| Mental health facility grows
As part of its plan to grow with the community, Manatee Glens has opened its first private-practice outpatient facility in East Manatee. Manatee Glens East provides mental health services for adults and children in its new office at 5233 Fourth Ave. Circle E. The office hosted an open house Tuesday afternoon. "Our board of directors has always been interested in meeting the needs of the community," said Mary Ruiz, president and CEO of Manatee Glens. The nonprofit provider of mental health and addiction services also is looking to expand north and south in Manatee County. The nonprofit has provided private counseling in a clinical setting for more than 20 years, Ruiz said, and now it's doing so in a new setting and location. Manatee Glens East has a handful of offices in which there are chairs and love seats, plus a desk for the therapist.
Fighting addiction is a struggle at any price
High-profile alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers seem like a home away from home for Hollywood celebs like Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Robert Downey Jr. Some charge nearly $50,000 a month. But since Lohan's arrest last week on charges of driving under the influence and possession of cocaine -- after several in-and-out stays at pricey rehab clinics -- one wonders what, if anything, works. Headlines about backsliding celebrities should not lead people to believe rehabilitation clinics are not worthwhile. However luxurious -- or Spartan -- the surroundings, however famous or workaday the patient, it's not unusual for people fighting addictions to fail often before they may finally succeed, say doctors and those who run rehab clinics.
Jamie's kitchen tough on kids
MORE than half the young down-and-outs who started apprenticeships with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in Melbourne failed to finish. Eleven of the 20 who started the Fifteen Melbourne program dropped out, the Herald Sun can reveal. One relapsed into heroin addiction, two have struck trouble with the law, one slumped back into homelessness and another threw it in to work in a pastry shop. The TV series Jamie's Kitchen Australia charted the first four months of the 16-month apprenticeship scheme, aimed at helping the young disadvantaged. But youth workers said the conditions were too tough. Youth welfare worker Les Twentyman said young people felt more pressure to perform under the public's gaze. "If they're not successful, it can throw them into further depression," Mr Twentyman said. "Those who fall by the wayside could be at higher risk of self-harm." Fifteen Foundation boss Peter Brown said he was glad the cameras would not be rolling during the next course.
Why the jail is jammed
I read the Gazette headline about the overcrowding of Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail and came away with emotions ranging from amusement to disgust.
What do we expect when judges and prosecutors refuse to consider alternative punishments such as house arrest, and politicians "get tough on crime" by increasing jail penalties and imposing more and more minimum mandatory jail sentences?
As a result, our jails contain more and more alcoholics, addicts, mentally ill and mentally retarded inmates who could be better treated in rehab centers and mental hospitals.
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Weariness on battlefield, stress at home
On the day her husband's Schofield Barracks unit left for Iraq on his third tour in six years, Jennifer James slipped into the shower to cry, thinking no one would hear her. She was wrong. "Mom, it's OK. We've been through this before," her then 8-year-old son Bradley said through the door. Frequent and extended troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are stressing not only those on the battlefield but also their families at home. The military is paying close attention as are counselors, researchers and family advocates particularly as troops return to the war zones for a third, fourth and fifth time. "They're exhausted, they're frustrated at the lack of predictability in their lives, especially with the extensions. Every deployment gets harder and harder," said Joyce Raezer, head of the National Military Families Association in Alexandria, Va.
The Culture: Behind the felt and fur, a human face
The hottest and most uninhibited sex scene of the summer isn't taking place on any movie screen or Web site. It's onstage at the Orpheum Theatre, where a couple of hand puppets go at it in the exhilarating Broadway musical "Avenue Q." The characters' names - and let me assure you that audiences come to see these constructions of felt and fur as fully dimensional characters - are Princeton and Kate Monster. Princeton (operated and voiced by Robert McClure) is a recent college graduate who moves to a funky New York neighborhood and wonders, in a drolly cynical musical number early in the show, "What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?" Kate (with Kelli Sawyer as her human enabler) is a self-effacing assistant kindergarten teacher who wears a sad little smile on her wide-mouthed monster face and nurses a dream of starting a school of her own.
Royal Family Kids Camp helps to heal children s wounded souls
His name is Tommy.
Most people will never know him, but the Rev. Scott and Tricia Murrish will never forget the angry boy who would ultimately redirect the course of their ministry.Tommy was about 8 years old when more than 80 percent of his body was burned after he was put into a tub of scalding hot water.By the time he went to a Royal Family Kids Camp in Kansas, Tommy was so full of rage and withdrawn that he wouldn't respond to any activities.
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Experts cite must-haves for effective rehab
Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx says he used to love the thrill of freebasing cocaine. "I love that moment, right before I put the glass pipe to my lips," Sixx writes in his upcoming book "Heroin Diaries." "The craving, the salivating, the excitement all feel fresh and innocent." And then, later in the book, he describes the pain: "I was in my closet with my grandfather's gun pointed at the door, needles and dirty spoons on the floor... terrified because people had slid under my front door like vapor and were in the house and were coming to get me." After more than 30 years of abusing drugs, Sixx realized he needed rehab. "I did a Google search," he says. "I was desperate to find a place." Sixx got lucky. Google led him to a place that worked for him, and he's now been sober for six years.
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