Case in point:

Tammy Lewis, mother to a 15-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, and self-described bishop Alan Bushey are in custody on “felony counts of being a party to causing mental harm to a child.”

According to a Yahoo! News article, Lewis and her two children lived with Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth’s corpse for two months on Bushey’s advice. Bushey claimed Magdeline (who was 90 years old when she died) would come back to life.

Well, Magdeline did not come back to life, and authorities found her body on a toilet at Lewis’s residence late last week. Lewis and Bushey were placed in custody, and the two children were placed in foster care.

Like the Fritzl case, this is…well, it’s not something you hear about every day. Like the FLDS case, religion is heavily involved.

Ken Jensen is currently rockin’ out in the This Is Why I ROCK! series here at Mental Health Notes. If you have a mental illness and are still living the life you love, head on over the the official announcement post and enter!

Post from: Blisstree

Lewis & Bushey: Incarcerated For Causing Mental Health Harm To Children

Let’s glance back at some of the topics I covered this week here at Mental Health Notes. I shared pictures during Sunday’s Brain Break, mused on the mental health repercussions for the FLDS religious sect children, explained why being kind to the earth (and not just on Earth Day!) was good for our minds, offered tips on how to nurture your mental health after a cancer diagnosis, honored National Poetry Month by recognizing famous poets with mental illness, and reminded you ALL that This Is Why I ROCK! is still accepting entries.

What are some of the big mental health advocacy groups up to lately? Well, Mental Health America is “calling on presidential candidates to emphasize mental health in [their] health policy plans,” as well as urging the rest of us to contact our senators about cosponsoring two bills to block harmful Medicaid regulations.

Want to know what’s going on in the world of scientific-, research-, and government-related mental health news? According to an independent study by RAND Corp., about half of the 300,000 American troops returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems are receiving treatment, while 320,000 American troops have sustained brain injuries. The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) in Rock County, Wisconsin is looking for new ways to address the issue of folks who are arrested and sent into the criminal justice system. Dr. Michael J. Rivkin of Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston led a study that suggests mothers who drink, smoke, or use other drugs during pregnancy put their babies at risk for being born with smaller brains.

And finally, what’s going on around the rest of the b5media Health & Wellness Channel? Well, aside from the fact that we’ve changed our name to the Health & Wellness Channel (remember, it used to be Science & Health Channel?), tons!

Scott over at Health and Men offers up two very important posts for consumers of any gender: First, he gives us tips on how to get the most out of health-related Web sites while still protecting ourselves with The Internet And How It Has Changed Health; then, he highlights a quite in-depth health resource with which many of you may not be familiar in Taking Steps Towards A Healthier Lifestyle With SmallStep.Gov.

Liz over at Alzheimer’s Notes offers up a nice collection of personal stories about Alzheimer’s Disease, while Kristina at Autism Vox lets us know what she thinks of Adam Jasinki, the Big Brother finalist who called autistic children “retards” (why haven’t I given this punk an A.S.S Award yet?!).

Laura at Baldiness reminds teenagers that managing stress and learning to chill out can help prevent hair loss, and Elaine at Genetics & Health tells us about the connection between doggy DNA and human psychiatric problems.

Ruth at Eating Fabulous points out the importance of Vitamin D regarding brain function, and Liberty over at Healthbolt explains how dandelions can help relieve stress.

That’s all for this week! As always, if you have any Saturday Sanity-worthy news to share, send it my way!

Image sources and credits here, here, and here.

Post from: Blisstree

Saturday Sanity: Gathers No Moss

For the most part, I try to stay out of other people’s religious business. Sure, if your car breaks down on the way to Mass, I’ll give you a lift. Along the way, I may even ask you a question or two about the history of the Rosary or whether or not you’ve met the Pope.

I’m helpful and curious, what can I say.

However, it’s neither helpfulness nor curiosity that’s caused me to keep up with what’s going on out in Texas regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the Yearning For Zion Ranch (YFZ) – specifically, what’s going on regarding the children being taken from their families and placed in state custody, DNA testing to determine who’s related to whom, and the still anonymous teenage girl who’s telephone call alleging sexual abuse by her 50-year-old husband that started it all.

Frankly, it’s worry.

Their worlds have been turned upside down, they’ve been taken out of familiar surroundings and away from their parents, and they’re being given the impression that the lives they’ve lived until this point have been “bad.”

Mental health professionals and behavioral experts were brought in to “try to ensure a sense of normalcy” for the children shortly after the raid on the YFZ Ranch. Too, spokesperson for Child Protective Services, Darrell Azar, claims CPS will make the “transitions as easy as possible” and “keep them together as much as possible so they don’t feel they’re completely isolated from their culture or the people they know,” but the children’s mental grip on everything they’ve known has already suffered a serious blow.

At the same time, another CPS spokesperson, Marissa Gonzales, points out that separation is necessary because keeping the parents and children involved in abuse allegations together isn’t normal practice, and that the decision to separate them was made after “after consulting mental health experts and attorneys who thought it would be best to separate the mothers from their children.”

I can see the need to separate children from their parents when investigating abuse. It doesn’t make the situation any more pleasant or bearable, but I can see the need for it.

During my search to find more about what mental health professionals are saying about the situation, I kept running into testimonies from Dr. Bruce Perry. According to Scholastic, Perry is an “internationally-recognized authority on children in crisis.” And, according to Perry, we’re seriously stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Well, he didn’t say that exactly, but he may as well have.

Perry, who has studied “children in cults,” claims the FLDS belief system and culture is “abusive” and “very authoritarian,” and he feels the children would be at risk returning to YFZ. However, Perry also testified that “the traditional foster care system could be destructive.”

Therein lay our rock and hard place: “Don’t send them home because it could be abusive, but the alternative – traditional foster care – is potentially dangerous, too.” (My quote.)

What to do, what to do…

Religious beliefs aside, if the court does deem these children are being abused in some way, then…traditional foster care is the only answer, isn’t it? If it’s determined that these children cannot return to their family environments, facing the destruction Perry claims the traditional foster care system could cause seems inevitable, right?

It seems we’re merely at the tip of the iceberg, and my heart goes out to these children.

Image source and credit.

Want to show the world how you’re managing mental illness and kicking butt? Check out This Is Why I ROCK! and enter today!

Post from: Blisstree

Mental Health Repercussions For FLDS Religious Sect Children