"In 2006, deciding she no longer needed Depakote, Ms. Dennard stopped taking it."

In stark contrast to tragedies like that which befell Christina Eilman in Chicago, the case of Janet Dennard in New York is uplifting and heartwarming.

While they both have bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness, the difference between them is that Ms. Eilman, who was a student at UCLA, was not legally forced into treatment, while Ms. Dennard was.

Eilman ended up the victim of a terrible crime. Dennard is once again a productive citizen.

Here is Dennard's story in the New York Times. This is the key sentence: "While Ms. Dennard was at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, a court mandated that she be medicated."

She was next provided with housing at the Transitional Living Community, a shelter in Brooklyn for women with mental illness. Seriously ill people like Janet Dennard can function, as long as they have supervision. In early December, she received a permanent apartment in an S.R.O. in Queens that specializes in looking after people with mental illness.

It's a shame no one took control of Christina Eilman's life. She could have been productive, too.

Janet Dennard can still hear the hum of her sewing machine. Late at night, the memory of it lulls her back to sleep.

Ms. Dennard, 56, who loves to sew and crochet and has battled bipolar disorder for the better part of her life, does not miss the low points. But she does miss the high ones. When she channeled her elevated moods into her work, she produced scarves and hats by the armful.

“With manic-depressive illness, you’re really up or you’re drop-dead bottom,” she said recently. “When I got depressed, no one could change the thoughts I was dwelling on.”

A native of Ohio, Ms. Dennard moved to New York more than 30 years ago, with her daughter, Dannela, now 36. Ms. Dennard ran a small business from her apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn: from costuming dance companies to upholstering large pieces of furniture. After school, her daughter would help out, sewing buttons and ironing. For years, it was mother and daughter against the world. One day, that changed.

“When she had her first breakdown, the mother I knew was no longer,” said Dannela, who was 15 then.

Glass was thrown, tables upturned. Thoughts of grandeur and paranoia took over.

“When you’re in that state, you do things that hurt people,” Ms. Dennard said. “What makes you crazy are the flashbacks. You can’t make amends for all the crazy stuff you did.”

After receiving a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and being briefly hospitalized, Ms. Dennard was given a daily prescription for Depakote, an antiseizure drug also used to treat the manic phase of bipolar disorders.

In the 16 years between that first episode and a second one, Ms. Dennard’s emotions were kept more or less in check, as long she as took her medication. But family life frayed.

Dannela began dividing her time between her stepfather in New York and her biological father in Virginia. When she moved back to Brooklyn at 19, Dannela was pregnant with a baby girl.

In 2006, deciding she no longer needed Depakote, Ms. Dennard stopped taking it. With a monthly income of $1,010 in Social Security disability payments, Ms. Dennard moved out of an apartment she had shared with her partner of 15 years and into one that cost $1,300 a month. Before long, she was homeless.

With nowhere to turn, she moved in with her daughter and granddaughter, Nephteli. But her behavior became increasingly erratic, and finally Dannela reached her limit. In May 2006, Dannela asked that New York Adult Protective Services forcibly remove her mother. While Ms. Dennard was at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, a court mandated that she be medicated.

After a few months in a halfway house, Ms. Dennard briefly moved back in with Dannela before moving, first to Ohio and then to Delaware. Two years later, Dannela brought her mother back to New York.

Over the summer, Ms. Dennard moved into the Transitional Living Community, a shelter in Brooklyn for women with mental illness. It is run by the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, one of the seven beneficiary agencies of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

A $240 grant from the fund was used to buy a vending license so Ms. Dennard can sell her handmade wares at sites throughout the city.

In early December, she received a permanent apartment in an S.R.O. in Queens that specializes in looking after people with mental illness.

Upon leaving the Transitional Living Community, Ms. Dennard was given a used sewing machine as a going-away gift. A miniature version of what she used to work on, it is a reminder of her need to get her belongings back to New York. She pays $450 a month to store three industrial-size sewing machines, fabric and supplies in Ohio; furniture and other belongings are in Delaware.

In a 12-by-12-foot room, she is already at work, sewing pillow and cushion covers for her new apartment. For Ms. Dennard, the future looks like a small sewing business, where she plans to employ people with mental illness.

She has even picked a spot, a corner between the door and the kitchen, where her larger sewing machine will soon live. Her only worry now is for ample electricity — enough to power her creativity.

"She hung around Midway Airport raving about the price of oil, exposing herself, making lewd comments and screaming at ticket agents."

The tragic case of Christina Eilman, a UCLA student who grew up in Rocklin, never would have occurred in Chicago, if the state of California had committed her to a mental hospital, where she clearly belonged and could have been treated properly.

But left "free," she wandered to Chicago and there, the Chicago Police Department did themselves no credit in how they treated her. Instead of taking her to a psychiatric clinic as their own protocol required, the CPD set her outside in a dangerous and unfamiliar neighborhood when she was unmedicated and out of her mind, where she was raped, brutalized and (probably) thrown seven floors to the ground, where she mercilessly did not die.

I cannot imagine how Chicago won't lose a huge lawsuit for this unbelievable negligence. The officers involved deserve to be fired. This is the story from Chicago Breaking News:

Christina Eilman was mentally ill.

The 21-year-old California woman hung around Midway Airport for two days, raving about the price of oil, exposing herself, making lewd comments and screaming at ticket agents, a baby and a blind man.

Then the Chicago police took her into custody, held her overnight and released her into a high-crime neighborhood, where things turned even worse.

On behalf of Eilman, whose plunge from a seventh-floor public-housing apartment in May 2006 has left her permanently brain-damaged, her parents are suing the city for $100 million, contending that police negligence placed her in harm's way without the wherewithal to seek help or protection.

The Tribune wrote about Eilman's ordeal three years ago based on the information available at the time, but as the trial approaches in March, recent court filings have shed new light on her case. Perhaps the most disturbing new detail is a police officer's account that a police supervisor told officers to take Eilman to the hospital instead of putting her in a lockup overnight, but they didn't because they said there was no car handy at the station.

Later, the same watch commander ordered a police sergeant to talk to Eilman based on the reports from other officers about her behavior. The sergeant reported back that he didn't see any signs of mental illness, and Eilman ended up in a holding cell for more than 24 hours, according to officers' depositions.

Pretrial testimony and other court documents show that several officers involved in Eilman's arrest at Midway had an ongoing discussion at the Chicago Lawn District about how to handle the woman who was behaving so strangely. One officer testified she called Eilman's parents in California, learned that she was "probably bipolar" and then relayed the information to a watch commander and the arresting officers.

Police Department policy requires officers dealing with mentally ill people to take them to a hospital for an evaluation. But instead of arranging transportation to a hospital, police ultimately sent Eilman miles away to the Wentworth District lockup, where multiple witnesses said jail guards dealt with her erratic and bizarre behavior by repeatedly telling her to "shut up." One inmate testified that black officers repeatedly shouted at Eilman, calling her a "white bitch."

City officials stand by the decision not to send Eilman to a hospital. Eilman seemed lucid and apologetic during a roughly half-hour interview with Sgt. David Berglind, said Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department. Hoyle also cited an officer's testimony that Eilman's father, Rick Paine, had used the word "probably" when discussing whether Eilman was bipolar. But Paine recalled that he told the officer that his daughter had been hospitalized for bipolar disorder a year before.

Eilman's lawsuit is set for trial in federal court in March. It is unclear whether the city will attempt to settle the case, but no settlement offer has been made, Hoyle said.

Through their lawyer, Eilman's parents declined to comment for this story. But they have said previously that the $100 million in damages they are seeking in the case take into consideration that Eilman will never be able to live independently and that she will require costly treatment and therapy for the rest of her life.

As a result of the fall, Eilman suffered numerous broken bones and a shattered pelvis, and a severe brain injury from which she will never fully recover. In the last four years, Eilman's progress has reached a plateau, and she will remain in an impaired state, with a childlike grasp of reality, for the rest of her life, doctors say. The brain injury has only exacerbated the severity of her bipolar disorder, according to medical experts. After being treated at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Eilman now lives with her parents in suburban Sacramento, Calif.

Testimony from Eilman's friends, police officers and women detained alongside her reveal a vivid timeline of the last months of Eilman's former life: her instability in spring 2006, frayed relationships with friends and family, dropping out of the University of California at Los Angeles as her bipolar disorder crowded out her ability to study and work, and her trip to Chicago weeks later.

While city officials assert that Eilman seemed lucid during Sgt. Berglind's interview with her on the day of her arrest, the testimony of other officers paints a more complicated picture.

Officers involved in the arrest contradicted each other's statements, but one of the arresting officers testified that a watch commander instructed him and his partner to transport Eilman to a designated hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Officer Rosendo Moreno told investigators that while Eilman was being held at the Chicago Lawn District near Midway, he heard Lt. Carson Earnest tell Moreno's partner, Officer Richard Cason, to take Eilman to the hospital. But Cason responded that he and Moreno didn't have a car to transport her, according to Moreno.

In his lawsuit deposition, Moreno said he did not recall the conversation, but when Eilman's lawyer reminded Moreno of his statements to internal affairs investigators, he acknowledged it had taken place.

Quoting from sealed internal affairs documents, one of the expert witnesses hired by Eilman's lawyers wrote in a report that "Moreno admitted to telling Sgt. Skala that the Watch Commander said they should put Ms. Eilman in a car and take her to the hospital. However, he then reported, 'Rich (Cason) told him that we did not have a car.' "

When asked about that statement, Cason told investigators he did not recall that conversation and that it might have pertained to a different arrest, according to the report.

Earnest, the watch commander, denied any officers told him they believed Eilman was mentally ill. His account also differs from the testimony of Officer Yvonne Delia, who was so alarmed by Eilman's behavior that she used her own cell phone to call the woman's parents in California. Delia said she relayed to Earnest and Cason that Rick Paine said his daughter had mental health issues.

Though Earnest denied any such knowledge, he said he was aware that police had been called to Midway for two straight days to deal with Eilman, whom witnesses said was out of control, making lewd, irrational and aggressive statements to people in the terminal.

Instead of arranging transportation to a hospital, police ultimately sent Eilman miles away to the Wentworth District lockup. Rick and Kathy Paine have agonized over their own decision to stay at home, waiting by the phone for more information from Chicago police instead of jumping on a plane to come to their daughter's aid. Kathy Paine told the Tribune in 2007 that she did not know what to do because police would give her no concrete information.

Over nine telephone calls from Kathy Paine to the Wentworth District, she said, she was repeatedly told to call back later until an officer told her that Eilman had already been released.

Police escorted Eilman to the back door of the Wentworth District, which also houses an area detective headquarters. She then wandered along 51st Street a few blocks east to a takeout restaurant, where men began to gather and talk to the petite blonde, who was dressed in a skimpy jogging suit.

Witnesses said she appeared to be disoriented and behaving erratically, unable to make eye contact or track what people were saying to her. A short time later she walked to the public housing high-rise at 5135 S. Federal St., then the last remaining building of the Robert Taylor Homes. It has since been razed.

A crowd gathered around, befuddled by the presence of an unescorted white woman in a virtually all-black, high-crime area. Eilman eventually went with a group of people to a vacant apartment on the seventh floor that residents used as a communal room.

One resident, Melene Jones, said she repeatedly told Eilman to leave because the building was not safe for her. Several men asked Eilman to perform oral sex, but she refused, at one point saying she would jump out the window if anyone laid a hand on her, witnesses said.

Jones said she tried to persuade Eilman to leave because she feared something bad would happen.

"First off, because, I mean, there was nobody there with her. And second off, because she was a white girl and, I mean, it's really unusual for a white girl to be in the building and especially by herself," Jones testified. "If you live there, it's cool and you know everybody and whatnot, but if you don't and you just be there and whatnot, people, they might try to take advantage of you and whatnot."

Eventually, reputed gang member and convicted felon Marvin Powell entered the apartment and began trying to talk to Eilman, several witnesses said. He began trying to provoke her with sexual taunts and then demanded that everyone else leave the apartment. When Eilman tried to leave with them, Powell allegedly held her back and said to the others, "I'm gonna show this bitch who the real killa is," according to testimony from resident Robert Kimble.

Powell is charged with abducting and sexually assaulting Eilman. He is jailed awaiting trial.

Eilman began screaming that Powell was going to kill her, and Powell shut the door. Soon, people outside did not hear any more screaming, Kimble and others said. About 15 minutes later, residents started running through the halls of the building in an uproar. The woman had plummeted from the window, they said, and was lying in the grass below.

A very tragic, very common occurrence: all over the news

It's true that I am looking for these stories. However, it's hard not to notice how many there have been in the news recently of horrible crimes being committed by people with serious, but untreated mental illness.

Here is a sampling from today's papers:

The New York Daily News gives the details of a tragic murder of a child:

Alejandro Morales, 25, was taken to Bellevue Hospital just hours after he allegedly plunged a knife into the chest of Anthony Maldonado while they played a Playstation skateboarding game. Morales's relatives told detectives that he has a history of mental illness, according to police sources, while his neighbors in Morningside Heights' Grant Houses claimed his behavior has been erratic for years. "He was kind of [crazy]," said a neighbor too afraid to give her name. "He was sick in the head."

The Palm Beach Post reports that Paul Merhige, the man with untreated mental illness who murdered four members of his family on Thanksgiving Day, was caught hiding out in a motel in Long Key, Fla:

Paul Michael Merhige's grudge against his family was that they did not do enough to take care of him, a point that the mentally troubled man argued with them constantly before police say he executed his twin sisters and two other relatives on Thanksgiving Day, Merhige's father told police.

In an arrest report released today as Merhige made his first court appearance, his father, Michael Merhige, told police that the 35-year-old man had recently stopped taking medications and had once shot himself in the chest years earlier in an attempt to kill himself.

CTV in Ottawa, Ont. reports on the murder of a police constable:

Const. Eric Czapnik was fatally stabbed on Tuesday when he was working near the Ottawa Hospital Civic campus. Kevin Gregson, a suspended RCMP officer with a history of mental illness, is charged with first-degree murder in relation to Czapnik's death. ... Becoming a police officer was a lifelong dream for the 51-year-old father of four, who left managing a furniture store three years ago to wear the uniform at an age when most officers contemplate retirement.

An editorial in today's Austin American-Statesman argues that not treating the seriously mentally ill before they get into trouble is bad policy:

Texas has about 155,000 state prisoners. Almost 44,000 have a history of mental illness. ... We are not getting a sufficient return on our criminal justice dollars because we do not make sufficient investment in other areas, including mental health treatment and public education.

"We have a very poor mental health system," Senate Criminal Justice Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said. "The criminal justice system largely has become the state's mental health system."

A mentally ill man, who likely should have been treated in a mental hospital, brutally murdered his daughter in Greenwich, Conn., according to this report from the Greenwich Time:

A landscaper charged in the brutal slaying of his daughter appeared in state Superior Court in Stamford Monday where he was assigned a public defender and transferred to a state prison facility. Adam Dobrzanski, 55, of 100 Sterling Road, appeared sullen and dazed as he stood before Judge William Wenzel with several court marshals.

Police believe Dobrzanski slit his daughter's throat before attempting to kill himself in a murder-suicide plot Wednesday night at the backcountry estate owned by hedge fund executive S. Donald Sussman.

After being given a code to the Sterling Road home, police found Dobrzanski in a bedroom with multiple cuts on his body and one on his throat. Police said there was blood all over the floor and furniture. Dobrzanski told officers at the scene he tried to jump out a window and set himself on fire before stabbing himself. He was treated and released from Stamford Hospital.

While police questioned him at the scene, Dobrzanski mentioned something about his daughter, leading police to sweep the mansion until they found Amanda Dobrzanski with a large cut to her neck. She was dead at the scene, police said.

"He lives in the woods across from Hi-Way Liquors ... about eight miles from the airport

That Calvin Cox would wind up living homeless in a forest should come as no surprise to anyone. The crime he allegedly committed -- "stealing, attempting to fly and crashing a fixed-wing single-engine Piper PA-18-150 plane" -- is unusal. But the fact that he will likely be sent to prison, because he had untreated schizophrenia is not. That is the conclusion for tens of thousands of Americans stricken with serious mental illness every year.

The Frederick (Md.) News-Post gives the details:

A man charged with trying to steal an airplane from Frederick Municipal Airport remains at the Frederick County Adult Detention Center. District Judge W. Milnor Roberts did not change the $10,000 bail amount for Calvin Craig Cox, 51, during a bail review Tuesday afternoon. Assistant Public Defender Roland Brooks had asked for Cox's bail to be lowered.

Cox has been charged with stealing, attempting to fly and crashing a fixed-wing single-engine Piper PA-18-150 plane about 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to the Frederick Police Department. The plane never left the ground and was found on a nearby runway, leaning forward on its nose with damage to the fuselage and propeller. Cox, who was found in the woods, has been charged with theft, second- and fourth-degree burglary and trespassing.

When Roberts asked Cox for his address, he told the judge he lived in the woods across from Hi-Way Liquors in the 6900 block of Baltimore National Pike. The store is about eight miles from the airport. Brooks told Cox he was entitled to ask for a preliminary hearing if he wanted one.

"If it's in my advantage, yes," Cox said. "I've never been through this before."

Although this was the first time Mr. Cox was arrested for a crime, it's not his first brush with the law. Just two weeks ago his ex-wife won a restraining order against him. Presumably, her judgment about Calvin was not wrong:

On Monday, Cox was served with a temporary protective order by his former wife, Therese Ann Schooley. The order was granted Dec. 18. In it, Schooley claims Cox is a dangerous schizophrenic. A hearing on the protective order is set for Tuesday.

Many years ago, there were activists who uncovered poor conditions and maltreatment of the mentally ill in many state hospitals. They worked first to improve conditions and largely succeeded. Most of those abusive situations had been remedied by the time the activists change their tact, to shutter most public mental hospitals. They succeeded in that effort, as well, as hospital after hospital was shut.

But where are they now? Where are the activists fighting for the estimated nine hundred thousand mentally ill who have wound up homeless or in prison? Is it not time we consider the experiment of closing their hospitals a failure?

If Calvin Cox had been forced into treatment for his disease, he would not have been living in the woods and he would not have tried to steal an airplane. In all likelihood, with some supervision to make sure he was taking his medications, Mr. Cox could have continued living a productive life as an outpatient.

Did pseudo-science kill Jett Travolta?

I didn't really care about the death of Jett Travolta in the Bahamas on January 2, 2009. But today, reading Google News, I hit the wrong button and thus by accident came across this anti-Scientology blog which rails against the quackish medical care John Travolta and Kelly Preston afforded their autistic son. The implication of the blog piece is that pseudo-science indirectly led to their son's death.

Jett suffered from epileptic seizures. According to Travolta and wife Kelly Preston, Jett was taken off his anti-seizure medication, claiming it wasn’t working for him and that it was harmful to his liver. Ironically, Jett’s parents put him on the Purification Rundown, which has proven harmful to the liver.

Scientology believes that this treatment can cure many problems. Even though there has never been any medical or scientific proof that Scientology’s Purification Rundown has any benefits what so ever. In fact it has been called pseudo science and quackery.

The blogger makes a big deal out of the fact that the Travoltas did not have medical professionals caring for their ill child. They had untrained male nannies, one of whom (pictured above) was rumored to be a paramour of John Travolta:

Disturbingly, this (purification) treatment is administered by untrained staff with no medical backgrounds.

John and Kelly flew to the Bahamas for a 60 person New Year’s Eve party they had planned. ... They traveled with two male nannies who did not have medical backgrounds or proper training for a special needs child. ... The night of Jett’s death, he was left unattended for over 10 hours. He had a seizure, fell and hit his head and died. ...

Why did Travolta and Preston have two male Scientologist nannies who were void of medical or special needs training? One of the nannies was Jeff Kathrein, who was photographed previously kissing Travolta. ... Where were the two nannies when they were supposed to be watching Jett the night he fell?

Why didn’t Preston and Travolta have round-the-clock care by highly TRAINED medical professionals for their son? Money certainly wasn’t an issue.

Normally, I have a neutral view of idiotic cults like the Church of Scientology. If someone is so stupid to join such a group, it's his decision, his money, his mistake. In a free country, everyone has the right to be an idiot.

However, parents should not have the right to deny their children appropriate medical care. It's one thing if an adult (who is not mentally incompetent) with say, cancer, believes in some cockamamie alternative medicine in place of lifesaving chemotherapy. It is quite another when the adult forces his stupidity on his child.

That is the point at which I don't think parents should have freedom of religion for their children. If Scientologists are harming their sick children, the state needs to step in.

If life were good, most people wouldn't want to be a part of the jihad.

On Christmas Eve, the murder of a Jew in the West Bank by three Arab terrorists garnered almost no press. This Reuters' story was the only one I saw covering it:

Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, said their operatives had killed an Israeli settler in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said Meir Avshalom Hai, a 40-year-old father of seven, died when his car came under fire in the occupied West Bank on Thursday night, either from a passing car or a roadside ambush, near the city of Nablus.

Imagine how much attention our media would pay to the unprovoked murder of a father of seven by three armed terrorists if the victim had been an American in say, Vermont. But a Jew killed in Nablus by vicious Arabs goes without mention. The lack of concern is almost a sanction for this sort of cowardice.

I knew instinctively that this killing at this time was particularly bad news, because the so-called president of the Palestinians, the ever timid Mahmoud Abbas, pretends he is impotent. He acts as if his power is in his name alone. He should, of course, respond to a murder like this by striking at the terrorist groups, one of which is tied to his political party.

But what he should do and what he would do are two different things. One of his lackeys probably told Abbas he would be murdered by those terrorists if he went after them. So to preserve his own life, he acted as if nothing happened.

Colonel Avi Gil, an Israeli commander in the area said the military has been removing checkpoints from West Bank roads to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians but it would consider placing new ones if it would prevent future attacks.

I imagine one reason the terrorists carried out this murder was because life was getting better -- without the road blocks -- for ordinary Arabs. The blood-thirsty fanatics want life to be Hell for their fellows. If life were good, the people wouldn't want to be a part of their jihad. They would want to make peace.

Seeing that Abbas would not move, I expected Israel to bring justice to the killers of one of its innocent citizens. Today they did. This story is getting one hundred times as much attention as the murder of Mr. Hai:

Israeli troops blasted their way into the homes of three wanted Palestinians on Saturday, killing each in a hail of bullets and straining an uneasy security arrangement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Notice the slant in that opening sentence? It was, according to this AP story, Israel's response to the murder of its citizen which has strained relations with Abbas. It was not Abbas's non-response to the terrorist act under his nose causing that strain.

The violent Nablus raids, after months of relative quiet, embarrassed Western-backed Abbas, whose security forces have been coordinating some of their moves with their Israeli counterparts and share a common foe, Hamas.

Again, no mention that it was Abbas's decision to sit on his hands which compelled Israel to respond in his place.

The target of Saturday's predawn raids were three longtime members of Fatah's violent offshoot, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The army said the three — Anan Subeh, 36; Ghassan Abu Sharah, 40; and Raed Suragji, 40 — were involved in Thursday's deadly roadside shooting of an Israeli settler, and that Israeli forces entered Nablus to try to arrest them.

No one seems to doubt Israel got the right guys.

The AP story sympathetically portrays the widow of one of the terrorists:

She said her husband opened the bedroom door. "Suddenly, shots were fired at us," she said. "He fell down. I started shouting. I held his head in my lap and sat on the ground."

Yet the AP did not even bother to report on the murder of Mr. Hai, who was an innocent man, unlike this woman's dead husband. Further, the AP did not interview Mr. Hai's wife or his children or his neighbors.

One of the dead terrorists was working directly under President Abbas, after Israel granted him amnesty for his past crimes:

Subeh had recently been accepted in Israel's amnesty program for Fatah gunmen, according to Nablus' deputy governor, Anan Attireh. Subeh's family said he had also joined the Preventive Security Service, a branch of the Palestinian security forces.

The other two dead murderers had a history of attacking Jews:

Suragji was released from an Israeli prison in January, after a seven-year term for involvement in shooting attacks. Abu Sharah was also held by Israel in the past, the military said.

Israel is condemned the world over for having its roadblocks in the West Bank. Yet if they had those roadblocks in place, it's possible the murder of Mr. Hai could have been avoided. And now pressure will build in Israel to reconstitute them, harming the quality of life of all West Bankers:

In Israel, right-wing critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his policy of easing travel restrictions in the West Bank was to blame for the shooting attack. Lerner said Israel did not plan to set up new roadblocks.

I hope Israel does not succumb to its right-wing, here. I applaud them for responding to the terrorist attacks. However, it is not in Israel's interest to make life Hell for innocent Palestinians, and that is what the roadblocks help do.

--------------

EDIT: Haaretz is reporting today (Sunday) another attack against a Jew in the West Bank:

A young Israeli woman was moderately wounded on Sunday when Palestinian militants hurled a firebomb at the bus in which she was riding south of the West Bank city of Hebron. This was the second attack in less than a week against Israelis traveling on West Bank roads. The 18-year-old woman suffered second degree burns after the flaming bottle made contact with her bus on the main road leading to the isolated settlement of Nagahot, near South Mount Hebron.

Does it make sense to pay as much attention to a 90-year-old lady from Iowa as to a 23-year-old man from a Muslim country?

The L.A. Times is reporting a Muslim man tried to blow up a Northwest Airliner with Delta Airlines markings, today, on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit:

In what was described as an act of terrorism, a Nigerian passenger attempted to ignite an incendiary device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Friday as the plane began its approach for landing, federal officials said. Other passengers overpowered the man and the plane landed safely.

The suspect, identified as Abdul Mutallab, 23, suffered severe burns as a result of the attempt, authorities said, and two of the other 277 passengers reported minor injuries.

The suspect smuggled a powder aboard the plane in a container taped to his leg, the official said. Covering himself with a blanket to hide his actions, he used a syringe to inject a liquid into the powder, and a fire resulted from the combustible mix, according to the official, who did not identify the materials.

Those aboard described some panic after noises like firecrackers, then quick, heroic actions.

Peter Smith, another passenger, told WJBK Fox 2 in Detroit that one man saw the flames and leaped across the aisle to help extinguish them. "He jumped over all the other people and he took care of it, so the fire went out," Smith said.

Nigerians have not figured in many cases involving Al Qaeda, but the rise of violent Islamic extremism in that country -- as well as in sub- Saharan Africa overall -- concerns Western anti-terrorism officials.

A good question is why, when security personnel are screening every single passenger who boards an airplane, they don't just let through without a second thought the old WASP-looking grandmas and other people who have never posed any type of security risk, but then focus far more attention on people, especially males from age 20 to 55, who come from Islamic countries or have Islamic names, or people who are otherwise acting suspicious or nervous?

Before I would suggest profiling anyone on the basis of his religion or national origin, etc., I first ask myself the question, "So how fair do you think that idea would be if it applied to you?" In other words, what if they let everyone through without a second thought, but hassled bald Jews over 6-feet tall for a half an hour every time you wanted to board a plane?

Of course, I would hate that. But if every single recent incident of attacks against civilian airlines were made by bald Jews over 6-feet tall, I would understand why they were suspicious of me. And I would agree that paying special attention to people with those characteristics was the right thing to do.

Because in fact all the terrorists we are worried about on airliners are males from age 20 to 55 who come from Islamic countries or have Islamic names, we should be profiling them and letting just about everyone else get on an airplane with no more than passing through a metal detector.

Most of what passes for "security checks" -- like forcing my 87-year-old mother to take off her shoes and not carry on a bottle of water -- is a huge waste of time and makes flying an unnecessary pain in the ass.

Why Wikipedia will wipe out The World Book

Yitzhak Ahronovitch, Exodus Skipper in Defiant ’47 Voyage of Jewish Refugees, Dies at 86

The New York Times is reporting that "Yitzhak Ahronovitch, the captain of the refugee ship Exodus, whose violent interception by the British Navy as it tried to take thousands of Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1947 helped rally support for the creation of the state of Israel the next year, died Wednesday in northern Israel. He was 86."

The story of the Exodus was huge first because of the worldwide reaction to the idea of returning Jews to Germany. It was very bad press for England, particularly when three Jews were killed in the incident. Perhaps no other single event -- I would not call the Holocaust a single event -- generated more sympathy for the plight of the Jews in the post-War period; and thus this "police action" by the British helped in a big way to move the United Nations to approve the Jewish State in Palestine.

It also caused a reaction among Jews, motivating those who had been quiet in their support for Israel to start taking action. After Hitler, Jews no longer wanted to live in a world in which other nations controlled their fate. This turning-back incident made Jews all too aware that they were still at the mercy of other powers:

The refugees had no legal authority to enter Palestine, and the British were determined to block the ship. In the battle that ensued, three Jews aboard the Exodus were killed. The ship’s passengers — more than 4,500 men, women and children — were ultimately deported to Germany.

Captain Ahronovitch was 23 when he took the helm of the Exodus. On July 11, 1947, he picked up the refugees at Sète, in southern France. On July 18, as the ship neared the coast of Palestine, the British Navy intercepted it. Captain Ahronovitch tried to break through, but two British destroyers rammed the ship.

Several hours of fighting followed, with the ship’s passengers spraying fuel oil and throwing smoke bombs, life rafts and whatever else came to hand, down on the British sailors trying to board, The Times reported at the time. Soon the British opened fire. Two immigrants and a crewman on the Exodus were killed; scores more were wounded, many seriously. The ship was towed to Haifa, and from there its passengers were deported, first to France and eventually to Germany, where they were placed in camps near Lübeck.

What is more in question in my mind is the notion that the British were wrong in their actions. Obviously, as a Jew and as a Zionist, I have great sympathy for the refugees. But the Brits were trying to uphold the rule of law in a land they ruled. And the Exodus was trying to break that law. In that sense, I see this much like I view it when our Coast Guard stops refugees from Haiti trying to enter U.S. waters. The Coast Guard is not unambiguously evil. They are just trying to enforce the law. Unlike refugee ships during the War which were transporting Jews out of Nazi-controlled lands where, if they returned, the refugees would be murdered, the Exodus was transporting immigrants who were in no danger in Europe at that point.

On a side note ... One book I have long meant to read but never have is Leon Uris's fictional account of this story:

The story of the ship’s thwarted journey formed the loose basis for Leon Uris’s novel “Exodus,” published in 1958. In 1960, the novel was made into a film starring Paul Newman as a character based on Yossi Harel, the overall commander of the Exodus operation. Neither book nor movie, apparently, included a character based on Captain Ahronovitch.

Everything does not happen for a reason: Some things are completely random and senseless

A popular saying which really annoys me is, "Everything happens for a reason." People believe it (I guess) because they believe in a god who is omnipotent, controlling everything that happens to them. When their innocent four-year-old child dies in a car accident, for example, they will assuage themselves with the notion that it was god's will: "Everything happens for a reason." But that is just stupid.

Yes, the person in the next lane over had an allergic reaction and began sneezing and drove his car into oncoming traffic and caused the car accident which stole the child's life. The accident can be explained. But is that a reason? Is that god's will?

Believers assuage themselves further with the hope that there is a magical afterlife. But I doubt most people, regardless of their vows of faith, believe in that. If they did, why would they want to live? Why would they be sad if their child died? Is he not going to a better place? A person who believes in this heaven must look forward to dying. It's "a better place."

The New York Times reported a story recently about Andrzej Leonik (pictured above), a Polish immigrant who now has a lame leg, no job and no money because of a truly senseless act, one that even the religious would have trouble believing is god's will:

Mr. Leonik, 49, came home from his job as a carpenter in August 2006 and put on a red tank top and took his dog, Sonia, for a walk on 56th Drive in Maspeth, Queens.

A green Cadillac crept toward him and then stopped. Its driver was aiming a 9-millimeter pistol at him. Mr. Leonik slipped behind a utility pole, but the shooter hit his right leg, shattering the femur.

“I heard the shot but couldn’t believe I was hit until I saw the bone sticking out,” he recalled recently. “I thought, ‘Why would someone do this to me?’ ”

He would find out later, while recovering at Elmhurst Hospital Center. The man in the green Cadillac, the police told him, was Matthew Colletta, an unemployed bricklayer with a long history of mental illness and erratic behavior.

The "reason" Mr. Leonik was shot had nothing to do with god's will. It rather had everything to do with the fact that we in the United States don't care about helping and treating people with severe mental illness. The shooter, Mr. Colletta, never should have been allowed to be in charge of his own life. He was dangerous and should have been in a mental hospital, under the care of psychiatrists. If his symptoms responded to medication, he could have then been let out under supervised care. But never should someone who is that ill be left completely alone.

The police said Mr. Leonik was the first of about a dozen people whom Mr. Colletta, then 34, fired upon that evening. He spent the next six hours roaming Queens, randomly shooting people wearing red or riding in red cars, prosecutors said. The spree left one person dead and five wounded.

Prosecutors said Mr. Colletta believed he was being threatened by the Bloods gang, which is identified with the color red. None of the shooting victims were Bloods, certainly not Mr. Leonik. This was a man who stood with the Solidarity trade union while living in Poland in the 1980s and immigrated to New York with his wife and two teenage daughters in 2002, hoping to prosper.

It's scary that Mr. Leonik could survive a totalitarian government in Poland, but he is victimized by our insane system of not forcing the severely mentally ill into treatment.

Instead, he is turning 50 with a bad leg, no job and no money, his American dream dashed.

Hs daughters are helping to support him, now that he can no longer work as a carpenter renovating Manhattan apartments. His wife developed a heart problem and moved back to Poland for health care.

That we also don't have a sensible system of universal coverage, so his wife had to leave him, makes our laws doubly stupid.

Mr. Leonik’s leg has 15 long screws stabilizing it, and scars from knee to hip. He cannot climb stairs or lift heavy objects and at times, his leg is swollen and useless. A coming operation, his fourth, may help, he is told. He grits through the pain, refusing, he said, to waste money on painkillers.

More torturous is the notion that his fortunes nose-dived because of the color shirt he put on one quiet summer evening to walk the dog, he said.

Think how many people's lives are destroyed by the insanity of our civil libertarian policies when it comes to dealing with the severely mentally ill?

“For a long time, I could not sleep because of the pain,” he said. “I’d think, ‘Why me? Why did this happen? How am I going to make it? I’ve become a burden to my family.’ ”

His small savings ran out quickly. Since he lacked proper immigration documentation, he had trouble receiving benefits.

“I was making good money and the whole world was open,” he said, with the help of an interpreter. “I was going to send my daughters to college and buy a house, but things turned out otherwise.”

That perfectly speaks to the notion that "everything happens for a reason." Does anyone believe it was god's will that Mr. Leonik and his family should be destroyed by this crazy act of a madman who did not have control of his faculties? A man who was only driving around like that because we refuse to lock up the severely mentally ill?

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, lent Mr. Leonik a hand by providing $919 to help with his phone and electric bills. And they provided an immigration counselor, Malgorzata Ulbrych-Luczynski, who has helped him apply for a visa that is available to certain crime victims.

Preventing incidents like this would be a far wiser use of our public dollars. If we had forced the shooter into treatment for his illness, one man would be alive and the lives of dozens of others would be normal. Mr. Leonik would not need charity.

Mr. Leonik recalled that when he fell from the gunshot, Sonia leapt onto his chest. The shooter sped off, but his face was seared into Mr. Leonik’s memory, and he later testified before a grand jury and identified Mr. Colletta from an array of photographs, helping prosecutors indict him on second-degree murder and other charges.

What kind of system is it where we even prosecute the mentally ill? The person deserving prosecution is the one who emptied out the mental hospitals which used to treat people like Colletta.

Mr. Colletta has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is likely to start early next year. There were long delays because he changed lawyers repeatedly, prosecutors said recently.

If Colletta ever gets out of prison, he will again likely become a danger to everyone, once he stops taking anti-psychotic medications. Hopefully our laws change between now and then. Mr. Colletta does not belong in a jail cell. He belongs in a mental hospital.

The new fire contract: It fails to deal with our long-run problems

Mentally ill need our help

At least they are reading my column...

I opened up Wednesday's Davis Enterprise to discover the entire letters to the editor section covered in letters dedicated to me. They were about my recent column on the mentally ill; and they were all very similar to each other and to a series of anti-Rifkin letters which The Enterprise published following my first column regarding how we treat the severely mentally ill.

The first epistle was posited by three authors, Guille Libresco, Marilyn Moyle and Leslie Carroll. I don't know any of the trio, but did some searching to see where they come from. Guille Libresco is a local "psychotherapist" who is associated with a leftist-peace group. Marilyn Moyle and Leslie Carroll are associated with the Yolo County chapter of NAMI. The local website says, "NAMI strives to reduce stigma and ignorance of psychiatric disorders and to help eliminate discrimination and restrictions accessing essential treatments and life supports such as employment, housing, and health insurance."

The letter they wrote says I am dangerous and that I am trying to further discrimination against the mentally ill.

Here is how they begin:

Rich Rifkin's recent Enterprise column needs clarification. We agree that the mentally ill need our help, but Rifkin's attitude is potentially more dangerous to society than the individuals and tragedies he mentions in the article.

Rifkin implies that most mentally ill people are not capable of 'running their own lives.' We know this is not true.

This is an unfair characterization of my column, which focused on people who are insane and therefore not capable of running their own lives. I never discussed anyone who has mild depression or any other minor disorders. I wrote, "Until those of us who are sane take full responsibility for people who are insane and accept the fact that they cannot run their own lives, we will have more and more tragedies like the one at Bellissimo Pizza."

Many people are able to learn how to manage their chronic illness, just as diabetics or other people with chronic illnesses can.

Nothing I suggest would harm the interests of those who can manage their problems. However, many cannot manage; or think they can manage and it turns out they were wrong.

The analogy with diabetes is completely off for someone who is suffering from severe schizophrenia. A diabetic can manage his disease because his mind is not his problem. The severe schizophrenic cannot always be expected to make rational decisions about his own care, because his disease, his chemical imbalance is in his brain. I wonder if these writers have ever had experience with a family member who suffers from a severe mental disorder like schizophrenia? Apparently not. Anyone who has -- such as me -- knows how completely wrong these writers are. Tragically wrong.

For those who are more seriously disabled, we need to provide support that from the beginning gives individuals hope for a meaningful life.

Providing support and guidance is what I would like to see for those who need it. But it goes beyond that. When someone has a debilitating mental illness, he CANNOT be relied on to make proper decisions about his psychiatric health. To say so, as these three do, is crazy. A person who has such a problem normally can be helped by psychotropic medications. But if the patient "chooses" to go off his meds, his mental health will decline and his life and the lives of his family will deteriorate severely. That is why the family needs to have the authority, backed up by the law, to make sure their family member is treated, no matter what the patient "wants."

The mentally ill are human beings with the same rights and privileges as the rest of us.

Of course they are human beings and deserve our compassion. The reason I care so much about this issue is because I am very sympathetic to people who have been victimized by these terrible disorders. I abhor our society for its neglect of the mentally ill who are locked in prison cells and living on the streets.

Someone with severe mental illness SHOULD NOT have the same rights and privileges to run his own life. It's funny that these folks think I am dangerous. Their attitude is really, terribly dangerous -- both for the severely mentally ill and for those around them.

There will always be extreme cases that require more intervention, and we need to find new and better ways to solve these old problems.

The better way to solve these problems is for those of us who are sane to take charge of their lives. Every patient who is diagnosed by a medical doctor as having a severe psychiatric disease needs to have a guardian -- normally a family member -- who can serve in loco parentis. The guardian needs the legal authority to make his ward take his medications, if meds are believed to be salutary by psychiatrists. And if medications don't work, place them in a locked mental hospital until their symptoms are manageable.

Simply locking people up will not solve the problem and is neither curative nor humane.

I have never called for locking people up willy-nilly. The only people who need to be treated in a locked hospital are those who are suffering terrible symptoms, those whose cases are not being managed. In most cases, the hospitalizations would be short. But they would not be released on their own. They need to be managed if they have a severe disease.

The second letter to the editor was by Roger M. Pehlke. He is apparently on the Board of Directors at Yolo-NAMI. Mr. Pehlke writes:

Rich Rifkin's Dec. 9 article, 'The mentally ill need our help,' was ironically titled given that what he wrote is so hurtful.

His column was not original. He said the same things in a May 2, 2007, Enterprise article, 'Common sense for the mentally ill.' At that time, he lamented the 'deinstitutionalization of the 1960s, when we emptied out and ultimately closed most of our insane asylums.' He argued that a mentally ill person 'shouldn't be treated like a regular adult.'

It is nice to see he keeps copies of my old columns. He continues:

Now, in last week's column, he's at it again, blaming 'successful lawsuits decades ago by the ACLU that 'freed' the mentally ill from psychiatric hospitals.' He cites a recent violent stabbing in San Francisco and says, 'I've scoured news accounts of this tragedy, looking for reports of 'mental illness' and have not found any. However, the second I read about this attack I was sure what was going on.'

That is accurate.

Rifkin's confidence in identifying mentally ill is misplaced. He goes on to suggest 'prophylactic action' be taken with the mentally ill and, while it is unclear what he means by this, the implications are disturbing. This is an unfortunate and ignorant refrain.

I am interested to know what Mr. Pehlke thinks is disturbing, unfortunate and ignorant.

I wrote a letter to the editor in 2007 about Rifkin's first article. My response here is not original either because I feel the same.

It is clear Mr. Pehlke feels the same.

I said, 'You choose demeaning phrases and inappropriately use words interchangeably: Mad, insane, psychotic, lunatic and mentally ill.

Because of the outcry by people like Pehlke the last time I discussed this issue, I purposefully used no politically incorrect terms in this column. Thus, for him to dredge up words he thinks are hurtful from a 2007 column to attack a 2009 column is a diversion.

You imply all those with mental illness are 'madmen' who are therefore violent, dangerous and ought to be locked up.

I didn't use the term "all" or imply that "all those with mental illness" are dangerous or violent or ought to be locked up. Rather, I have discussed people who have severe diseases -- specifically people who are violent -- and cannot manage their own lives. It is shocking that Mr. Pehlke is so irresponsible with his characterization of my views.

In short, writing like yours fuels the stigma surrounding mental illness that mental health professionals have been trying to curtail for decades.

Pehlke does NOT speak for all mental health professionals. I don't know of any polls of psychiatrists, but I suspect the vast majority share my views about changing our policies with regard to people with severe mental illness. (I get the sense that Mr. Pehlke speaks instead for most far less educated, far more politicized "psychotherapists" who look at the world through a dimmer lens than medical doctors do.) I am fairly certain most psychiatrists believe our civil libertarian approach is Crazy.



The Treatment Advocacy Center's co-founder contacted me, for example, and said as much. I highly recommend that Mr. Pehlke read one of the TAC books: The Insanity Offense (2008) by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.; or Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill (1990) by Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia C. Armat.

I suggested Rifkin was essentially 'advocating taking away the rights of the mentally ill that you and I enjoy.' I pointed out that prejudice like this has no place in our local newspaper. I repeat.

Pehlke is right. I do advocate taking away the civil liberties of individuals who have severe mental illness. The reason I believe that is the right course is because I know from the experience of a family member that someone who has severe psychosis cannot make rational decisions for himself. People in that state often "choose" to go off of their medications; and the results are very often tragic.

Indeed, people with mental illness are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence.

I agree. Often people with severe psychosis end up homeless and derelict. If we helped them out and forced them into a treatment program and saw it as a societal responsibility and not the individual's responsibility to care for these victims, we would not have a large population of homeless mentally ill victims. What Mr. Pehlke advocates, a civil libertarian approach to these unfortunate souls, is the reason they are victims.

To persist in stigmatizing this group of people by highlighting the worst stories and stereotyping them as Rifkin does is madness.

The folks I am talking about have lost touch with reality. They have severe diseases and they need treatment. To call that "stigmatizing" is stupid.

The final letter was by Derrick Wydick. He attacked me in a 2007 letter on this topic, as well. Wydick is a local "psychotherapist". He writes:

For the second time, Rich Rifkin has produced a column that paints people with mental illness as some kind of ticking time bomb.

Untrue. I painted a picture of some people with untreated, perhaps even undiagnosed severe mental disorders as "a ticking time bomb." I made no reference to people with minor problems. The fact that Wydick and the other "psychotherapists" infer that I am talking about people with social anxiety, for example, shows me that they have closed minds, that they are blinded by a strange hypersensitivity.

His idea that the mentally ill need 'prophylactic action' suggests a broad and uniform solution reminiscent of the 'lock 'em up' approach that our society used in the past.

I do want our society to go back to an approach used in the past. Advances in pharmaceuticals have made it so we don't need to lock up most people suffering from very severe mental health issues for very long. The drugs are for many people salutary. On occasion, when someone is very sick and is not taking drugs or the drugs are not working for him, lock-up and forced treatment -- the old approach -- is the best approach.

The truth is that the issues of mental health are extremely complex. Even to use the label 'the mentally ill' ignores the fact that an amazingly large percentage of our population deals with varying degrees of illness at various times, with various treatments and interventions.

I have never written about people with minor issues. I have only discussed people who are severely psychotic. The kind of people who cannot manage their own lives.

This is not a one-solution-fixes-all disease.

Agreed. My solution is not for all and it is not for the disease. I am not a psychiatrist. My solution is for the law and only for those who are diagnosed by psychiatrists as having a severe form of mental illness.

Rifkin's article offers no reasonable solutions ...

That's not true. I offer the solution to the legal problem as I see it. Wydick, oddly given his accusation, offers no solution. What would he do for someone living on the streets who is hearing voices but does not "want" to take psychotropic meds?

... but paints a dramatic image of the crazed, dangerous stranger waiting to kill us.

Yes, that crazed, dangerous stranger has a serious disease and is not responsible for his behavior. Yet, if we continue with a civil libertarian approach, that person harms himself or others. Most of the time, if someone else is harmed, it is a member of his own family.

This is an irresponsible use of his platform. Professionals who work with people who are mentally ill will be the first to say that the system needs fixing - but without promoting a fear of mentally ill people. Cut it out, please.

This is an irresponsible letter, Mr. Wydick, which tries to portray me as a man of prejudice who hates the mentally ill and wants others to hate them as well. The truth is I want the severely mentally ill helped. And your civil libertarian approach is harming them. That far left ideology needs to be cut out.

Yeah, I see the resemblence

An unusual case of murder-suicide

Murder-suicide is strangely an all-too common crime. I don't know if the numbers have changed in recent years, but an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 1992 that they account for "approximately 1,000 to 1,500 deaths yearly in the United States. The annual incidence of these events is relatively constant across industrialized nations and has not significantly changed over several decades."

In the book, "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812," Martha Ballard tells the story of a farm family in Maine where the father murdered all of his children, then killed his wife and then committed suicide. Before I read that, it hadn't occurred to me that such incidents took place back in the 18th Century. But, alas, they did. And in all likelihood, they go back thousands of years.

Most of the time the murderer is the father of the family. He does not always kill his children in these cases. I've read of many where the man, who normally has some history of domestic violence, loses his wife's love and in a rage kills her and then kills himself. My guess as to the reason why it is almost always the man of the family is testosterone. Men have a lot more of it in their systems. And it makes men prone to violence.

However, today, there is a breaking news story out of San Clemente in Orange County about a family killed murder-suicide in which the murderer is likely the mother of the family. She seems to have killed her children and an older woman, who I would guess is her mother and the grandmother to the kids.

A 38-year-old mother and her two daughters, ages 2 1/2 and 4, were among four family members found dead in a home in a gated San Clemente neighborhood, authorities said this morning.

Another relative, a woman in her 60s, also was found dead in the home on Calle Sonador, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities are now calling the case a murder-suicide. The bodies found in the hallway were so close together they were touching, authorities said. But they still cannot say how the family died and who the killer was.

“There's no question the two children were killed first, and one of the adult females is the killer, which is unusual by itself,” Amormino said. Investigators are awaiting the results of an autopsy, which is expected to identify the victims and causes of death.

"We know where the father was, and the father was nowhere near the crime scene." Amormino said.

What has always baffled me is why someone who is suicidal thinks it makes sense to kill others along with himself? If he is going to be dead, why should he care if others go on living? Or is it the case with murder-suicide that murder is ultimately his great impulse and that he only kills himself because once he has committed murder he lacks the guts to allow law enforcement to punish him for his crimes?