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An in-depth feature on the failure of the U.S. mental health system to properly treat schizophrenia patients appears in the March 19 Los Angeles Times. The writer asserts that the psychiatric profession clings to outdated notions of patients inevitably deteriorating, unable to improve. The story cited a 1950s Yale University study, researched in part by SAR Rehabilitation Counseling Professor Courtenay Harding -- then a Yale professor -- in which 269 chronic schizophrenics were placed in a comprehensive rehabilitation program. Researchers were astonished to find 20 years later that half to two-thirds of the patients showed no signs of the illness. "These patients were considered hopeless," says Harding. "They had been languishing in the back wards for years, and couldn't dress themselves and had forgotten how to tell time. But the belief that schizophrenia is incurable is so deeply embedded that no amount of facts seems to make a difference." Additional research indicates that fewer than half of schizophrenics receive any kind of psychological help, only one in four gets vocational help, and just 10 percent receive family therapy. "The real tragedy is we knew in the 1950s what we needed to do to reclaim lives," says Harding.

In an editorial in the March 21 Los Angeles Times entitled "There's Divorce, and Then There's Divorce," COM Journalism Professor Caryl Rivers and a coauthor write: "The anti-divorce movement is gathering steam. So-called 'covenant marriages,' in which couples entering marriage agree to make the possibility of divorce more difficult, are now legal in Louisiana and Arkansas. . . . The rationale for these changes is most often that divorce harms children, so it must be avoided at all cost. A new and very pessimistic bestseller on divorce may encourage such policies. Yet the best available research does not demonstrate that keeping troubled couples together is in the interest of their children.. . . The fact is, you can't make a categorical statement about divorce either way. Its effects are neither always trivial nor always devastating. . . . Divorce is complicated. Some divorces are terrible for everybody and others are liberating. How they affect children depends on many issues. . . . It won't help to hit parents over the head with guilt, and it won't help to rush into making unwise laws that only make things worse."

Whether it is sequencing the human genome or a smooth landing on the asteroid Eros, scientific breakthroughs are making life tough for science teachers across the country. The Washington Post carries a story on March 18 detailing how high school teachers are desperately trying to keep up with rapid scientific discovery while trying to maintain their students' attention. Many of the teachers turn to area universities for modern laboratories and equipment because science textbooks become outdated after only a couple of years. School of Medicine instructor Don DeRosa directs the education program CityLab at the Boston Medical Center, which provides biotechnology laboratories for middle school and high school students. "It's a monumental task when you consider that a biology teacher, during the year, is asked to teach ecology, genetics, zoology, a little bit of plant physiology, respiration, and energy exchange," DeRosa says. "I know of very few people who can be an expert in all of those fields. The way the systems are now, we're asking a tremendous amount of our teachers to keep current."

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

30 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations