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From iTWire Australia: Study finds most celebrity stalkers are mentally ill

From Craegmore News: Celebrity stalkers are mentally Ill.

From The Sun: Royal stalkers are mentally Ill.

From the APA Headlines: Celebrity stalkers may have much greater incidence of serious psychotic illness

A study suggests celebrity stalkers are more mentally ill?
Wow! Thanks for the newsflash.
Let’s dig a bit deeper:

Here’s a snippet from the APA:

New Scientist (10/8, Nowak) reports that the results of a study presented at a forensic science meeting in Australia suggests that, "rather than being hapless eccentrics, the majority of stalkers suffer from serious psychotic illnesses." Study leader Paul Mullen, D.Sc., a forensic psychiatrist at Monash University and the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health," said, "We didn't expect such high rates of psychosis. It was very surprising to us." For the study, researchers "scrutinized over 20,000 incidences of stalking members of the [British] royal family, such as repeated and threatening letter writing, and repeated attempted approaches and attacks, from 1988 to 2003. The data was contained in files on 8000 people kept by the Metropolitan Police." After culling the files, researchers "examined in detail the files of 250 of the remaining 5000 people judged to be true stalkers. About 80 percent had a serious psychotic illness, including schizophrenia, delusions, and hallucinations, they found." Notably, this "finding contrasts sharply with people who stalk non-famous people," of which only "a fifth...have some sort of serious or severe psychotic disorder." _________________________________________________________________________________

Interesting. The newsworthy part here is that there is a greater rate of comorbid serious mental illness in this group of celebrity stalkers, than what has shown in other studies of non-celebrity stalkers. As to the science, I do wonder if there was a bias in the definition of stalking during the screening process (weeding 8000 people down to 5000). Also, this is a retrospective study (obviously, imagine recruiting for a double blind study!) and is not given an in-study comparator. Also, is this a trend only specific to the royal family? Is there a greater level of impairment if one is hung up over Prince Charles than Eva Longoria?

That all being said, there does seem to be a logic to the trend given that it would seem more “delusional” to develop a fixation with a person one has never met. It would be interesting to see what percentage of those delusional symptoms is persecutory or grandiose. Persecutory delusions are often seen in paranoid schizophrenia, and may involve famous people. For example one might believe that George Bush is bugging his telephone and wants to send him to Guantanamo. (Um, ok, make that Martin Sheen is bugging his phone..) Likewise, it would be consistent with grandiose delusions (as often seen in bipolar disorder) to develop a sense that a famous person is one’s soul mate (as I know that Norah Jones is for me).

Uma Thurman, David Letterman, Mel Gibson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sheryl Crow, Olivia Newton-John, Sandra Day O’Connor (by the same stalker as Olivia Newton John!), Brittney Spears, Monica Seles, and Michael Douglas, are just a sampling of those in the news who have had celebrity stalkers. The effect can be quite devastating on the individual and their family. Many stalkers have tried to reach celebrities by going to the homes of the celebrity’s parents.

The challenge is in figuring out the severity of the stalkers potential for harm. Is a stalker a potential Mark David Chapman (stalker and eventual murderer of John Lennon)? Or is he a laughable (perhaps) William Lepeska, who swam naked across Biscayne Bay to woo Anna Kournakova, who ended up swimming to the wrong house, and getting an express trip to the psych ward?

The mere presence of “serious mental illness” alone though does not give one a sufficient predictor of dangerousness. Most studies have shown consistently that persons with serious mental illness (usually defined as chronic schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, chronic psychotic depression, or schizoaffective disorder) are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.

The movies also portray the dualism of the stalker character. In “The King of Comedy” Sandra Bernhard plays a hapless comedic (albeit darkly so) stalker to Jerry Lewis’ talk show character. Ironically, Jerry Lewis had a stalker once jailed after the stalker showed up at his house with a gun. Wesley Snipes in “The Fan” is an all business stalker--angry, delusional, and on a mission. Kind of the middle ground of the stalker continuum. “Cape Fear” (Mitchum-1962 and DeNiro-1991) has a perfect sociopathic stalker. (Notice three DeNiro movies so far?) BTW, Kathy Bates in Misery is still my favorite, and scariest, on-screen stalker.

For a good book on stalking, and how one (especially young ladies) should respond to stalking, I’d suggest Gavin De Becker’s “The Gift of Fear.”

Stalking stories? Do share. Also, anyone have Norah Jones' phone number? :)

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Wow! The blog’s been silent a couple of weeks, and it only seemed like a few days. Same thing happened this summer, which apparently lasted only 4 weeks for me. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” the adage goes. Apparently it also moves rapidly when quite busy. But, that got me thinking on some random musings about time; so I took some time to get them down:

The Aborigines of Australia do not always have a linear concept of time. Mental health professionals note occasional difficulty with psychological assessments due to this pattern. Aboriginal people do not see events necessarily in past, present, or future sense, but rather in a “time-circle” on the basis of importance to themselves and their community. To put it in our perspective, September 11^th 2001 would be closer to our “time-circle” than, say, Martha Stewart going to jail.

Those that focus on the present to the exclusion of a stressful past have lower scores on depression scales. A study done by Morton Beiser on Southwest Asia Refugees hypothesizes that a “Nostalgic” time orientation incorporates the actual stressful memory into the sense of time, and thus correlates with a greater depression symptoms. Dr. Herbert Rappaport at Temple U. notes that emotional maturity comes when one is able to project well into the past and the future in a balanced way had the strongest self acceptance.

Acute stressors, such as car accidents, tend to slow the perception of time; while longer stressors, such as being held hostage for days, tend to have a more compressed perception of time. I wonder if the brain attempts to keep the perception of time accurate during stressors or anticipated stressors. Perhaps this is why we whistle when we are nervous?

Altered time perceptions are described frequently in altered neurochemical states. Depression, Anxiety and Substance abuse are all identified with a potential for “remembered time” perception changes. Multiple studies have identified cannabinoid, serotonin, dopamine, and opiate receptor systems that are associated with altering time consciousness.

Attention Deficit Disorder and Parkinson’s disease are also linked to time perception changes. These latter two disease states appear to have a direct difficulty with “perceptual time” or “clock time,” the ability to estimate or compare duration of time. The most recent neuroimaging suggests that the basal ganglia and dopamine, acting upon the parietal lobes are the role players for this sense of time.

“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.”
-Albert Einstein

Mickey OCD's

FOND DU LAC, Wis. - A 54-year-old man says his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to eat 23,000 Big Macs in 36 years. Fifty-four-year-old Don Gorske says he hit the milestone last month, continuing a pleasurable obsession that began May 17, 1972 when he got his first car.

Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box. He says he was always fascinated with numbers, and watching McDonald's track its number of customers motivated him to track his own consumption.

The only day he skipped a Big Mac was the day his mother died, to respect her request.

The correctional-institution employee says he doesn't care when people call his Big Mac obsession crazy. He says he's in love with the burgers, which are the highlights of his days.

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Some thoughts:

1. Do the math. He's averaging almost two per day.
2. Apparently he has written a 205 page book about this. Because of his OCD, he types only using one finger, and double spaces between each word.
3. He's physically fit. (6 foot, 180). Still, I'd love to see an echocardiogram on this guy.
4. Yes, he's in "Super Size Me."

Shrink Think:
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety spectrum disorder characterized by repetitive, and often anxiety provoking thoughts (Obsessions) and repetitive or ritualistic behaviors (Compulsions). The symptoms should be severe enough to cause a disturbance to "normal" functioning, or to cause significant distress to the individual. I have many patients who have described the difficulty with stopping the compulsive behavior as like trying to stifle a sneeze. (Curiously, I have heard the same comment about tics in Tourette's Syndrome). If a compulsive behavior is missed, sometimes the individual will have to perform a secondary behavior to "make up for" the missed compulsion. This is called "undoing." An example is a person who has to count the stairs, and goes back two steps, if he misses one. Classic OCD patterns include counting routines, germ phobias rituals, and checking (locks, doors, etc.)

Some of the more curious OCD patterns I have seen include:

Grooming: washing each body part 33 times. This made for a long morning routine.

Galeophobia: fear of sharks with OCD. This individual would ruminate about sharks, and have specific undoings when hearing the word "shark" or other trigger words, such as "ocean." Taking a bath was out of the question for many years.

Demonic Possession: A young individual would think the name of the devil repetitively, and that the devil would be in inanimate objects of a certain shape or color, if he did not use his undoing. The pattern of requiring specific numbers, lack of extreme severity, (relatively speaking in Psychiatric terms!), overall awareness of this patterns, and positive treatment response to conventional therapy helped differentiate this diagnosis from schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disorder.

Common treatments include medications, such as SSRI's (Prozac type medications), usually at fairly higher dosages, and behavioral therapy. One example of behavioral therapy is systematic desensitization, for example as with germ phobia rituals, desensitizing the individual with dirt on their hands, and increasing the amount of time that he can tolerate it. Many persons with OCD do not seek out treatment, and try, often successfully, to just work around it.

As with many anxiety symptoms, there is a continuum, upon which most of us exist. Simple phobias, preference towards certain patterns, etc. are often all part of the wonderful variety in life: While I am not one who is usually attuned to organization, I have all of my CD's organized alphabetically, with each CD in the case positioned that one can read the title of the CD when it is opened.

Thoughts? Or, care to share your Obsessions and/or Compulsions?

Smelly Science?

A new study from Craig Roberts in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences notes that birth control pills could cause a woman to choose the wrong mate.

From an article byJeanna Bryner at LifeScience:

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are involved in immune response and other functions, and the best mates are those that have different MHC smells than you. The new study reveals, however, that when women are on the pill they prefer guys with matching MHC odors.

MHC genes churn out substances that tell the body whether a cell is a native or an invader. When individuals with different MHC genes mate, their offspring's immune systems can recognize a broader range of foreign cells, making them more fit.

Past studies have suggested couples with dissimilar MHC genes are more satisfied and more likely to be faithful to a mate. And the opposite is also true with matchng-MHC couples showing less satisfaction and more wandering eyes.

"Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems," said lead researcher Stewart Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Newcastle in England, "but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."

Sexy scents

The study involved about 100 women, aged 18 to 35, who chose which of six male body-odor samples they preferred. They were tested at the start of the study when none of the participants were taking contraceptive pills and three months later after 40 of the women had started taking the pill more than two months prior.

For the non-pill users, results didn't show a significant preference for similar or dissimilar MHC odors. When women started taking birth control, their odor preferences changed. These women were much more likely than non-pill users to prefer MHC-similar odors.

"The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors," Roberts said.

____________________________________________________________________

The abstract and link to the journal article is here.

A few thoughts:

1. This explains my wife’s disinterest after having kids!

2. There was no placebo group used in this study, always a red flag in my books, especially when one could have easily been done.

3. There is no data to suggest that scent plays a primary role in choosing a mate in this testing group. Only MHC compatible or incompatible scents were tested, which is a far cry from the actual dating choices. That is, there are way too many other factors involved.

4. On the other hand, a new genetic/MHC compatibility internet dating service could be just around the corner for some enterprising person who reads this blog. eSmell.com anyone? Or perhaps a new cologne “infertile, for Men. By Calvin Klein”

5. If my understanding of genetics is correct, MHC is more compatible with first degree relatives. Don’t give your sister the pill.

6. Craig Roberts is the same researcher who determined that women prefer more "rugged" men during the fertile phases of their menstrual cycle (Abstract here). Then again, I'm not sure how much we can trust research from someone who can't spell "odor" correctly.