EBD Blog

In “Crown seeks 10-year term for young killer,” Sherri Zickefoose of the Calgary (Alta, CA) Herald reported about the trial of a 14-year-old girl who was convicted of first-degree murder last summer for her contributing to the stabbing deaths of a family of three. The girl was 12 at the time of the murders.

Noting that the “prosecutor says girl is ’significantly disturbed’ and fails to show any remorse” and has requested the maximum punishment, Ms. Zickefoose reported that Justice Scott Brooker is reviewing psychiatric reports.

He is also reviewing a media request to view the reports on which he will base the girl’s sentence.

The girl, who cannot be identified, has both oppositional defiance disorder and conduct disorder, according to psychiatric reports, the hearing in Court of Queen’s Bench was told.

“The young person does not recognize that she has committed a crime, nor does she have any insight into her condition,” said Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary, calling the girl “seriously disturbed” and saying she shows no remorse or acceptance of criminal responsibility for her role in the triple slaying.

Court heard the girl suffers from dependency issues, anxiety and depression, and is prone to immature problem-solving and wishful fantasies, though a psychologist hired by the defence said she had no homicidal or sadistic tendencies.

Jeremy Steinke stands accused of actually stabbing the family members, at the encouragement of the girl. Shortly after the girl and Mr. Steinke were arrested, she agreed to marry Mr. Steinke, according to reports in multiple sources. In a story that appeared on MacLeans.ca, James Stevensonof The Canadian Press reported about the jailhouse romance.

Just 18 months ago, the girl and Steinke were arrested in the back of a pickup truck in Leader, Sask. as police combed her blood-soaked house in suburban Medicine Hat.

In the following days, the two exchanged a series of crudely written prison-house

love letters full of spelling mistakes that culminated in Steinke asking for her hand in marriage. The girl, now Canada’s youngest convicted multiple killer, said yes.

“Ahahaha! I never thought I’d find myself hystericaly (sic) laughing in a holding cell in these kinds of circumstances,” wrote the girl. “But still! ahaha you make me so happy! Yes! Yes! I will, I would love to.”

There’s a lot to this story. Whatever the sentence, I hope she gets some good intervention.

Here are some links:

Ms. Zickefoose’s story;
Mr. Stevenson’s coverage of the girl breaking the engagement to Mr. Steinke;
Victoria Times Colonist coverage;

Here’s a YouTube link that points to a brief video illustrating ways that mental illness is made stigmatic. PsychoMedia: Laying the Foundation for Siberia USA. Flash of the electrons to StigmaNet.org.

The Collaborative on Community Integration at the University of Pennsylvania is seeking examples of people’s experienices with the mental health system. The UPENN Collaborative, which is connected with National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse, is hoping to use the stories as part of efforts to inform others about the problems people encounter along the way to addressing issues in mental health.

We are seeking stories from parents with mental illnesses and from students with mental illnesses regarding their experiences.

From parents, we seek personal stories regarding their experiences with the child welfare system, child custody issues, barriers to reunification associated with having a mental illness, and custody being used to encourage treatment compliance.

From students, we see stories from individuals – or family members of individuals – who were asked to take a leave of absence or withdraw from a college, university or other educational program because of a mental illness. Individuals who are or were undergraduate and graduate students from colleges or universities, vocational or other trade programs can submit their stories.

This information will be useful to us in developing training, policy and research initiatives to increase opportunities for parents with mental illnesses to have lasting, loving relationships with their children and for students with mental illnesses to successfully achieve their academic goals.

Please contact Pam Cousounis (pamelac2 [at] mail[dot]med[dot]upenn[dot]edu or at 215-746-1950) if you have a story and ideas that you would like to share with us. We look forward to hearing from you – thank you in advance for your contribution!

Links to the Web sites of the UPENN Collaborative on Community Integration and National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse.

When should a student’s right to participate in education be denied because his or her behavior is inimical to rights of other students’ to benefit from education? When is one student’s behavior so problemsome that his “right” to be in a classroom is trumped by his peers’ right to participate in an orderly learning environment?

Most educators, I would hazard a guess, want to make it possible for students to participate in a minimally restrictive environment. Although the “least restrictive environment” clause of the US special education law is buried pretty deeply in the structural outline of legal guarantees, it is advocated strongly by many people (educators, parents, attorneys, etc.) concerned about special education. And, many advocates argue that it—the “right” to the “least restrictive environment”—is the ace of trumps.

Is it? When does the balance shift from the access rights of an individual to the access rights of the individual’s peers? When are the interests of an individual to participate in “mainstream” education of lesser importance than the interests of peer students’ access to an environment that is conducive to learning (i.e., not disrupted)?

These and some other matters are the likely subjects of discussion at a forthcoming meeting on classroom disruptions. Suitably scheduled for Hallowe’en, the meeting will be held in Washington (DC, US). here’s the basic info:

Class Disrupted: Disorder and Its Effects on Learning and School Culture

October 31, 2007

Location: Washington, DC

Many teachers and principals struggle to create and maintain positive classroom and school cultures–free of disruption, disrespect, bullying, intimidation, and violence. While public school systems are rightly focused on meeting AYP and the other requirements of No Child Left Behind, they must also address the fact that without order and respect, little learning and progress can be achieved. Student misbehavior that goes unaddressed in the hallways and the classroom undermines instruction, stifles the development of character and social skills, and contributes to teacher burnout. This forum will:

* Examine disorderly conditions in schools, including factors contributing to the problem, looking beyond traditional concerns about safety and violence, to acts of disrespect, disregard for school rules, and disruptive behavior;
* Highlight the consequences of disorder in schools, specifically on learning and culture;
* Present new ideas on how law impacts student discipline at the school level; and
* Share key perspectives on what must be done to help restore respect and order and maintain safe and productive schools.

Date: October 31, 2007
Time: 8:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Registration begins at 8:00 a.m.
Lunch will be provided
Location:

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C.

If you’re interested in this topic, contact RSVP@cgood.org. (or for more information, contact Ali Kliegman at akliegman [at] cgood.org or 212.681.8199 x14.

Flash of the electrons to Elona Hartjes of Teachers At Risk whose post, “Class Disrupted: Disorder and Its Effects on Learning and School Culture” brought this to my attention.

In the September-October issue, Psychology Today magazine carried coverage of the father’s-age issue. Under the headline of “A Man’s Shelf Life,” Mark Teich interprets recent developments for a general audience.

“Everybody was familiar with the concept of women’s biological clock, but when we introduced ‘male’ to the equation, the reaction was ‘What are you talking about? Men can have children at any age,’” recalls urologist Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and author of The Male Biological Clock. “It became a social issue. Men do not like to be told they have a problem.”

Nonetheless, a virtual tidal wave of recent research has made it irrefutable: Not only does male fertility decrease decade by decade, especially after age 35, but aging sperm can be a significant and sometimes the only cause of severe health and developmental problems in offspring, including autism, schizophrenia, and cancer. The older the father, the higher the risk. But what’s truly noteworthy is not that infertility increases with age—to some degree, we’ve known that all along—but rather that older men who can still conceive may have such damaged sperm that they put their offspring at risk for many types of disorders and disabilities.

There is not much new in the analysis, but it is accessible. Also, it will be read by many more people than the more esoteric treatments that are generally available. Link to the print version of Mr. Teich’s article. Flash of the electrons to Leslie Feldman—she wrote EBD Blog’s treatment of the topic (see “fathers’ age” among the pages)—for bringing it to my attention.

How many students have Emotional and Behavioral Disoders? Is it 1%, 5%, 10%, or even more? What is the true prevalence of EBD?

Some children and youth with problems in the emotional and behavioral area have difficulties that do not rise to the level of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Reasonable adults know that every individual experiences bumps along the road. But what counts as a legitimate Emotional or Behavioral Disorder, not just a bump in the road?

This begs the question of how we define EBD. That’s a serious issue, one that policy makers should examine. And they should turn to the extant data about what’s normal. There are plenty of data that address this point.

The philosophical side of the question about what is normal turns, in part, on the question of whether “normal” is defined as what’s “right” or what’s “average” (borrowing from Ullman & Krassner). Some behavior among children and youth (say, sexual contact with peers) may be common (i.e., average) but not socially acceptable (i.e., ideal). Societies must wrestle with this matter, and social mores (e.g., religious views) often enter in the discussion.

But, another way to examine this matter is to ask how often people (parents, teachers, and individuals themselves) report that children and youth display behaviors that are so unusual that they are abnormal. Is, for example, Jim’s nosepicking such a problem (he really gouges the nostrils all day long!) that it’s more frequent and more severe (deeper pentration) than 99% of other children? Well, if the answer is “yes” and we consider nosepicking an inappropriate behavior, then it’s a problem. It’s abnormal.

It turns out that researchers have lots of data about the important others’ (parents, teachers) ratings of of children and youths’ behavior. Some kids do things that are generally out of the range or normal often and over extended periods of time. Sometimes, multiple raters—parents and teachers or teachers over several years—give similar ratings to the same youths.

If there is convergence among these ratings, wouldn’t one think that they represent problems worth examining? I’d say, “Yes.”

My colleagues and I are examining all the empirical studies we can find that report data about the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems among school children. If we find that scientifically trustworthy studies show a higher prevalence of EBD among school children than the percentage of students identified by the research samples, we’ll have to suggest alternative explanations for the findings.

What might those explanations be? Why are more (or fewer) students with EBD identified in the US schools than are pesent in the population, according to prevalence research?

Stephen Smith and colleagues have discovered why mothers who have been exposed to infectious agents during pregnancy produce offspring that have abnormalities in behavior, histology, and gene expression similar to what is seen in schizophrenia and autism. Working with rodents in the lab of Paul Patterson at California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA, US), Mr. Smith and his colleagues showed that interleukin-6 is at least partially responsible for mediating the behavioral and genetic changes in the offspring.

A team of California Institute of Technology researchers has found an unexpected link connecting schizophrenia and autism to the importance of covering your mouth whenever you sneeze.

It has been known for some time that schizophrenia is more common among people born in the winter and spring months, as well as in people born following influenza epidemics. Recent studies suggest that if a woman suffers even one respiratory infection during her second trimester, her offspring’s risk of schizophrenia rises by three to seven times.

Since schizophrenia and autism have a strong (though elusive) genetic component, there is no absolute certainty that infection will cause the disorders in a given case, but it is believed that as many as 21 percent of known cases of schizophrenia may have been triggered in this way. The conclusion is that susceptibility to these disorders is increased by something that occurs to mother or fetus during a bout with the flu.

Now, researchers have isolated a protein that plays a pivotal role in that dire chain of events.

Link to the public abstract of the study from the Journal of Neuroscience. PhysOrg.com coverage quoted here.