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Catching Up!

By Dr. Brian Russell • on January 9, 2010

I’m back in Kansas and back online and hoping that everyone had great holidays. Happy New Year! Here’s a quick rundown of developments in various cases that occurred while I was on hiatus:

The Florida man who allegedly murdered several family members at Thanksgiving dinner and fled the scene was captured, still in Florida, hiding out in a motel in the Keys. Maybe now we’ll find out what motivated him.

Actor Charlie Sheen allegedly assaulted his wife on Christmas. According to her, he held a knife to throat and threatened to have her killed. She reportedly was drunk at the time, however. So, when I came on Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell via satellite early the following week to discuss the case, I said I’m most concerned about the couple’s small children. As a child custody expert, it doesn’t sound like either parent is parent-of-the-year in the Sheen household. Shocking, I know. (By the way, some in the media compared Sheen’s troubles to those of golfer Tiger Woods and questioned why the public didn’t seem as troubled by Sheen’s alleged behavior. That’s easy: Woods let people down. Sheen didn’t. People didn’t really expect better from Sheen, so his alleged behavior was less of a disappointment to people.)

A Delaware pediatrician was arrested and stands accused of molesting numerous child patients during office visits and videotaping the crimes. Questions abound in this case, like why so many parents apparently left their kids alone with this guy long enough for them to be molested by him, and why the authorities in Delaware didn’t act sooner on complaints of inappropriate behavior. Medical boards around the country send doctors here to Lawrence, KS to be evaluated by my colleagues and me when there are questions about the doctors’ fitness to practice. I wish the Delaware board had sent this guy to us when suspicions were raised approximately a year ago. I can’t tell you for certain, but I certainly hope that we could’ve spotted some red flags that could’ve spared some kids from becoming sex-crime victims.

The Utah mother of two who went missing shortly before Christmas while her husband supposedly had gone camping in the middle of the night in freezing conditions with their small kids (when he was supposed to be at work the next morning) unfortunately remains missing. The husband’s now a “person of interest.” Ya think?

A terrorist burned up his privates trying to ignite an explosion on an airplane, sending the U.S. air travel system into a panic at one of the busiest travel times of the year. Anybody feel sorry for him? Me neither. Why he and his potentially-deadly baggage weren’t screened out, however, is cause for all of us to be concerned.

A shooting at the federal courthouse in Las Vegas left the shooter and a security guard dead and a federal marshal wounded. From what we’ve been told about the motive/psychology of the shooter, he apparently was upset at the government because he didn’t think he was getting enough in Social Security payments.

Study this no. 1: A new study on depression in teens found that teens who are sleep-deprived are more likely to become depressed.

Study this no. 2: A new study on antidepressants found that in many cases, the drugs were not significantly more effective than placebos (inactive pills) in treating mild to moderate depression. Kind of scary when you think about how hard pharmaceutical companies and some psychiatrists are pressing to put more people on more of these drugs more quickly (at younger ages) despite potentially-low effectiveness and potentially-damaging side effects. If you know of someone, especially a child, who’s been harmed by psych meds, tell the person or the family to send me his/her/their story.

OK, that’s it for this rundown based on my memory of what I was hearing and saying here and there over the holidays, now let me know what I left out, and I’ll continue to follow the major cases, celebrity scandals, psychology news, and cultural chaos with you here and on t.v. in the year ahead!