Schizophrenia

...ba href=/schizophrenia/a/b" over Iraq has left it with no bang for its reconstruction money in that country and is blunt in his assessment that so much of the chaos enveloping Iraq today could have been avoided.American officials who ignored plans for fostering post-war democracy in Iraq must today "look at themselves in the mirror," said LeBlanc, 50, a one-time powerful political player in Ottawa.During his time in Iraq, he worked out of an unmarked Baghdad office building.Most Canadians have never heard of him, but thousands of Iraqis know him.As the country director for the National Democratic Institute, a non-governmental agency, he helped oversee two Iraqi elections and one referendum, groomed homegrown election monitors, helped teach political parties how to get their message out and worked to involve more women in Iraqi politics.He did it all under intense, 24-hour, seven-day security, outrunning a car bomber his first day in the country and speaking anonymously to the world press to protect his personal safety."I believe there is an embryonic seed of democracy in Iraq now," he said yesterday."It needs fertilization.

My concern is that there might be enough there to sustain it over the long term."It could become much more dangerous."LeBlanc now describes Iraq as an "albatross" to the Bush administration and he said, beyond the American president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, no one at the U.S.

State Department is prepared to foster democracy in that country.Without the b...

...ba href=/schizophrenia/a/b and other serious mental health ailments.

Defence attorney Shawn Buckley first recapped how the makers of Empowerplus jumped through numerous hoops trying "every reasonable means" to comply with a regulation that did not fit the nutritional supplement industry.

In fact, Health Canada officials, testified that fully 90% of all so called "natural health products" did not comply with Health Canada regulations requiring a DIN number, not because they "thumbed their noses" at the regulations, but because compliance was impossible.

That's why the law was changed on Jan.

1, 2004, to set up new regulations for natural health products.

Nevertheless, Health Canada later that year retroactively charged Truehope with not having a DIN in 2003, even though that law no longer applied, a clear example of abuse of process, argued Buckley.

Buckley also gave numerous examples of Health Canada officials attempting to "sabotage" Truehope's attempts to comply in other ways.

He also said it was "highly suspicious" that Health Canada tried to hide information from the court, saying it was "undiscoverable" but when the judge ordered the material to be sent, hundreds of pages of the information in question was faxed to the court within the hour.

"It's alarming to me that Health Canada would proceed knowing that their actions would cause deaths and hospitalizations.

This is the kind of bureaucratic behaviour that would shock the community's sense of fair play and decency," said Buckley, p...

...ba href=/schizophrenia/a/b, closed.

The cuts will harm patient care and this is at a time when mental heath services need more investment not less Julie Waldron Warneford and Littlemore hospitals in Oxford were left to pick up the demand for beds, but now those sites are facing the prospect of cuts.

The top three-star rated trust has been asked by local health bosses to make £5.5m of savings partly to bail out the rest of the county's NHS services.

Huge deficit Oxfordshire is expected to finish the financial year over £25m in deficit, most of which is being run up by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the biggest trusts in the country responsible for four hospitals.

Vicky Lovell is proud of her service As well as losing more of its inpatient beds, the mental health trust is also considering plans to shed seven psychiatric consultants and seven junior doctor posts.

This represents nearly a tenth of its clinical staff, although because of a forthcoming merger with a neighbouring trust no-one is likely to be made redundant.

A specialist A&E service for self-harm and suicide patients is also under threat.

The trust has responded by beefing up its community teams with a £1m centre opening up in the north of the county and patients being given 24-hour access to teams of psychiatric nurses, social workers and carers.

Vicky Lovell, a psychiatric nurse who has been helping to redesign the services, said: "For the last few years the push has been towards community services so we were...