enemies.

Because she was pretty. So very very, well - beautiful. Gorgeous. Attractive. Voluptuous. Curvy. Obviously, always twenty and always able to bear live young in droves. Without ever getting pregnant and having that siren wail fill the air. It needs food. Food costs money. M’man in this didn’t have any such money, just a little. Not enough.

Not having money could bend a man’s mind, don’t you think? But he was handsome. So very, very handsome. The handsomest man on the face of the planet. You picture him.

Well, let’s see. Here’s where the heart of this story begins.

He finally got into taking care of her, but she was either anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-white, this or that, up or down or sideways, even though she was never anything but polite about all other people, and about him. She wasn’t oh my gosh his mom. So he started raping her like that on a daily basis. Because she was pretty and out of reach. They couldn’t have sex at all. She was so out of reach and he was so Daddy, so very very Daddy, that he kept trying to tell her to get up out of the wheelchair and walk. It always sounded to her like the utmost in cruelty. He couldn’t get it, the simp.

Because he was thinking it would be more fun to torment her with her inability to walk, he would dance her around the room, then lie her down on the bed and rape her with his fingers before raping her with other unspeakable means.

And she was always, all through it, so pretty, so very very…aw, I’ll shut up. You know. She stayed that way. Nearly forever, even though he had been hurting her emotionally and physically for years. She finally prayed to God to help her. And then one day, she looked at her helper cum rapist, saying, “Please stop it.”

"Stop what? I'm not doing anything," he sighed, fingering her area.

"Stop...raping me," she sighed, in a very pretty way.

“You’re too mentally retarded to know what rape is, my dear. Here, I’ll clean up your bm." And he did so, for he was only a lowly butt wipe. He cleaned around her perineal area and her anus, but not with a washcloth. He did it with his finger, so very very slowly, without really getting around to cleaning her. She was getting infected again, from the poor care she was receiving. But it was hard, so very very hard, to find a new attendant. They were always men, and cruel to her.

Because. You know. The Dance of Death is oh so slow. He had to go and make fun of her. He had no choice. He was backed into it by utter circumstances. And he did not have a wife at home because he left her before. Because she was pretty. Oh, she could take good care of herself. And therefore, she had been worthy of being left behind, but not exactly stranded. She was worthy, his first wife there. Of being able bodied. This disabled little girl was clearly not worthy to God. He could do what he wanted, because God did not love her pretty, pretty little body.

And wasn’t his ex wife the most gorgeously pregnable thing you ever did see? Just an ordinary woman, really, with her little gaggle of male and female friends. And so able bodied and able to work and able to do anything at all she really wanted to do that was within reach. She was a kid in a candy store, no really. She could walk, even, and talk, even, and he left her because she wasn’t his mommy, you know.

So he ended up slowly dissolving and getting a very spurious job that was a bit on the low side. No income in it, you know. But some people depend on their "good" pasts and their own mental pictures of themselves, to the absolute death. They’re twenty in their heads, and they keep thinking disabled people are space fools. Apparently. And that they can have their way with them. Even the guys…I mean, they think that about the guys, too. That they are their kids. So it goes. They think they can correct their “rude behavior” of not going to the bathroom properly or whatever. In gay couples, yet. And they even think they can rape them, both the men and the women, and get clean away with it.

But the lady of the house is the lady of the house, I suppose. The guy crossed the line. Did she call the cops? No. She was too scared to do it. She was very afraid of him. He kept doing that over and over and she simply wasn’t herself anymore. Even though it had happened to her millions upon millions of times before. He, she thought, was just trying to get her pregnant and didn’t know better that she was in charge because he was on his own little superiority trip. It was pretty heavy duty. That’s how pretty it was.

One day, he stooped down to put his face in it and eat her. Mommy saved him, okay? You know what she did? Do you guess what Mommy there did? God musta loved her. He finally smiled on her. She grew a big old whomper red fanged mouth, ten feet tall and twelve feet wide, the size of Manhattan Island, yes, she most certainly did, and her handsome prince there backed off a little. He looked at her, went totally gaga and pranced around a little while locked completely in place by his own mortal terror. Having taken His time, God had finally, finally answered her prayers. He'd merely given the rapist time to feel sorry for what he had done, which had not happened.

The inhumanly large red maw gaped - with a no longer pretty grin. It dripped gallons of saliva down its sides, and then it ROARED as the tongue protruded.

The one scrap of macho dignity left to her obscene rapist was that he couldn’t scream or say stuff high “like a woman.” He did get that, at least, if you like him so much. Then, she ate him, chewing him painfully first, and then swallowing him alive in one big noisy, slurpy and not so pretty - GULP!

Death, it’s pretty abrupt, don’t you think? Her mouth went back to normal size. The next day, she hired a nice young girl who answered her newspaper ad to work for her, and it's been working out ever since. But maybe it's only because she warned the new girl about her mouth. How it could get a little big sometimes, if she wasn't very careful and very nice to her.

She showed the new girl her big mouth only once. It made quite an impression. It made sure she was treated right, even if she had to threaten another innocent young girl. She would probably never feel sorry about it. And thanks to her big mouth, the new and very, very pretty girl will perhaps never, ever leave. But she does pray to God sometimes. For answers, and for His help.

Because she is pretty. So very, very pretty.,,

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.