News & Views

 

News Commentary: Antipsychotic Drug Prescriptions for Children

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September 3rd, 2010

Diagnosis-Driven Treatment
Profits Big Pharma,
Not Children

Within days of an article in The New York Times Magazine with a title posing the question Can Preschoolers Be Depressed? a special report appeared in the same newspaper (Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young) about the use of off-label, heavy-duty antipsychotic medications for the same age group.  Not unlike big tobacco’s attempts to expand its market base by appealing to young consumers with cartoon characters like Joe Camel, the pharmaceutical industry sends representatives to the offices of pediatricians and child psychiatrists to leave behind promotional items like Legos emblazoned with the logo for Risperdal, one such drug.

Insufficient research to support prescribing these drugs for small children has not prevented the practice, which finds ready takers among low-income families without the resources to understand or access other options like parenting instruction and family and individual therapy.  At their wit’s ends, mothers of so-called difficult children follow the advice of their doctors to give their two-year-olds drugs with serious side effects like weight gain and diabetes.

In the piece questioning the existence of diagnosable depression in young children as early as infancy, naysayers insist it’s inadvisable to label symptoms like anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), low energy, poor appetite, insomnia, poor self-esteem and pervasive negativity as an emotional disorder.  Variability of expression and the immaturity of the brain, the say, renders it premature to label small children in that way.

Those who support the diagnosis point to scans showing similar changes in the hippocampus and certain neural networks in the brains of depressed children and adults.  Other studies link depressive symptoms in children with family problems;  e.g., a mother’s depression can quickly impose itself on her baby by virtue of her own joylessness and lack of responsiveness.  In addition, children are ill equipped to handle emotionally and physically overwhelming experiences like abuse and neglect, death and/or separation from caregivers, and any of the many other calamities that can befall them.  When children act out their distress in developmentally appropriate ways, they too often become a problem to be fixed, rather than being seen as the canary in the coal mine heralding impending doom.

To recognize the reality of depression in young children, one need only listen to adults whose early lives were rife with difficulties.  Traumatic experiences like incest and other forms of abuse have devastating effects on the still-forming brain.  Living in circumstances where caregivers struggle with their own pain- and anxiety-filled existence weighs heavily on the spirits of children.  As quiet as it’s kept, four-year-olds have been known to deliberately swallow bleach and six-year-olds to throw themselves down a flight of stairs with their arms at their sides, all in hopes of escaping what for them has become a prison of pain.

Yet to establish a diagnosis of depression in children provides a rational for medicating them with the same antipsychotic drugs being used for acting out behaviors like aggression, self-injury, tantrums and severe mood swings.  Any of these symptoms,  signs of distress in a child, requires attention to the entire environment, including parents, siblings and others involved in the child’s life.  Helping the caregivers invariably helps the children.  Drugging children solves nothing and interferes with normal brain development, only one of many side effects.

Both cited articles mention successes with early interventions that take advantage of the plasticity of the young brain.  Certainly, ensuring a safe environment for the child takes precedence.  In yet one more report of severe neglect resulting in the death of a preschooler, the family was not unknown to child protective services.  Evidence suggests that the four-year-old girl with congenital health problems who weighed all of  15 pounds had been physically restrained with twine.  Perhaps she had become too much for an overwhelmed mother to handle, not unlike the children of some of the mothers who desperately seek help from their doctors and receive only psychotropic prescriptions for their children.

The way to assist frustrated parents lies not in the direction of prescribing narcotizing drugs to those among their children who broadcast otherwise silent family problems.  The best approach requires a commitment of time and resources to uncover and address the specific environmental challenges interfering with the child’s healthy development.

 

News Item: Communicative Musicality

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August 27th, 2010

Mother & Baby Duet:
Instrumental in Social Development

A mother hums to her little boy as she changes him on the shelf in a restroom while he looks with wide-eyed curiosity at the stranger attracted by the sounds.  On the train, another mother sings playfully to her child in a stroller.

All that billing and cooing does much more than entertain and/or soothe an infant.  Recent research strongly suggests that it plays a vital role in preparing children to learn the language, practices and rituals of their cultures.

In a special report on music appearing in Science News, babies were described as coming into the world prepared to engage musically, crying with the same melodic patterns found in their mothers’ conversations.  The singsong nature of motherese, the universal language of babyspeak, takes advantage of that innate ability; adults automatically speak in a higher-pitched and exaggerated manner when addressing infants and toddlers.

One researcher, psychobiologist Colwyn Trevarthen, believes that babies have an active part in this exchange with their mothers, recognizing  when an adult invites them to respond and at times initiating the musical interactions.  In addition to building a foundation for later learning, what Trevarthen has come to call communicative musicality also provides for emotional expression and sharing between parent and child, crossing cultures with only minor variations.

The critical nature of these formative experiences is best appreciated in their breach.  Studies conducted by psychologist Maya Gratier of women diagnosed with depression and/or borderline personality disorder (BPD) demonstrate how a mother’s own inability  to respond to the desperate attempts of her baby to engage musically has negative consequences for the child’s development.

Because of their personal histories of severe childhood abuse and neglect, women with BPD have difficulty sustaining ordinary relationships and controlling their impulses.  They feel empty emotionally, fear abandonment, tend to elicit angry responses from others, and end up in intense, tumultuous relationships.

Ill equipped because of their own early deprivation, these mothers produce sounds devoid of any musical sense when trying to speak motherese.  They utter repetitive, sometimes odd, noises that lack rhythmic flow.  Seemingly unaware of their children’s desire to participate, they create no entry point for it.  Babies of these mothers give up and withdraw or actively demonstrate their distress by becoming fussy and upset.  Although the depressive women in Gratier’s studies could generate more variety in their communications with their infants, they did so in a low, flat voice lacking rhythmic timing.

Flexibility and expressiveness are prerequisites for musical attunement with one’s baby.  These women (and others like them) can give no more than they have received.  Children raised without the benefit of rhythmic relationships miss out on the opportunity to successfully complete a critical stage of development and encounter difficulties in subsequent social situations, starting in preschool.

Research findings like these point to the importance of early intervention for mothers with histories of severe childhood abuse and neglect, perhaps in the form of music lessons for the mother and infant duet.  Not only could it benefit the child, it could also teach the woman a skill she had missed out on learning as a baby.

 

News Commentary: Army Fails to Support Troops

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August 18th, 2010

Personality Disorder Diagnosis
Instrumental in Denial of Benefits

Between 2005 and 2007, the Army discharged about 1,000 soldiers a year with a diagnosis of personality disorder, effectively barring them from receiving veteran health care and combat-related disability payments.  Unlike Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), caused by encounters with life-threatening events, a personality disorder has its roots in early life, rendering it a pre-existing condition and therefore not the Army’s responsibility.

After a 2007 article appeared in The Nation noting those figures, the Army announced a new policy that required higher level review of all cases.  Soon after that, diagnoses  of personality disorder dropped to 75 percent of their previous level while those of  PTSD skyrocketed, reaching 14,000 by 2008.  Despite this coincidence, the Army steadfastly denies that it had inappropriately discharged all those service members.

In a recent New York Times report on the issue, a personality disorder was described as “a deeply ingrained maladaptive pattern of behavior” whose symptoms could be mistaken for those of the “anger, irritability, anxiety and depression” associated with PTSD.

There are ten categories of personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), only two of which contain any of those symptoms:  Antisocial Personality Disorder (“irritability and aggressiveness”) and Borderline Personality Disorder (“dysphoria, irritability or anxiety,” “inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger”).  Both of these labels carry major stigma, the first because it describes a person without conscience and the second by virtue of its pejorative connotations in the mental health field.

Studies have found up to three quarters of people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have histories of childhood sexual and physical abuse.  Not surprising then that its symptoms mirror those of PTSD.  Assaults on children during the critical years of brain development affect their ability as adults to manage emotions and relate to others.

In selecting the personality disorder diagnosis, the Army managed its bottom line at the expense of the women and men who suffer mental anguish from their war experiences.  Apparently this practice has not abated; Army psychiatrists have discovered another diagnosis that blames the victim, Adjustment Disorder, characterized by “marked distress that is in excess of what would be expected given the nature of the [psychosocial] stressor.”  Congress is looking into that one.

One has to wonder at the shabby treatment service members continue to receive at the hands of the institutions designated to serve them.  Saving money by denying benefits to those who need and deserve them constitutes unconscionable behavior, not unexpected from narcissistic or antisocial personality types but from the United States military?

 

News Item: Emotions

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August 16th, 2010

Exercise Cools Rage Reactions

In a recent Sunday Times Magazine article, the phys ed writer Gretchen Reynolds described a recent study that found that for young men with “high trait anger,” which she translated as having “a very short fuse” and being “habitually touchy,” exercise took the edge off their intense emotions.

Extrapolating from studies that demonstrated a link between low levels of serotonin and aggression in animals, and mood disorders in humans, the researchers hypothesized that because the neurotransmitter serotonin increases with exercise, it probably plays a role in the modulation of anger.

Individuals with traumatic histories often react defensively with rage when triggered, usually by situations that their brains associate with previous hurts.  In addition, the development of a healthy serotonin regulatory system in the brain can be negatively impacted by early trauma, leaving the adult without the full benefit of a neurotransmitter that has been shown to calm nerves.

It comes as good news then that exercise has the potential to help trauma survivors deal effectively with their reactivity.  The freedom experienced once runaway emotions come under control opens up possibilities for exploring the stories embedded in them, one more reason to push away from that computer or get off the couch and take a brisk walk.

 

Art Review: Charles Burchfield

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August 11th, 2010


Heat Waves in a Swamp
on a Steamy NYC Day

Charles Burchfield, An April Mood, 1946–55. Watercolor and charcoal on joined paper, 40 x 54 in. (101.6 x 137.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art. Purchase, with partial funds from Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman.

With temperatures outside nearing 100°F and humidity to match, the chilly galleries of the Whitney Museum of American Art seemed like the perfect place to spend the afternoon. Even more inviting were the rooms filled with the doodles, drawings, designs and watercolor paintings by the master craftsman Charles Burchfield.

Exiting the stairwell (or elevator) into the introductory gallery, one was greeted by Autumnal Fantasy, a large watercolor (39″ x 54″) completed in 1916 and augmented in 1944. In this landscape, the warm yellows and oranges of the leaves falling on the water and carpeting the ground contrast with the cool blacks and blues of the tree trunks, water, and the two white-breasted nuthatches that frame the scene. Light from an almost-white sun touches everything in the picture. Reverberating boomerang-like black shapes picture the songs of birds, both seen and hidden.

Odd, though, that this first painting was not the eponymous Heat Waves in a Swamp. In the catalog (p. 9) Robert Gober, an artist in his own right and curator of the show, explains that he chose the title because he felt it best represented Burchfield’s interest in nature and particular fondness for swamps. The watercolor, known only by its listing in several earlier catalogs, remains lost, but the many other, chronologically arranged, pictures offered plenty of insight into Burchfield’s process.

Lest anyone misunderstand this artist’s intentions, Charles Ephraim Burchfield left behind 72 volumes of journals (some of which were displayed in a vitrine in the last room of the show), starting at age 16 and continuing until his death in 1967. Containing thoughts about all aspects of his life and work, they provide unusual access to his interior life.

Born in 1893 in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, Burchfield had this to say about his childhood: “Father died when I was four and a half years old, leaving the family destitute. Mother moved with her ‘brood’ (four boys and two girls–I was the fifth child) to Salem, Ohio, her home-town…” (p. 21) As a left-handed child, living in poverty in a single-parent home, the boy overcame great hardship to grow into the mature artist he eventually became.

Burchfield encapsulated his recollections of that time in the watercolor-and-graphite Childhood’s Garden, dated August 22, 1917, for which a preparatory conté crayon drawing exists (Nostalgia) from the same year (p. 28, 29). In the painting, a green figure, suggestive of both phantom and tree, occupies the space beneath an angled roof that in the drawing contains a haloed woman in a doorway, silhouetted against a dark interior. In each image, a lush garden blooming with flowers threatens to swamp the house; in the painting, menacing trees press in against it. Burchfield described the artwork as “based on childhood memories of our garden at Salem, O.” (p. 28)

Among the many flowers in that garden, six stand out for their sad faces, suggesting the unhappiness of fatherless children. One, probably representing Burchfield, is grouped not with his five siblings but with an orange flower, perhaps their mother. Isolated beyond a growth of yellow and white vegetation, another orange flower hints at the impossibility of reunion with their father, as does the ghostlike phantom/tree that blocks retreat into the home.

The death of Burchfield’s father and the space left empty by it reappears in various forms throughout much of the artist’s work. Images of frightening weather depicted in several 1918 works like The Night Wind, The East Wind and Rainy Night capture the terrors he experienced as a child. In another watercolor of that year, White Violets and Abandoned Coal Mine, the entrance to a mine occupies the center of the painting while in the foreground grow three white violets in various stages of bloom. The choice of a flower at times associated with death and resurrection, coupled with the big black hole of the abandoned mine, leads the viewer directly into the depths of Burchfield’s unconscious.

Along similar lines, in a collection he called Conventions for Abstract Thoughts (not to be confused with the art form of the same name, he cautioned), the 22-year-old artist devised an iconography of dark moods that included: “Fear, Morbidness (Evil), Melancholy/Meditation/Memory of pleasant things that are gone forever, Dangerous Brooding, Imbecility (opposite), Fascination of evil, Insanity, Aimless Abstraction (Hypnotic Intensity) and (untitled) Fear 1″ (p. 22), most of which were on display. A great addition would have been a crib sheet containing images of all of them to help viewers decipher Burchfield’s visual code.

Wandering from one room to another at the Whitney, one could appreciate the ebb and flow of Burchfield’s creative process. After what he called his “golden year” of 1917, he did a stint in the Army where he ended up creating camouflage designs, then moved to Buffalo where he worked at a wallpaper company. Samples of both kinds of design were on display although an entire gallery papered in orange and yellow sunflowers amid blue and yellow leaves against a grey-green tangle of stems distracted from the other artworks hanging there and produced reflections on their glass.

Charles Burchfield, Black Iron, 1935. Watercolor on paper, 281∕8 x 40 in. (71.1 x 101.6 cm). Private collection.

Continuing to pursue his own art even as he worked to support his wife and five children, Burchfield eventually attracted gallery representation and quit his day job. During the years that followed, he painted realistic watercolors of trains, bridges, industrial scenes, townscapes, and woods and gardens, work that sold well and brought him widening acclaim.

When he turned 50, Burchfield began to yearn for the freedom he felt in his 20s when he produced his most daring work. Revisiting, quite literally, some of those earlier pieces, he carefully attached paper to accommodate expansions on the original ideas. The preparatory sketches included in the exhibit, as well as the paintings themselves, demonstrate the artist’s uncanny ability to tap into the adolescent energy still active in one’s 20s, when the brain has not yet finished the work it began in its teens.

Charles Burchfield, Dawn of Spring, ca. 1960s. Watercolor, charcoal, and white chalk on joined paper mounted on board, 52 x 591∕2 in. (132.1 x 135.3 cm). DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Able to pick up where he had left off in his youth, Burchfield spent the rest of his life producing ever more fanciful celebrations of nature. The last gallery of the show contained an array of large, colorful watercolors, most of which incorporated earlier works. More than a few viewers could be found playing the game of find the joins of the add-ons.

One stunning transformation occurs in Song of the Telegraph (1917-52). To a considerably smaller painting of telegraph poles receding into the distance, Burchfield affixed paper on all sides. At the base, a new foreground of greenery now supports another vibrating pole on the right and the appearance on the left of a corralled stand of trees haunted by dark, ghostlike figures in front of which, perched on a prominent fencepost, sings an eastern bluebird surrounded by a halo of yellow and white light. The broader expanse of sky hosts a flock of unidentifiable winged black creatures heading left, into the past, backed by a huge grey-winged cloud shape, also facing in that direction, in contrast to the blue and orange bird that faces right, toward the future.

Charles Burchfield, Glory of Spring (Radiant Spring), 1950. Watercolor on paper, 401∕8 x 293∕4 in. (101.6 x 73.7 cm). Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, 1959.

Although dark patches still appear in Burchfield’s late paintings, as evident in the rain-drenched Night of the Equinox (1917-55), that he found his way to the bright and colorful creations of his last decades speaks to the power of art and nature as transformative forces in one person’s life. The watercolors he left behind resonate with the exuberance one imagines he felt when setting up his image-making gear in his beloved swamps, surrounded by the sounds of birds and other calls of nature.

Heat Waves in a Swamp:
The Paintings of Charles Burchfield

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue (at 75th Street)
New York, NY 10021
(212) 570-3600

All page numbers referenced are from the catalog:
Heat Waves in a Swamp:
The Paintings of Charles Burchfield

Cynthia Burlingham and Robert Gober, editors

 

News Item: Emotions

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August 9th, 2010

Frown Muscle Needed for
Recognizing Negative Emotions

Better think twice before getting that shot of Botox between the brows.

Putting on an emotional face activates areas of the brain responsible for the subjective experience of that feeling.  Without that link, scientists have discovered, recognizing related emotions in others becomes more difficult and creates a disadvantage in social situations.

In research described in Science News, women who had received Botox injections took longer to read sentences describing angry or sad situations than they did for descriptions of happy situations.  Because the shots paralyze frown muscles, researchers hypothesize that they gradually erode the connection between those muscles and the neural networks involved in coordinating negative emotions.

Not sure about the validity of these findings?  Break into an authentic grin and notice how that brightens your mood.  Turn down the corners of your mouth and see what happens.  Then reflect on what life would be like without the ability to experience anger.

 

Theater Review: Kim Katzberg’s Penetrating the Space

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August 6th, 2010

Under Construction at Dixon Place

Best not to expect a finished product when signing up to see a performance at Dixon Place, a downtown venue catering to artists of all persuasions looking to test drive their latest creative endeavors in front of a live audience.  Founded in 1986, Dixon Place exists to provide a space for writers and performers whose work might not be otherwise accessible because of its cutting-edge, provocative nature.

To get to the staging area after entering the venue from the street, one has to first walk through Dixon Place’s brilliant fundraising strategy, the bar, where a pre-theater crowd gathers and chats.  Thanks to alcohol’s great disinhibiting properties, a well-lubricated audience provides the additional benefit of being more receptive to the unconventional fare about to be offered up.  How else to account for the laughter that greeted Kim Katzberg’s highly unsettling attempt to communicate her personal struggle to make sense of her internal world?

Part of Dixon Place’s 19th Annual HOT! Festival, Penetrating the Space is described in the program as “a one-woman show in which a kooky bisexual performance artist and incest survivor mistakenly believes that theatricalizing her psychological fragmentation and integration in front of an audience will lead to mainstream acceptance in the acting industry and a big-time agent.”  On her website, Katzberg owns its autobiographical nature: “The show is inspired by my relationship with my Dad and with men in general.”

Eventually the doors open and the audience ambles in to fill the three rows of seats, the first of which sits on the floor of the performance area.  As loud music plays in advance of the show, stage lighting reveals a set comprised of a screen on which hangs a long black wig; a box of organic buttermilk pancake mix under a double spotlight; a black garment laid out on the floor; and a chair surrounded by and topped with assorted props including an ancient combination phone and answering machine, a phallic-shaped aluminum thermos, a box of Kashi cereal and a “Supersize Stickermania Sticker Album.”

At show time, the music stops and a character soon to be identified as Terry saunters on, carrying her music player.  Dressed in a low-cut, leopard-patterned jumpsuit, she dances erotically to the music and slurs her words as she begins to talk about herself. When the phone rings, she answers it “suicide prevention hotline.”

More characters will follow, introduced in the next scene by a film showing the aspiring writer-actor, Jinny, entering Dixon Place in search of an appropriate space for her work in progress.  She steps out of the film and struts onto the stage wearing a blue jumpsuit and pink patten-leather heels, commenting on the theater in an exaggerated, affected tone of seriousness.  In describing the content of her script, she shares that three orifices in her body have pockets where lives a secret, that her daddy touched her there.

Breaking out of role, Jinny confides to the audience, “I’m totally freaking out, doing this,” but bravely continues on as the wanton Purple-Horse Girl, riding her pony-sized stuffed horse, the aspiring model/actor Wolf Girl, whose fanged mask impairs her speech, and the part-time stripper and counselor Terry, whose suicide prevention advice to a gray-mustached man seen in several predicaments on film is “just don’t do it.”

In her hypersexualized roles, Katzberg presents the eroticized child grown up, eager to pleasure men/daddy, though always with an undercurrent of rage, most evident in Terry’s nonchalant responses to the guy trying to off himself.  As Jinny on film, the writer-actor complains to Terry by phone about being triggered by Richard, the only person who attended her one-woman show, describing how in response to him, she hovered above her body and was cutting herself.  “Because you work professionally with men,” she implores her friend, “tell me how to deal with this dissociation.”

The audience experiences these effects of living with incest in much the same fragmented way survivors do—without the benefit of integration.  The device of a play about creating and staging a performance invites the audience to accompany the writer-actor along this obstacle-encumbered journey.  Though Katzberg shares some of her intentions and trepidations, her relationship to her characters remains vague, perhaps imitating life more than she realizes.

The raw material of this work in progress has great potential to be shaped into a cohesive story of one woman’s attempts to wrest meaning from trauma by communicating the more uncomfortable truths about how incest affects children and the adults they become.  One hopes as Katzberg comes to grips with her own family history that she’ll achieve more control over the characters in Penetrating the Space and give the world the powerful performance it can be.

The 19th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002
(212)219-0736

 

Art Exhibit: Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club

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August 1st, 2010

Toy Soldier Painting Wins
Medal of Honor for Oil/Acrylic
at the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club’s
114th Annual Open Juried Exhibition
at the National Arts Club

The Toy  Soldier painting has won the Medal of Honor for Oil/Acrylic at the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club’s 114th Annual Open Juried Exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York City.  It can be seen now through October 29, 2010, Monday through Friday, 12N- 6pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 1-6pm.  (Call 212-475-3424 before visiting because the galleries sometimes close for National Arts Club functions.)

 

News Commentary: Blaming the Child Victim

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July 30th, 2010

Another Model Parent
Murders Her Children and Herself

When firefighters showed up to tackle the blaze at the apartment building in Staten Island, they discovered five victims: a two-year-old boy barely alive who would die later in the hospital; two girls, ten and seven, and a 14-year-old boy, all with their throats slashed; and their 30-year-old mother, also dead.  The teenager, CJ, had a straight razor under his arm.  Investigators quickly determined the fire was deliberately set.  (New York Times)

Because of his recent history of fire setting and an assault on his school principal, CJ was immediately deemed the murderer.  Much rumination followed about what might drive a youngster to commit familicide and those who knew the family were quick to share their observations about what a close-knit group they were, how Leisa Jones, their single mother, struggled to provide financially for her children, how in their home she insisted on proper manners and behavior.  (New York Times)

Only after the tragedy did some start to wonder about the pressures on young CJ to be the man of the house.  Those aware of the family’s circumstances shared observations of how he always took care of his younger siblings and did the things his mother needed him to do.

Where were they before when his behavior signaled the existence of serious problems, at least within himself but probably also inside the family?  A child who assaults a principal and sets fires clearly suffers from distress of some kind.  Did anyone try to find out what was troubling him?

And what sense did it make that he could set a blaze without slitting his mother’s throat, too?  Surely the screams of the children would wake her.  The youngest child was undoubtedly spared because he could do nothing to stop the perpetrator unlike the older children who could.  How often does someone, especially a teenager, commit suicide by slashing his/her own throat?  And how could the blade end up under his arm?

Far easier to blame the troubled child who acts out his/her distress than to contemplate the still unimaginable possibility that parents kill their children even though there are ample statistics testifying to that fact.  “In 2007, one or both parents were responsible for 69.9 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities” and “more than one-quarter (27.1 percent) of these fatalities were perpetrated by the mother acting alone.”  (Administration for Children and Families)  Still everyone remains shocked when these murders happen in their neighborhoods.

It’s time that adults take notice of disturbing behaviors in the children they encounter and make the effort to find out what’s wrong, to intervene before tragedy strikes again and leaves them scratching their heads and trying to figure out how it could possibly have happened.

 

Book Review: Addiction & Art

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July 26th, 2010

Art Serves Science:
Understanding Addiction
Through the Eyes of Artists Touched by It

In an age where attention spans have shrunk to mere seconds, addiction professionals face competition for air time just like everyone else with a message.  How can they ever hope to effectively communicate the devastating toll alcoholism and drug addiction takes on individuals and the people who know and love them, a subject that usually elicits denial?

One organization, Innovators Combating Substance Abuse (affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) decided to use the visceral power of images to convey what words often fail to do.  For five years they sponsored juried competitions that invited artists to share their creative responses to addiction and held exhibitions of the selected pieces.

Winners of the latest competition participated first in 2008 by having their art displayed at the offices of SAMHSA (Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration) in Rockville, Maryland, and then in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where it was viewed by  professionals attending the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.

Later, with grant support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Patricia B. Santora (then at The John Hopkins School of Medicine) and her co-editors gathered together a selection of artwork along with artists’ statements, combined them with introductory text and an appendix describing how these competitions can be replicated on a local level, and produced a unique book, Addiction and Art.

Hoping to “appeal to a diverse audience: the general public, individuals in recovery, health professionals working within and outside of addiction medicine, young people, community leaders, and policymakers” (p. xiii), the editors were forced to confront the problem of whether or not to include art that could offend or even trigger some viewers.  In the end, they opted for the undiluted truth of the tragedy of addiction, hoping that it would provide insights for those struggling with their recoveries.

Browsing through the pages, one discovers that food and tobacco have not been left out.  In Prison, a digital photograph by Brain Kelly, four filtered cigarettes stand in for jail cell bars with the prisoner’s two hands grasping the middle two.  Kelly explains: “The fear and agony that drive an addiction are prisons that only bring pain and desperation.” (p. 34)

Joseph Barbaccia’s sculpture, Obesity, made with a food grater lying on its side, oozing flesh-like clay from the holes on top and covered at the bottom with a hairy, pot belly “…attempts to communicate the imbalance and destructiveness of a typical eating disorder.”  The artist goes on to describe his intention to create “…an image that unsettles the mind and offers a different perspective.” (p. 56)

Especially poignant, several of the images depict loved ones lost to addiction.  Callyn Beals submitted a self-portrait of her brother, the photograph Matthew, who died at age 25 from methamphetamine and AIDS. (p. 61)  And Julia Carpenter contributed two of a series of ten portraits of her sister, Goodbye, Amy Johnson (1980-2005) and Autopsy, Amy Johnson (1980-2005) that she had painted to “document the persistence of my grief over her premature death.” (p. 63, 65)

Anyone interested in experiencing visually the impact of addiction won’t find a better compilation than this book.  Those who work with addicts would be well served to add this to their library and to order enough copies to share with as many people as possible.  Addiction and Art, with its critically important subject, belongs on everyone’s bookshelves and deserves to become a bestseller.

Addiction and Art
Patricia B. Santora, Margaret L. Dowell and Jack E. Henningfield, editors.
Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

(Special discounts for bulk orders: (410)516-6936 or specialsales@press.jhu.edu)
Available at Amazon.com (book and digital)