Aircraft noise may be bad for your health and heart

A study is linking aircraft noise to hypertension, airline advocates said.

In a recently published study, the Hypertension and Exposure to Noise Near Airports (HYENA) study has linked aircraft noise to hypertension in residents near airports.

The New Jersey Coalition Against Aircraft Noise (NJCAAN) said the report shows how the Federal Aviation Administration has "completely ignored analyzing the significant public health, safety and welfare impacts of shifting low altitude departure patterns directly over residential communities in its 10-year effort to revamp the flight patterns in the metropolitan area. "

The group has called upon New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine to block implementation of the FAA’s impending implementation of new low altitude departure patterns at Newark and Philadelphia airports and instruct environmental officials to investigate the health impacts of this plan.

Military will address health care; will mental health be part of the strategy?

The Department of Defense says it's trying finalize its 2008 plans for ensuring top quality healthcare for all service members and beneficiaries.

Noticeably left out of that declaration is any discussion of mental health - despite the fact that thousands of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to develop symptoms for post-traumatic stress disorder within the next decade.

"Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Gates charged me with being the guarantor of quality healthcare for service members, retirees and their families," said Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "Quality healthcare is the Secretary's top goal, apart from the war itself."

The DOD first discussed its "MHS Strategic Plan" at a Washington D.C. conference in January. All of the presentations for the conference were aligned with the plan's goals and objectives, Pentagon officials said, including:

• Enhance deployable medical capability, force medical readiness and homeland defense ,including humanitarian missions;
• Sustain the military health benefit through top quality patient-centered care and long-term patient partnerships with a focus on prevention;
• Provide globally accessible, real time, health information that enables medical surveillance and evidence-based health care;
• Provide incentives to achieve quality in everything;
• Build and sustain the best hospitals and clinics; nurture a caring environment.

Casscells and conference organizers also expect to raise awareness among military and civilian communities worldwide regarding the value of military medicine - not only in combat care, but in research, education, international healthcare and humanitarian relief, the Pentagon said.

"The conference agenda is ambitious," Casscells said. "But it's the right event at the right time to energize our commitment to quality care throughout the entire enterprise."

Jim Carrey says he knows how to heal people with depression - but does he?

It was interesting to learn that Jim Carrey was set to write a self-help book on depression since the comedian has experienced it himself - although Page Six in The New York Post is now saying that it was all a "joke."

Either way, can he be trusted based on these conflicting reports, as well as his opinion that medication may not be considered "an answer?" He also has a history of producing material that has drawn the ire of the mental health community.

Known for his slapstick performances in the "Ace Ventura" series, Carrey battled depression for a long time after he became famous and resorted to Prozac to cope, the sun.co.uk reports. However, he now believes that medicines are not the answer and wants people to deal more with the root causes, according to the report.

He said: "I dealt with depression for a while by medicating with Prozac and although it was good for dealing with the problem there and then, I wasn't getting to the bottom of my anger and frustration.

"I think we have a real problem these days in that everything is treated with a drug. I think there's a whole new way of healing depression that doesn't require drugs - and I'm writing a book about it."

Mental health activists, meanwhile, have long argued that Carrey's 2000 film, "Me, Myself and Irene," is ignorant, insensitive and filled with myths about schizophrenia, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

In the film, Carrey plays a cop with a mental illness. He's mild-mannered when he takes his medicine, but abusive and even violent when he doesn't.

Doctors say the film and its promotional campaign showing Carrey with a split personality and a tendency to be violent reinforce outdated stereotypes about schizophrenia, according to the CBC.

"Many people in the public have the wrong impression that schizophrenia is an illness that causes people to become dangerous...and that just isn't the case," psychiatrist Dr. Robert Zipursky told the CBC.

Ian Chovril struggled with schizophrenia for 10 years before he was treated, according to the CBC. He doesn't believe there's anything funny about Carrey's movie.

"This one really distorts the truth. This one is really using mental illness and schizophrenia in particular as a plot device, without any regard to the nature of the illness," he says.

Why should political wives suffer in silence as their spouses betray the public trust?

This time it's Silda Wall Spitzer, spouse of more than two decades to Eliot Spitzer, the New York ex-governor snared in a prostitution ring, who is the latest woman to play the supportive female in unseemly political scandal, notes Mary Sanchez of McClatchy Newspapers

As Sanchez noted: "Ever notice how the wife is always positioned in these media moments? She is a mute backdrop. Saintly, you might say, in her suffering."

Sanchez noted others who have played similar roles in what's becoming a trend: Sen. Larry Craig’s wife, Suzanne; Dina Matos McGreevey, who is now in the process of divorcing the former governor of New Jersey; and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s wife, Carlita.

"Faced with the public humiliation of a cheating spouse, each woman stood to the side as her husband expressed remorse," Sanchez said. "They all knew the drill: At the end of his speech, the couple walks off the stage together, his hand gently touching her shoulder."

"It’s about time we start questioning this display," she added.

Stephanie Coontz, an expert on marriage and author of “Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage,” has closely observed how attitudes and expectations about marriage have changed, especially during the last 40 years in the United States, Sanchez said.

She notes that when a jilted woman appears “too pushy“ about her grief or anger, it tends to gain sympathy for the man, not herself, Sanchez said. "Don’t be caught throwing a fit about your husband’s transgressions," Sanchez added. "No, not in 2008!"

Here’s one to contemplate, Sanchez asked: What if the roles were reversed? Once the scandal was exposed, would the husband be a quiet creature of support? Or, Sanchez asked, would his rage be viewed as justified?

"Rather, would the male public reaction match the anger and hurt that no doubt is felt by any betrayed spouse but that, in the case of women, is left only to private venting?" Sanchez asked.

Mistreatment of mental health issues is not just an American problem

Following a four year investigation, Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) recently released a report detailing the human rights abuses perpetrated against children and adults in Serbia with disabilities, forced to live out thier lives in institutions.

"Torment not Treatment: Serbia's Segregation and Abuse of Children and Adults with Disabilities" describes children and adults tied to beds or never allowed to leave their cribs - some for years at a time. In addition, filthy conditions, contagious diseases, lack of medical care, rehabilitation and judicial oversight renders placement in a Serbian institution life threatening for both children and adults.

"These are Serbia's most vulnerable citizens. Thousands confined to institutions are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and abuse. Children and adults tied down and restrained over a lifetime is dangerous and painful treatment tantamount to torture - clear violations of the European Convention on Human Rights," said Attorney Eric Rosenthal, Executive Director of MDRI and an expert on human rights law.

"We call on the government of Serbia to stop these abuses immediately and to respect the human rights of all people with disabilities," Rosenthal added.

An article from a recent issue of the International Herald Tribune further outlines MDRI's findings. For more information or to read our report, please visit the MDRI website.

MDRI is an international human rights and advocacy organization dedicated to the full participation in society of people with mental disabilities world wide. For more information, visit our website.

An abusive place now become a caring place - hopefully

One of the nation's most notorious psychiatric hospitals - where abuse and carelessness were once considered the norm, and where a famous patient, folk singer Woodie Guthrie, met Bob Dylan - has reopened.

New Jersey officials recently showed off the new Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital during an afternoon ceremony. Governor Corzine called the new $200 million facility symbolic of how the state's mental health system has evolved.

The 450-bed facility will replace aging buildings long plagued by shoddy conditions. Here are some other age-old problems with the facility, as reported by The New York Times:

- It's been long criticized as substandard and plagued by a rash of escapes and assaults on patients.

- Built in 1876, the hospital has been criticized over the last quarter-century by state judges and lawmakers as offering less than ideal care to its mentally ill patients.

- Its environment, in the physical and psychological sense, was once said to ''strain the meaning of humane.''

- During unannounced visits, committee investigators found some patients sitting idle in day rooms without lamps, reading materials or games. Others slept on floors.

- Some had no access to soap or toilet paper, and 44 more had to share four toilets because other toilets were broken.

Anti-medication groups combine forces to fight "forced drugging"

Promising to fight what they call "pervasive and harmful violations of mental health clients" who receive drugs and electric shock treatment in the United States, The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights and the MindFreedom Shield Campaign announced today a joint Task Force on Mental Health Legal Advocacy & Activism.

Task Force organizers say the combination of PsychRights' expertise for strategic litigation and the "people power" of MindFreedom activists around the country will bring a synergy and geographic reach to their demands for people’s "legal and human rights" regarding medication use.

The new partnership of law and nonviolent activists has an initial focus in the states of California, Massachusetts and New York, organizers say.

"People's rights in forced drugging proceedings are ignored as a matter of course, resulting in great harm to them and decreased public safety," PsychRights' President Jim Gottstein said.

David Oaks, director of MindFreedom International, said violence committed by individuals labeled "mentally ill" has led to a backlash calling for a "massive increase in forced psychiatric drugging."

"Contrary to public perception, forcing people to take psychiatric drugs can often increase violence, rather than decrease it," said Gottstein. "If people were warned that both taking and withdrawing from these drugs can at times contribute to committing terrible acts, they and their loved ones can be alert to the possibility and tragedies averted."

The cost of the road can take a toll on the brain

My wife and I don't often look at our credit card bill. We don't like being surprised or scared.

But we don't like being poor, either. To be honest, we've had too many visits to the ATM where the machine said “insufficient funds.”

So lately, we've unsealed the unopened letters from the bank, and discovered what's obvious: Everything's going up. Gas. Groceries. Utility and cable bills.

It's certainly understandable. Services expand, so the costs go up. Our combined mortgage and tax bill now consumes more than 50 percent of my monthly salary.

The only one that's puzzling, however, is E-Z Pass, the toll service that allows vehicles to pass through without stopping. How does a bill keep inching closer to $300 every month when the highway toll rates haven't increased in five years?

It was the kind of tip-of-the-iceberg moment that makes hard-working families feel helpless, depressed and downright angry. And it's going to get worse now that the tolls rates on bridges, tunnels, ferries, highways and trains are all going up — by a lot. On the Hudson River crossings heading into New York, they increase by $2 as of today.

Some call the toll hikes just another cost-of-living adjustment that's part of American life. But, for many commuters, it's become virtually impossible to adjust when the cost-of-living is out-of-reach.

And what choices do you have when your income stays flat, the job market shrinks and there really isn't much of a mass transit alternative? How do you save to send you children to college? How do we pay our mortgage when property tax hikes make toll increases look like 50-cent Salvation Army donation?

“If I do drive into the city, I have to pay more for tolls — it’s a lot of money,” said Harry Adrian of New Jersey. “I can’t make a decent living by doing that.”

The obvious answer is to cut back. But how do cut back on a budget that, from our point of view, is already bare bones? Should we deny our children activities that help them grow and learn?

My wife has been shuffling the kids to more out-of-town extracurricular activities — a travel regimen that's contributing to the rising E-Z Pass costs. But karate and travel soccer have done wonders for our children's self-esteem and confidence. We've talked to psychologists who have endorsed this parental approach — though, I suppose, we wouldn't get the same response from financial planners.

Otherwise, we've virtually cut out any vacations. We've taken on additional jobs, such as teaching on an adjunct basis at local colleges. My wife teaches enrichment classes at the local YMCA.

We've also been using more mass transit — such as taking the train to get to New York City — and also staying home on occasion instead of working in the office.

But, as Adrian noted, these choices don't always serve as an equal substitute. Taking a train into the city every month costs around the same amount — or more — as paying for gas, sitting in traffic and using E-Z Pass to get into the city.

Once you get into the city, there's the additional cost of using the subway — and paying higher rates for that, too — or paying for a cab because, as Adrian noted, New York City's mass transit system doesn't always get people where they need to go.

All that takes a lot of time, Adrian noted, forcing him to spend too much time navigating a complicated system and not enough time seeing his family in Bogota.

“The roads that go into the city are always jammed up with cars — for that reason, I don't drive," said Adrian, who works for New York City Transit and takes the bus into the city. “I take public transportation, but it takes a lot of effort.”

The various transportation agencies have provided public forums for people to express their frustration regarding the rate hikes, and plea for change. But the six public hearings held in December to discuss toll and fare hikes on the Hudson River crossings and train lines usually attracted no more than five people at a time.

What people often fail to realize is that government will usually listen if you get loud.

I think of Steve Carrellas, New Jersey coordinator for the National Motorists Association, who got involved in transportation interests because he wanted the speed limit raised from 55 to 65.

He got that. But the more he paid attention to what's happening in New Jersey, the more he felt like he should get involved and provide a voice for the state's weary commuters.

Now the Port Authority and NJ. Gov. Jon Corzine actually lean on him for advice. They'll also brief him before they make a proposal to raise tolls — as the Corzine administration did earlier this month before it announced that it was raising tolls 500 percent over the next 15 years.

“We can support an increase if they can justify fairness and value,” Carrellas said. “If you can at least show some value [and invest in alternatives such as mass transit] then you can say it may be worth it.”