The study's author, psychologist Elizabeth Harvey, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, used a longitudinal design to examine the long-term effects of early parental employment - employment during the child's first three years of life -- on the functioning of the child.

     Dr. Harvey examined four employment variables: Whether the mother worked during the first three years of the child's life, how soon a mother returned to work after childbirth, how much she worked (hours per week) during the first three years of her child's life, and the discontinuity of employment (if there were any periods of unemployment during the same time frame). She compared these variables with five child outcome measures: compliance, behavior problems, cognitive development, self-esteem and academic achievement.

     Dr. Harvey found that children whose mothers worked during the first three years of their lives were not significantly different from children whose mothers did not work during that time frame. Among mothers who worked during the first three years of their child's life, the only significant effect of the timing of their return to work and the discontinuity of the employment was on compliance in three and four year olds. Three and four year olds whose mothers returned to work later showed slightly higher compliance than the same age group whose mothers returned to work sooner, but these differences were small and disappeared by the time the children were five to six years of age.

     Children whose mothers worked long hours were found to have slightly lower scores on tests, which measures children's vocabulary and individual student achievement, but again these differences were small and faded over time.

     Effects of fathers' employment status and working hours were also studied. No significant effects of fathers' employment hours on children's development were found.

     This study follows six previous studies based on NLSY data, some of which found negative effects of maternal employment. The author submits that the new study was based on data collected over a longer period of time and with a larger, more representative survey sample. The author further notes, however, that the quality of daycare was not part of this study and should be looked at in additional research on the effects of parental employment on young children.

     A national system for routinely evaluating psychiatric disorders in juvenile offenders was proposed this week by Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), who introduced legislation for the establishment and funding of such a program.

     Wellstone's proposed Mental Health Juvenile Justice Act calls for training of juvenile justice personnel, diversion and treatment of youths with serious mental disorders and a more "streamlined, responsive system for children."

     "It is in our interest as a society to identify and treat these children now or we will pay the price later," said the senator in a statement. "If appropriate mental health care is not provided, our country will pay a higher price in repeated incarcerations, high prison costs and broken lives."

     The study released this week, from a team of researchers headed by Dr. Deborah Shelton of the University of Maryland, shows that 57% of incarcerated youth have a history of mental illness, 83% have used drugs or alcohol, 19% have suicidal thoughts, 53% have a diagnosable mental disorder, 58% have anxiety symptoms, and 40% have "disruptive behavioral disorders."

     Based in this evidence, Maryland legislators Kenneth Montague (D-Baltimore) and Leo E. Green (D-Prince George's County) have submitted legislation in their state that would require mental health and drug abuse screening of juvenile offenders.

     Maryland has "no systematic procedures in place for screening detained children for mental health disorders," the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition said in a prepared statement.

            JASPER, Texas (AP) -- A white man convicted of dragging a black man to death will probably cling to his racist beliefs and could lash out violently again, a psychiatrist today told the jury that will decide whether the defendant should live or die.
 
            Other prosecution witnesses said John William King, the white supremacist convicted Tuesday in the slaying of James Byrd Jr. last June, acted up in jail by threatening to assault a police investigator and smashing a TV set.

            A defense expert, however, said a life sentence would be appropriate for the 24-year-old former laborer.  Dr. Walter Quijano, a former chief psychologist for the Texas prison system now in private practice, said he based that conclusion on King's lack of drug use and the fact he used no weapons during previous crimes.

            In Texas, a person serving a life sentence cannot become eligible for parole for at least 40 years.

            "The probability of people at age 64 committing violence is very low," Quijano said.

            A bailiff said King fell asleep during Quijano's testimony. King was sitting at the defense table, his head in his hand, when he apparently drifted off for a few minutes.

            Dr. Edward Gripon, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution after reviewing King's writings and photographs of his racist tattoos, said he doubts King will shake his beliefs.

            "Anyone who has white supremacist or any other kind of racist feelings, if they are heavily invested in that kind of ideology, it's not going to just go away," Gripon said.

            The psychiatrist also said, "I feel he would pose a continued threat for future acts of violence."

            The jury will probably be given the case on Thursday.

            Byrd, 49, died June 7 when he was pulled nearly three miles behind a pickup truck, chained by his ankles.

            Two other men, Shawn Berry, 24, and Lawrence Brewer, 31, are awaiting trial in the slaying.

    The amygdala -- a part of the brain that plays a role in emotion -- "is important in modulating memory for events according to their emotional importance, regardless of whether the nature of the emotion is pleasant or aversive," conclude Dr. Stephen Hamann and colleagues at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Their findings are published in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience.

    The authors presented 10 healthy male volunteers with a series of pictures. Some of the images were meant to evoke pleasant or unpleasant responses (for example, pictures with sexual or gastronomic appeal, or pictures depicting mutilated bodies or frightening animals). Other pictures were 'neutral' (plants, rooms). Others were 'interesting' but were thought to have little or no emotional impact (a picture of a chrome rhinoceros, an exotic festival).

    As each man viewed each picture, the researchers conducted positron emission tomography (PET) scans of brain activity.

    As expected, the most emotionally potent scenes elicited the highest levels of amygdala activity.

    Four weeks later, the men were quizzed as to their memory of the various pictures. The authors report that "long-term... recognition memory was substantially enhanced for the pleasant, aversive, and interesting pictures relative to the neutral pictures." They note that amygdala activity and memory retention was equally strong for both pleasant and unpleasant images.

    The amygdala is thought to enhance memory through its interaction with a prime memory center, a part of the brain called the hippocampus. PET scans conducted during the study showed that emotionally loaded images also elicited high levels of activity in the hippocampus.

    The Atlanta team speculate that the emotion-memory connection may have evolutionary roots. Pleasurable images connected with activities such as sex or food consumption, or frightening images linked with violence or danger "are generally more important than neutral stimuli for reproductive success," the authors point out.

    More "selective" strategies can be focused on high-risk (usually urban) communities. Interventions including Head Start, gun-free zones around schools, job training programs aimed at high-risk youth, and 'midnight basketball' leagues have all produced youth with "better coping skills, better conflict resolution and impulse control, and less alcohol abuse," the Committee experts say.

    Finally, "indicated" programs -- efforts aimed at teens thought to be at especially high risk for violent behavior -- may also help to curb violent behavior. The researchers cite the 'Boston miracle,' where a combination of well-funded efforts reduced the number of teens killed by guns to zero for a period of over 2 years. The Boston strategy included, among other things, "the provision of more than 100 part-time teenage counselors, the development of a basketball league limited to gang members, and the coordination of city-funded community centers and local churches," the study authors explain.
 
    Other efforts have been less successful. "Programs such as 'Boot Camp' have intuitive (public) appeal," the researchers say, but have not proven useful in reducing rates of teen violence over the long-term.

    In a related editorial, Drs. Hans Steiner of Stanford University in Stanford, California, and Dr. Lawrence Stone of the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio, believe more and better interventions are needed "to mitigate the human suffering of perpetrators and victims alike." But they believe the funding and political will for these efforts may be lacking in an era more concerned with punishment than prevention "where we seek to prosecute children as adults and seek the death penalty for 10-year-olds."

     Convicted sex offenders who are 40 or older, married or divorced and earn at least $11 an hour are most likely to complete halfway house treatment programs, new research suggests.

     Also, offenders who finish such programs are more likely to be better adjusted, take more responsibility for their actions and use fewer justifications for their crimes than those who don't finish the treatment, research reveals.

     The findings are significant because other studies have indicated that sex offenders who drop out of or fail to engage in their treatment have a higher risk of recidivism than those who successfully complete treatment, says lead investigator Don Strassberg, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Utah. He says such research may eventually help courts and other officials who make decisions about sex offenders identify those most likely to benefit from the treatment, or those most likely to drop out of treatment.

     The research team followed 121 men participating in a one-year treatment program at a halfway house for sex offenders in the Salt Lake City area. Most of the offenders had served time for incest or child-molestation crimes. The treatment included group and individual counseling and classes on managing anger and stress.

     The researchers developed their profile of the person most likely to complete the program by looking separately at such variables as age, marital status and income. Three-quarters of the men age 40 to 49 completed treatment, compared with about 14 percent of the offenders age 20 to 24, 17 percent of those age 26 to 30 and 61 percent of those age 31 to 39. About 75 percent of the married or divorced participants completed the program, compared with 45 percent of the single men. And nearly 70 percent of the men who earned $11 or more an hour finished compared with 26 percent of unemployed participants. The older participants may have been more committed to completing the program than the younger men because they naturally are less impulsive and tend to have responsibilities, such as a good job or a relationship, that encourage them to avoid a return to jail, Strassberg surmises.

Diagnosing head trauma from impacts or shaking can be difficult in the absence of a history of child abuse. Head trauma is also easy to miss if no obvious symptoms are present. But physicians must consider that such injuries may be inflicted on infants and young children who present non-specific signs of abuse, say the study authors.

"In some case, the parents knew that someone had hurt the baby and they didn't tell the doctors," said Carole Jenny, M.D., the study leader and professor of pediatrics in the Brown University School of Medicine. "In other cases, parents didn't have a clue. Abuse may have come at the hands of a babysitter, grandparent or boyfriend. We need to do a better job. Let's be more aware of this diagnosis."

The study showed that 54 (31.2 percent) of 173 children with abusive head trauma, such as hemorrhaging, fractures and brain contusions, had been seen by physicians after suffering the injuries but that the diagnosis was not recognized. For these 54 children, the average time to the correct diagnosis was about seven days. All of the children in the study were under the age of three.

Abusive head trauma was more likely to be unrecognized in very young white children from two-parent families and in children without respiratory problems or seizures.

"If these people walk in and physicians don't think that abuse occurred, then there may be subtle biases in terms of decision-making by physicians," said Jenny, who also heads ChildSafe-The Child Protection Program at Hasbro Children's Hospital.

In seven of the 54 children with unrecognized abusive head trauma, the misreading of radiological studies, such as CT scans and skeletal or bone X-rays, contributed to a delay in diagnosis. Jenny suggests that pediatric radiologists be the ones who read and interpret images of infants and children. "Pediatric radiology is a specialty unto its own," she said. "It is not the same thing as reading an image of an adult."

Fifteen (27.8 percent) of the 54 children with unrecognized abusive head trauma were reinjured after the missed diagnosis. Twenty-two (40.7 percent) experienced medical complications related to the missed diagnosis. Twenty (37 percent) had other signs of injuries to their face or scalp such as bruises. Four of five deaths in the group might have been prevented by earlier recognition of abuse, said the study authors.

Physicians must be more attentive to general signs of abuse such as scrapes and scratches, Jenny said. She suggested that doctors perform more mindful exams of young children, particularly if their faces are bruised. "Retinal hemorrhaging, for example, is a sign of abuse, and should be looked for as part of a careful exam," Jenny said.

Symptoms of head injuries in infants, such as irritability, vomiting or low-grade fever, are also indicators of other conditions. Because there is no complex of neuro-phenomena to alert a physician to abusive head trauma in infants, the authors call for more research on ways to screen for head injuries in infants and children.

One avenue of research would be to develop and test serum markers to tell if a young child has been injured through shaking or impact, Jenny said.

  The family of the late actor Phil Hartman plans to sue the maker of an antidepressant drug, saying Hartman's wife was affected by the drug when she killed her husband, the New York Daily News reported Feb. 17.

Brynn Hartman shot and killed her husband and then killed herself on May 28, 1998. An attorney for the Hartman family said Mrs. Hartman was taking Zoloft, an antidepressant which they claim played a role in the murder - suicide.

An autopsy report found that Mrs. Hartman had alcohol, cocaine and Zoloft in her system. Attorney Andrew Vicary will have to prove that the Zoloft alone triggered the murderous rage.

Vicary said that Brynn Hartman had never taken the antidepressant before. "What else was different?" She was
taking cocaine before. She had taken it in the past. She had taken alcohol before. She had never done this kind
of thing of turning violent before. So what was different in this instance?" said Vicary.

Pfizer, which makes the drug, said it is aware of "no substantiated evidence of a causal relationship between this
medicine and violent behavior."

"The injuries she inflicted on these children, especially the daughter, were horrendous,'' said Jim Borghesani, spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II. ``We simply feel it was in the interest of
justice that she pay a higher price for her conduct.''  Calixte, who had cared for handicapped residents of the state's Fernald Center before her arrest last year, yesterday admitted using electrical cords, brushes and belts to discipline her kids. She said when she became angry at her daughter, whom Joseph said she treated like a`slave,'' she would force her to lie on a leather sofa,  where she would thrash her. The whippings left lash marks on the young girl, Joseph said, and deep tears in the upholstery.

Calixte practiced voodoo, authorities said. Police found an altar in her apartment, authorities said. The refrigerator contained no food, just curious packages in the freezer marked with what appeared to be names ofpeople she'd cursed, authorities said.  And she allegedly forced her children to watch as she performed ritual sacrifices of chickens, authorities said.

Her lawyer, Richard Doyle, said probation may seem too light a punishment for the crime, but it was actually`fair and just.  "It was the mental illness working,'' he said, adding that her personality has changed since she started taking medication.  "I know it may be hard for people to believe this, but she loves her children and misses them very much.''

But the girl said she's happier on her own. ``I am doing fine now,'' she told her mother in court. ``My brothers are doing great. You always told me that I couldn't go through life without you, but I have proved you and myself that I can.''

FORMER FBI PROFILER ENTERS ANTI-ABORTION CASE!  Gregg McCrary in an interview with CNN has provided a profile of the killer behind the anti-abortion slayings ...  here is the relevant information in simplest form:

• The most recent killing was likely planned far in advance
• Surveillance of future potential targets may already be in the works
• The killer is cowardly, and will "go to great lengths to avoid apprehension"
• The offender is likely employed
• He may have a family & a relatively typical lifestyle
• Those who know the offender will know of his "passion about the abortion movement"
• It is possible that a support person or subordinate is involved
• There is a high possibility of copy cats
• Proactive Investigation: The person has likely been involved with mainstream anti-abortionists.  He may have "come and gone" these groups because he saw them as "too tame" or he may have been avoided to to being "too radical or too outspoken" ...  Anti-Abortion groups may be able to help identify possible suspects.