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Bullying Bills Pass IL & NY Houses

The Illinois House of Representatives and New York State Assembly have
passed similar bills calling attention the problem of workplace bullying. In
New York, A 2247 passed with a vote of 142-1 on May 6. In Illinois, HRJ 40
passed 114-0 on April 30. Both bills commission statewide studies of the
problem.

In New York, A 2247 (Mark Schroeder, D-145) directs the Department of Labor
to conduct a study of hostile workplace behavior and to make recommendations
within a year. Comprehensive versions of the Workplace Bullying Institute
(WBI) Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB), which would prevent abuse by employers,
have been introduced in the Assembly (A 5414A) and Senate (S1823A).

In Illinois a $100,000 Task Force to study fiscal and employee health impact
of bullying on private sector companies will be comprised of eight lawmakers
with support from the Department of Human Services. Rep. Arthur Turner (D-9)
was the sponsor of HJR 40 and the prime sponsor of a more comprehensive bill
for public sector employers. HB 374, the WBI HWB, has not advanced in the
House.

The positive House/Assembly votes send both study bills to the respective
Senate chambers. “This progress is encouraging for the anti-bullying
legislative movement. We only began citizen lobbying in 2003,” said WBI
Director Gary Namie. “The historical business lobby mantra of ‘no
regulation’ prevais in all legislatures. The economic meltdown and
subsequent populist outrage may give lawmakers the push to do something for
American workers.”

In 2009, the WBI Legislative Campaign, the national network of State
Coordinators, produced some version of the WBI HWB in 12 states. Since 2003,
16 states have introduced such legislation. Namie states, “We are prepared
for a long-term campaign because domestic violence, civil rights, women’s
rights, and schoolyard bullying were problems decades before lawmakers took
action.”

History of the WBI HWB is found at — workplacebullyinglaw.org and
healthyworkplacebill.org

Visit the New York Healthy Workplace Advocates (WBI-LC Affiliates) website

Visit the Illinois Healthy Workplace Advocates (WBI-LC Affiliates) website

—
Ari Ne’eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
1660 L Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC  20036
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
732.763.5530

————————————————————–
Take a look at our innovative new Public Service Announcement produced with
the Dan Marino Foundation at http://www.nomyths.org

If you like what we do, help support the Autistic Self Advocacy Network by
making a donation at:
https://www.change.org/donation/create?charity_id=211198

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Major depression and alcohol dependence co-occur in individuals and within families at higher rates than expected by chance.

A new study has looked at how mood-related drinking motives may explain the overlapping familial risk for major depression and alcohol dependence. Findings suggest that individuals with strong mood-related drinking motives, especially those based on negative feelings, may be vulnerable to developing both major depression and alcohol dependence.

The results will be published in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

“Although the frequent co-occurrence of alcohol dependence and major depression is widely recognized, the association between the disorders works differently for different people,” explained Kelly Young-Wolff, whose master’s thesis provided the stimulus for the study. “There are likely multiple mechanisms that result in the disorders co-occurring, for example, having major depression increases the risk to develop alcohol dependence, having alcohol dependence increases the risk to develop major depression; and causal factors – such as genetic risk or social circumstances – also contribute to developing both disorders.”

The association can also differ by gender, added Victor Hesselbrock, professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

“Studies of both clinical and community samples have found that primary depression – depression occurs first, followed by alcoholism – is more typical in females while primary alcoholism – alcoholism followed by depression – is more common among males. Furthermore, while most persons affected with alcoholism do report a lifetime history of significant depressive symptoms, the reverse is not true. Most people with depression do not report long periods of heavy drinking nor do they report significant numbers of lifetime alcohol dependence symptoms,” he said.

“Previous research had shown that individuals with higher than average scores on mood-related drinking scales are at increased risk to develop heavy drinking and alcohol dependence,” added Young-Wolff. “There is also evidence for familial risk factors, such as shared social and environmental or genetic factors, that contribute to overlapping risk for major depression and alcohol dependence, and for AD and mood-related drinking motives. Yet no study had examined whether mood-related drinking motives explain the overlapping familial risk for major depression and alcohol dependence.”

Researchers examined 5,181 individuals (2,928 males, 2253 females), aged 30 and older, drawn from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders, a longitudinal study of psychopathology in two samples of adult twins. Participants completed a clinical interview which assessed lifetime major depression, alcohol dependence, and mood-related drinking motives.

“Our study suggests that the familial factors that underlie mood-related drinking motives are the same factors that contribute to the overlapping familial risk for major depression and alcohol dependence,” said Young-Wolff. “The results are consistent with an indirect role for mood-related drinking motives in risk for depression and alcohol dependence, and suggest that individuals with strong mood-related drinking motives may be vulnerable to developing both major depression and alcohol dependence.

“In short,” he continued, “the findings indicate that the drinking motives for both males and females who are well into the period of risk for both alcohol dependence and for major depressive disorder are similar. However, it should be noted that the findings do not address motives regarding the initiation of drinking behavior in adolescence; the findings apply only to the subjects’ current drinking behavior. Since this was not a longitudinal study that began in adolescence, it cannot be assumed that these subjects’ motives for beginning to drink when they were teenagers were to cope with feelings of depression.”

“We might remember that there are many people with high mood-related drinking motives who do not have a history of major depression or alcohol dependence,” cautioned Carol A. Prescott, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and corresponding author for the study. “We would argue that the occasional use of alcohol to relax or unwind is not necessarily a bad idea. What should be avoided is heavy drinking as a regular coping strategy, since this can lead to other problems and is often a means of avoiding dealing with the issues that are contributing to the negative emotions.”

Both Prescott and Hesselbrock said these findings could help clinicians identify individuals at risk for both major depression and alcohol dependence, with a focus on examining motives for drinking, as well as finding alternative strategies for coping with negative mood states.

“I think it is important that family members understand that there is a real link between drinking and depression,” said Hesselbrock. “While the family member who is drinking may believe that they are doing so to cope with and relieve their symptoms of depression -and there is some pharmacological basis for this – they probably do not realize that their drinking will only prolong and exacerbate the negative feelings. For the person without alcohol dependence, reducing/stopping drinking will help reduce the negative effect/depression. For the person with major depression, stopping drinking will help reduce depression symptoms but not totally relieve the depression. It is a complex picture.”

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Carman Trust, the W.M. Keck, John Templeton, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, and a USC Kellerman Fellowship.

Young-Wolff KC, Kendler KS, Sintov ND, Prescott CA. Mood-Related Drinking Motives Mediate the Familial Association Between Major Depression and Alcohol Dependence. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2009 May; doi:10.1111/j.1530-0277.2009.00978.x   [Abstract]

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Elsevier

An article published in the journal Bioscience Hypotheses suggests that our feelings in our lifetime can affect our children.

Dr Halabe Bucay suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect ‘germ cells’ (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells (epigenetic inheritance), and hence how a child develops.

In his article Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception.

Brain chemicals such as endorphins, and drugs, such as marijuana and heroin are known to have significant effects on sperm and eggs, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them.

“It is well known, of course, that parental behavior affects children, and that the genes that a child gets from its parents help shape that child’s character.” said Dr Halabe Bucay. “My paper suggests a way that the parent’s psychology before conception can actually affect the child’s genes.”

“This is an intriguing idea,” commented Dr William Bains, Editor of Bioscience Hypotheses. “We wanted to publish it to see what other scientists thought, and whether others had data that could support or disprove it. That is what our journal is for, to stimulate debate about new ideas, the more groundbreaking, the better.”

Bucay AH. Endorphins, personality, and inheritance: Establishing the biochemical bases of inheritance. Biosci Hypotheses. 2009;doi:10.1016/j.bihy.2009.03.003 [Abstract]

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Erasing Autism

Scientists are closing in on the genes linked to autism. So why is Ari
Ne’eman so worried?

By Claudia Kalb | NEWSWEEK

Illustration by Brian Cronin for Newsweek

It’s spring in Washington, and Ari Ne’e-man, with his navy suit and leather
brief-case on wheels, is in between his usual flurry of meetings. Ne’eman is
a master networker, a guy you’d think was born in a campaign office and bred
in the halls of the Capitol. He’s fluent in policy-speak and interacts
seamlessly with high-level officials (he’s just had lunch with the acting
vice chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and inquisitive
reporters alike. He’s formal but sociable and has a well-timed sense of
humor. He also has a problem with velvet. I knew this about Ne’eman—he’d
mentioned it when we first started talking more than a year ago—but now, in
a D.C. coffee shop, he gets into the sensory details. His father used to
drive a car that had fuzzy velvet-like cushioning, and it made Ne’eman crazy
to sit in it. “I’d wince because I’d think about how it would feel to get
that under your fingernails,” he says. I think I see him shudder at the
memory.

Ari Ne’eman is 21 years old and has Asperger syndrome, a high-functioning
diag-nosis on the wide-ranging autism spectrum. Ne’eman’s velvet aversion is
triggered somewhere deep in his brain, a brain that he happens to relish. He
doesn’t want anybody to mess with or, God forbid, cure his Asperger’s. It’s
who he is, who he’s always been. It’s why he’s had ob-sessive interests
since toddlerhood. At 2½, he saw a dinosaur skeleton at New York’s American
Museum of Natural History and announced, “That’s a pterodactyl.” From there
he fixated on baseball, reciting players’ names and stats ad nauseam,
whether or not anyone was listening—a behavior experts call perseveration.
Later it was constitutional law. His friend Ben DeMarzo remembers driving
with Ne’eman and two other classmates one high-school weekend. DeMarzo and
the others wanted to listen to music—the Beatles were a favorite—but Ne’eman
had other plans. “Ari made us listen to Supreme Court oral arguments. It was
brutal,” DeMarzo tells me. He was outnumbered—how’d he win? I ask. DeMarzo
laughs. “Ari always wins,” he says.

He certainly puts up a fight. Ne’eman is officially studying political
science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, but he also runs
the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, a nonprofit he founded in 2006, the year
after he graduated from high school. The task he has taken on is daunting
and controversial: he wants to change the way the world views autism. Autism
is not a medical mystery that needs solving, he argues. It’s a disability,
yes, but it’s also a different way of being, and “neurodiversity” should be
accepted by society. Autistic people (he prefers this wording to “people
with autism,” a term many parents use, because he considers the condition
intrinsic to a person’s makeup) must be accommodated in the classroom and
workplace and helped to live independently as adults—and he is pushing to
make this happen for everyone on the spectrum. They should also be listened
to. “We’re having a national conversation about autism without the voices of
people who should be at the center of that conversation,” he says.

Ne’eman’s network has local chapters in 15 states, and he works closely with
organizations like the EEOC and the American Association of People With
Disabilities. Neurodiversity activists see their mission as a fight for
civil rights, and Ne’eman and others are willing to stir un-rest. “Ari’s
very straightforward,” says Lee Grossman, head of the Autism Society of
America, who supports many of Ne’eman’s efforts. “He tells it like it is
from his perspective.” Ne’eman has taken on powerful organizations,
specifically Autism Speaks, the largest science and advocacy group in the
country, be-cause he believes they rely on fearful stereotypes and focus
their research too heavily on what causes autism as opposed to improving
quality of life for autistic people today. Last year he helped stop an edgy
“ransom notes” ad campaign created by New York University’s Child Study
Center to raise awareness about autism. One said, “We have your son” and are
“driving him into a life of complete isolation.” It was signed “Asperger
Syndrome.” Ne’eman was appalled. “There’s a misperception that autism is
some thief in the night that takes a normal child and places an autistic
child in its place,” he says. “That’s not true.”

The autism spectrum itself, however, is a universe with multiple galaxies,
including nonverbal toddlers who bite themselves and college grads who can’t
tell the differ-ence between sarcasm and seriousness. This complexity leads
to passionate and conflicting viewpoints. Not everybody stands behind
Ne’eman, and some adamantly op-pose his views. One major area of contention:
scientific research, which includes the hunt for autism genes.

I knew Ne’eman had a surprising outlook on this and figured he’d have
something to say about the recent news that scientists have found common
gene variants that may account for up to 15 percent of all autism cases.
This is big in a disorder that varies so enormously from one individual to
the next. Environmental factors also play a role, but if scientists can test
for specific genes—most of which have yet to be discovered—they may be able
to intervene much sooner to help kids. One day they might even find a cure.
This is exciting for parents who want to understand the roots of the
disorder. Therapies—some helpful, some shams—vie for their attention and
their pocketbooks, and they’d welcome better, more targeted treatments. But
the new genetic advances concern Ne’eman. He doesn’t believe autism can be,
or should be, cured. His ultimate fear is this: a prenatal test for autism,
leading to “eugenic elimination.” If a test is developed one day, it will be
used, he says. And that means people like him might cease to exist.

When I press Ne’eman on genetic research—doesn’t it have some merit?—he says
he doesn’t oppose it outright, but he believes scientists must consider the
ethical implications of their work far more carefully. Already couples are
testing embryos for diseases like Huntington’s, then choosing to implant
only the healthy ones. And who can blame them? But autism isn’t a fatal
condition. Should people without the disorder be allowed to judge the
quality of life of someone who has it? “That is a message that the world
doesn’t want us here,” says Ne’eman, “and it devalues our lives.”

The prospect of no more Ari Ne’emans—whether you agree with him or not—is
haunting. Termination of fetuses with Down syndrome is routine today; given
the fear that autism inspires in parents, why wouldn’t it follow? And what
would our world be like without autism? The vast differences among
individuals on the spectrum make the notion even thornier: will parents
start demanding to know whether their fetus will be low- or
high-functioning? But it’s also impossible to ignore the parents who say
they’d do anything to free their children from isolation and pain. Some feel
so hopeless so much of the time, they do wonder in private if their children
would have been better off not born. And who can blame them?

Ne’eman battles a strange kind of image problem: his critics accuse him of
not really being autistic. His mother, Rina, is particularly sensitive about
this. “People who see Ari today have no idea where he’s been,” she says. As
a young child, Ne’eman was verbally precocious but socially challenged. “I
didn’t understand the people around me, and they didn’t understand me,” he
says. He was bullied and ostracized—back then he didn’t look at people; he
flapped his hands and paced incessantly (he still does both today); he
brought newspapers to elementary school as leisure reading. “I think the
word ‘freak’ may have come up,” he says. He was, at one point, segregated
from his peers in a special-ed school. That led to struggles with depression
and anxiety so severe he would pick at his face until it bled. I asked
Ne’eman how he manages all the professional mingling he does today. Small
talk makes him uncomfortable, but he’s learned to play along. Still, none of
it is easy. “You come out of a meeting and you’ve put on a mask, which
involves looking people in the eye, using certain mannerisms, certain
phrases,” he says. “Even if you learn to do it in a very seamless sort of
way, you’re still putting on an act. It’s a very ex-hausting act.”

He remembers being taught in social-skills training that when people are
happy they smile with all their teeth, and when they’re sad they wear
exaggerated frowns. “I was always wondering, ‘Why is everybody around me
neither happy or sad? They don’t have emotions’,” he says. When you’re
autistic, social interaction can be like a foreign language: no matter how
fluent you become, you’re never a native speaker. Katie Miller, a fellow
activist, jokes that “Ari is the only autistic we know whose special
interest and talent lies in networking.” But, she says, “it didn’t come
naturally. He’s learned it the way every-body else learns algebra.” Ne’eman
has a way of taming the stress he feels: he wears a tie because it puts a
soothing pressure on his neck. “It’s a good way of calming my anxiety,” he
says.

One of Ne’eman’s latest efforts is a new public-service announcement called
“No Myths,” which he helped create with the Dan Marino Foundation, a funder
of autism research. In it, Ne’eman appears in a red sweater and tie along
with others on the spectrum, including a man who speaks through a
communication device. “Our futures have not been stolen,” Ne’eman says. “Our
lives are not tragedies.” The message is clear: We stand before you. Don’t
make us go away.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/197813

Sarah Hutcheon

Children entering first grade with signs of depression and anxiety or excessive aggression are at risk of being chronically victimized by their classmates by third grade. That’s the finding of a new longitudinal study that appears in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Victoria, looked at more than 400 Canadian children beginning in the autumn of first grade. The children were asked about their experiences being bullied (such as being hit, pushed, and shoved, or being teased and excluded from play). Their teachers were asked to report on the children’s symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as on their displays of physical aggression. The researchers returned at the end of first, second, and third grades, at which time they asked the children and their teachers to report on the same issues.

Most children (73%) showed few symptoms of depression and anxiety over the three years. But 7 percent of the children showed continuously high levels. The remaining 20 percent showed moderate symptoms at first, but these increased over time. Victimization by depressed and anxious children wasn’t evident until third grade.

Children with more depressed and anxious symptoms in first and second grade were more likely to be victimized by third grade. Surprisingly, children who were more aggressive at the start of first grade also were prone to depression and anxiety by third grade. These children also were more likely to be victimized by their peers, perhaps in retaliation for their own acts of aggression.

“Children’s early mental health problems can set the stage for abuse by their peers,” according to Bonnie J. Leadbeater, professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, who led the study. “Just as some children learn to read with greater difficulty than others and require extra assistance when they begin to lag behind their peers, young children with mental health problems show signs that they cannot manage the complex social world of elementary school. Treating children’s mental health problems may go a long way toward reducing bullying.“

Adriana Bobinchock

Researchers at McLean Hospital, the largest psychiatric affiliate of Harvard Medical School, have identified a protein in the brain that serves as a trigger for the body’s innate fear response. This discovery suggests a new potential target for the development of new medications aimed at treating anxiety, particularly generalized anxiety disorder, a condition that afflicts millions.

In a paper published in the current issue of Cell, Vadim Bolshakov, PhD, director of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at McLean and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues report mice lacking the transient receptor potential channel 5 (TRPC5) gene showed diminished fear levels in response to stimuli that they normally would fear innately, compared to normal mice.

“This is the first demonstration that this protein is implicated in fear-related behaviors,” said lead author Bolshakov. “By identifying this trigger, we now have a greater likelihood of developing medications that will turn off the fear switch in the brain, and therefore significantly reduce anxiety.“

The study is the collaborative effort of Bolshakov’s laboratory and that of David Clapham, MD, PhD, the Aldo R. Castenada Professor of Cardiovascular Research at Children’s Hospital Boston, and professor of Neurobiology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

In the study, the researchers looked at the neurons in the amygdala of mice lacking the TRPC5 gene and discovered that they did not fire as well as those in the brains of normal mice. At the same time, neurons in the same region of the brain of the mice missing the TRPC5 gene were not as sensitive to the neuropeptide cholecystokinine, commonly released in the brain during situations of innate fear or anxiety, explained Bolshakov.

According to Clapham, while the identified protein is found throughout the brain, it is highly concentrated in the amygdala, the region of the brain implicated in emotional responses.

“The amygdalae is where all of our emotions originate from, including learned and innate fear response,” said Clapham. “What we found with our work was that the mice who did not have the TRPC5 protein, no longer showed fear-related behaviors when faced with a situations that would typically cause them anxiety.“

Bolshakov explained that the mice lacking the gene, for example, would show no fear in exploring places where they normally would fear to tread. The mice also were not as fearful of new social interactions with other mice.

“This is the first time this gene has been implicated in anxiety-related behaviors,” he said. “We have learned something at the level of fundamental science, but, at a practical level, it suggests some new potential molecular targets for treatments, some new kinds of treatments.“

“These experiments provide genetic evidence that TRPC5…has an essential function in innate fear,” the paper concludes.

Perhaps a new drug could be developed to block the function of this protein or the pathway through which the protein travels in the brain cells, Bolshakov said.

“This could give us a nice tool with which to treat anxiety,” he added.

Riccio A, Li Y, Moon J, et al. Essential Role for TRPC5 in Amygdala Function and Fear-Related Behavior. Cell 2009 May;doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.03.039   [Abstract]

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• Story Highlights
• GAO report uncovers abuse of techniques used to restrain or discipline children
  
• Some deaths of special-needs kids have been linked to the practices, report says
  
• Investigators: Utah boy with autism left in cubicle for at least two and a half hours
  
• Only five states keep track of incidents; many states have no regulations

The findings are among those expected from a Government Accountability Office report scheduled to be released Tuesday. The report documented serious problems with the way children with disabilities are being treated in public schools, including cases of children being held face-down on the ground.

The GAO report was prepared for the House Education and Labor Committee, which is considering new laws governing what actions teachers can take to rein in disruptive special-needs students.

“I think what we’re going to hear from the GAO is that very often, special-need children are subjected to the policies of seclusion and policies of restraint that have turned out to be lethal in a number of circumstances,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California, the committee’s chairman.

In other cases, children as young as 6 have been locked away “for hours at a time,” Miller said.

“What the GAO is telling us is that that policy is fairly widespread,” he said. “The state regulations about how to handle these incidents don’t exist in about half the states, and in other states you have kind of a patchwork of regulations.”

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that state laws governing the treatment of the more than 6 million children classified as having “special needs” — conditions including autism and Down syndrome — are patchy at best. Teachers and school staff frequently lack training in correct restraint methods, and in some cases, where improper restraints led to injuries, teachers often kept their jobs.

Only five states keep track of incidents where special-needs students are separated or restrained. Parents contacted by CNN commonly said they were not told their child was being disciplined until he or she began to behave badly at home — a sign of trouble at school.

When confronted with complaints, school systems sometimes sought to minimize or deny the allegations, even after public investigations found the charges to be true. And parents told CNN that when they got into a dispute with the teacher, their child was made to suffer as retribution.

Some of the most disturbing reports concerned the use of seclusion rooms. Experts have long recommended that children should only be isolated when they posed an immediate threat to themselves or others. But CNN found that isolation was often used as a punishment by teachers to compel the students to follow instructions.

State investigators in Utah found a teacher left 7-year-old Garrett Peck in an isolation cubicle for at least two and a half hours after the teacher said he told her to “shut up.”

While the boy was in the cubicle, the teacher taunted him by playing his favorite video and telling him what he was missing. His parents, Joshua and Becca Peck, said the child has an attention span of about 10 minutes, and they believe that after the first few minutes, he had no idea why he was in the cubicle.

“It was so sad. We felt it was a form of torture for him but he, being autistic, he had no way to express it,” Joshua Peck said. “He couldn’t tell.”

And Becca Peck said her son had been left in the cubicle with nothing but a magic marker — which he used to scrawl all over himself. When she came to school to pick him up, “He was covered in marker — on his eyelids, on his hair, face, clothes, arms, eyelids — everywhere.”

“I started thinking, ‘What was he thinking?’ Was he thinking, ‘Why is my mom letting this person do this to me? Why am I here? I trust no one now.’ “

In Garrett’s case, like others cited by the GAO, the teacher remains on the job. And what frustrates experts is that efforts to force unruly children to comply don’t actually work.

At one school in Pennsylvania, however, teachers appear to have better results using sharply different methods.

The Centennial School at Lehigh University serves severely emotionally disturbed children that have been passed from school to school, and even from juvenile justice centers. When school director Michael George came to Centennial in 1999, the school had documented more than 1,000 cases of restraint and seclusion that year. After the school revamped its approach, no such incidents were reported.

When they get to Centennial, students can be violent and aggressive. But instead of trying to force a change in behavior, the school teaches the children new skills to get what they need. Children who might be violent because they are desperate to escape an uncomfortable task or environment learn to communicate their discomfort in nonviolent ways.

Children who need to move frequently — a common trait with conditions such as autism — are permitted to do so, then re-directed to the task at hand. Staff are forbidden from saying anything negative about the children, parents or other teachers, even among themselves.

And when a child acts violently, the staff is trained to step aside, rather than immediately attempt a potentially dangerous restraint. On a recent visit to the school, all students appeared to be calm and receptive to teachers.

The school’s philosophy can be summed up in a question George likes to ask teachers interviewing for jobs there: Which teacher you remember most from your own childhood?

“No one ever mentions the person who yelled at them, who screamed at them, who told them to write a phrase a hundred times, who slammed them into closets, who was abrupt, who made them feel stupid. No one ever mentions those people,” said George.

“Our job is to teach. Sometimes the children we are teaching here present extraordinary challenges; it can be very, very difficult. But that’s the job we chose to do.”

Source:   http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/18/siu.schools.abuse/index.html

Related:

• The Coalition for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports … Abuse
• USA Today: Restraint can dispirit and hurt special-ed students

GAO in 2007 investigated similar allegations in residential treatment facilities.

Often in schools, investigators found, teachers aren’t fully trained in the techniques. Only seven states even require training, and 19 have no laws or regulations on restraint or seclusion in school.

• USA Today: GAO: Schools restrain, confine disabled children

A new report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, also out today, finds “widespread” allegations of abuse involving the practices in schools — even when students aren’t physically aggressive or dangerous to themselves or others.

• Hearing About Restraints and Seclusion Today

Today at 10am (EDT) is a live webcast of hearings on the “abusive and deadly use of seclusion and restraint …

• Disability News | PatriciaEBauer.com

Records reveal more abuse at Texas institution – ‘Fight club’ abuse apparently was not an isolated case From the Dallas Morning News: State records say dozens of employees at Texas institutions were fired…

• Mother Records Autistic Child’s Alleged Abuse – 11Alive.com | WXIA
• GAO Report Says Children with Disabilities Abused | Autism Disorder
• GAO Report Says Children with Disabilities Abused « A Time for Change