When I called the chief a couple of weeks ago and told him I’d been hearing good things about the new programs at the ranch, he sounded like he was going to fall off his chair. “What?” he said, laughing. “You’ve been hearing good things?

Oliver, 50, has good reason to ask herself the question. When just 31, she had reached such a state of physical decrepitude from alcohol abuse that she was given last rites by a priest, yet, "somehow, I don't know how", she pulled through.

The research, involving 20,000 Australians aged 17 to 24, found sleeping less than the recommended seven to eight hours per night could worsen and entrench pre-existing mental issues. People without a history of mental problems were at increased risk of developing mental problems if they slept fewer than five hours per night.

"People who are addicted to narcotics will be able to tell you what doctors don't ask questions, where you can go to get a prescription filled with very few questions asked, pharmacies that will turn a bit of a blind eye to suspected forgeries," she said. "And it will catch individuals who are double doctoring and [accessing multiple pharmacies]."

Nikki Bacharach, Dickinson’s daughter with composer Burt Bacharach, was born three months premature in the summer of 1966. She weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces. The baby was immediately put into a preemie isolette and no one was allowed to touch her—a fate Dickinson believes was linked to her daughter’s lifelong sense of isolation. “Even the doctors back then didn’t know the value of touch, that if you never get touched or hear a loving voice or get held in those first months, you won’t ever feel real or feel connected to anything. Not so long ago I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey for the umpteenth time with Nikki, and it hit me: you know that scene where the astronaut gets cut off and just floats into space? That’s how Nikki felt—how kids who have autism feel every minute of their lives. For the rest of us who can connect and ground ourselves so easily, it’s impossible to comprehend.”

Seniors’ abuse is not an easy topic to delve into, partly because by nature, most of us don’t wish to even acknowledge that such circumstances occur in the lives of some older citizens, at all. But the fact is, no community including our own, should assume that the abuse and neglect of older persons is something which happens only in other places, but not here at home.

This is a controversial measure, since it involves confining and treating people against their will for their own good. And, indeed, many people who have experienced involuntary admission claim it was a traumatic event that caused them significant harm. But on the other side, many people who have not been able to get mentally ill family members admitted to a hospital have had to stand by helplessly as they watched their loved ones deteriorate and, sometimes, commit suicide.

The young people Mr Rowe helps suffer from social, behavioural or emotional problems. Ms Rowe has given them a second chance, increased their confidence, life skills and given them something to look forward to. "Some of them only make small changes... but you might run into them in the street and they will come up and say 'I will never forget what you have done for me'.

The authority says it will meet with provincial mental health leaders to come up with clear definitions under the Mental Health Act to determine when committal becomes an option. An authority spokeswoman said patients can be committed when they become a danger to themselves or others, but advocates for schizophrenics say doctors can and should intervene earlier, when their condition substantially deteriorates.

The coroner said Ms Bugmy's family clearly loved her, but they had neglected her and should have sought help for her earlier. The Coroner also found that Ms Bugmy fell through the cracks of poorly co-ordinated and extremely under-resourced heatlh and community services in her remote home town.

A special needs child who jumped into the Red River was saved Tuesday thanks to some quick-thinking water taxi crews and a courageous cop. But there's no happy ending for the autistic boy's mom, who says her son has been cast adrift by the province.

While the teenagers might someday go on to use their newfound circus skills under the big top, they will more likely glean important life lessons from learning to juggle, swing from a trapeze or walk the high wire, said Hirschbach, who founded Circus Circle, a drop-in program aimed at teenagers and young adults with challenging lives.

London, England (CNN) -- Works by self-taught artists and those with schizophrenia and Down's syndrome are being presented in a gallery in Turin, brought together under the umbrella of "Outsider" art.

Barbara Hocking, Executive Director of SANE Australia. Bipolar disorder is attracting an increasing interest among the general public, clinical and research fields due to the emergence of a wide range of new pharmacological and psychological treatment options. Prof Castle said, "It is also associated with an increasing awareness that bipolar disorder is more common than previously thought."

IT has been a long hard road back to recovery for David Pepperell, after a severe head injury left him in a coma and wiped out two years of his life. While working on a building site in November 2008, the house builder and former Bundamba resident lost his balance, falling three metres to the ground, on to concrete. During the fall he sustained a head injury, which required a titanium plate to be implanted. He also broke his back, shoulder blade, wrist and fractured a bone in his neck.

EREDO - Even as landscapers from companies around West Virginia and into Ohio scurried around wielding wheelbarrows and shovels to finish planting what is intended to be a healing garden at the Golden Girl Group Home here, the garden was already doing its job.

Earlier studies involving patients with "treatment-resistant" depression have found that those given a single dose of ketamine experience rapid and significant improvement in symptoms. In a small study published earlier this month on patients with bipolar depression, 71 per cent of participants responded to ketamine versus six per cent who responded to placebo. "It's like a magic drug — one dose can work rapidly and last for seven to 10 days," Ronald Duman, professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Yale, said in a media statement.

Scientists have found solid evidence that kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) process sensory information such as sound, touch and vision differently than typically developing children. The study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University supports decades of clinical and anecdotal observations that individuals with ASD have difficulty coping with multiple sources of sensory information. The Einstein finding offers new insights into autism and could lead to objective measures for evaluating the effectiveness of autism therapies.

A two-year-old Canadian boy has died after being left in a sweltering sports utility vehicle (SUV) in Texas. The boy was apparently forgotten inside the SUV amid confusion surrounding visits from relatives on Thursday, Harris County police said.

A new study of babies who'd been placed in the neo-natal intensive care unit after birth was originally intended to research infant development.

Mental health activists in Newfoundland and Labrador say the public needs more information about how a patient in a locked psychiatric room was able to start a fire in a Happy Valley-Goose Bay hospital.

A study by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) has found 18 per cent of Australians will experience periods of problematic drinking within their lifetime, while four per cent become alcoholic. Problematic drinking includes being unable to perform duties at home or work, or having alcohol-related arguments with a spouse or run-ins with the law.

Andrew is a Special Olympics medallist many times over. His room is filled with trophies, ribbons and awards, and he says swimming and winning make him feel "happy and joyful". Despite this, winning is not what drives him. "We’ve got a team spirit oath that says, ‘Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt,’ " he says.

A CYCLIST who spent six weeks in a coma after he was hit by a bus is back on his bike again. Peter Gill took more than 18 months to recover from the brain injury he suffered after he was dragged under a bus in Old Market Square, Nottingham, on Valentine's Day last year. Now the 54-year-old from West Bridgford, who has been a cyclist for more than 30 years, has decided to ride 1,000 miles to raise cash for three charities.

Alioto-Pier's decision came after San Francisco's public health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, made a forceful argument to reject the legis- lation that would allow the city's mental health chief to petition the civil court to order people with severe mental illness into outpatient treatment.

Agoge Integrated Martial Arts, the Denver studio that brought us Zombie Defense Tactics and Zombie Survival 101, is presenting a new program called Jedi Academy to teach life skills and self reliance to troubled youth.

Every month, a group of about six or eight kids meet at Burnaby's Bill Copeland Sports Centre for a special session designed to strengthen and stretch their heels. Local mom and photographer Jillian Chateauneuf coordinates the group for children with club feet, cerebral palsy or toe walkers, and she's named it Flexi-foot.

Joe Steffy, a Kansas resident who has Down syndrome and other problems, was told by officials at his high school that his future was dim. But his parents didn't simply accept that. They helped him start up a popcorn business that today brings in decent revenue and gives Joe a meaningful life.

Previous research has suggested that family members of autism patients are more likely to have some minor brain impairments than other people, said Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an advocacy organization.

Severely disabled people may soon be able to use their noses to write, drive a wheelchair or surf the Internet, thanks to a device developed and tested by doctors in Israel. The device harnesses sniffing -- or breathing in and out through the nose -- which involves the soft palate on the roof of the mouth, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. The soft palate is controlled by cranial nerves, which are "always very well conserved following severe injury," said Noam Sobel, a professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and one of the lead authors of the study.

They used to call it a nervous breakdown. Now it's depression. Neither term is helpful. The former doesn't come close to expressing the long list of symptoms that apply (insomnia, anxiety, dismal mood, panic, thoughts of suicide, loss of energy/weight/joy/libido/love). The latter is, if anything, worse, conjuring up misleading images of people staring through windows at drizzle. But depressive illness isn't like that Monday-morning feeling, or getting back from holiday to find the cold water tank has burst. It's a medical fact, like breaking an arm, only the broken bit is in the chemical circuitry of the brain. It's delicate stuff in there. It takes a long time to fix. Usually, I am told, you get better.

MANILA, Philippines - Jose Antonio "JA" Tan, a 24-year-old boy with autism, recently completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada.

"The greatest benefit that the cat program has bought to the individuals receiving services at UCP is from sensory integration," Carter said. "Several individuals receiving services have a disorder that causes difficulty with processing information from five senses [touch, vison, auditory, taste, olfaction], the difference is that information is processed by brain in a different way and may cause confusion or distress, animals assist individuals to integrate the five senses in a therapetic manner."

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Starting Wednesday, national leaders in the treatment of brain injuries will be meeting in Anchorage to discuss the latest treatment and diagnostic developments. Doctors, researchers and health officials will be meeting at the Hotel Captain Cook to review the many causes of brain trauma, but there is more on the line than just addressing symptoms.

Fulton's family said in its letter that testimony at the trial made it quite clear that Noyes was a threat to the community and a danger to children, yet no one warned the families that lived at the low-income complex she called home.

Dr. Judith Owens of Brown Medical School led a team that surveyed more than 6,000 members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The nearly 1,300 who responded said almost a third of their patients had significant difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and they advised about a quarter of them to use drugs to help them sleep. Overall almost all of the psychiatrists said they recommended at least one sleep drug over the course of a month.

LANGHORNE, Pa.—A residential center for people with disabilities has suspended a second employee following the death of a 20-year-old autistic man found in a hot van after a trip to a suburban Philadelphia theme park.

Researchers examined discharge records from 3,605 U.S. hospitals between 2002 and 2007. The records included nearly 270,000 hospitalizations among people with schizophrenia and more than 37 million hospitalizations among general population patients.

Parents of children with autism, though, say Akhter may have also been overwhelmed. Raising kids with autism -- which affects a child's development of social and communication skills -- can be a frustrating, lonely, exhausting experience, they say.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A young child with Down Syndrome is being credited with solving a neighborhood crime, just by taking a few pictures. Tuesday night, the landlord of a residence near 300 South and 1200 East in downtown Salt Lake City stopped by and saw that his sprinklers had been kicked down and his valve box vandalized. With the help of his neighbors -- and one smart kid -- they assisted police in citing the culprit.