Personality Disorder

A Philadelphia-area psychiatrist who examined surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead has concluded that she is suffering from a personality disorder marked by impulsive and unpredictable behavior, self-centeredness and paranoia, and that psychiatric treatment probably would not help her. In a report released yesterday, psychiatrist Marshall D. Schechter of Wynnewood recommended "immediate severance" of the relationship between Whitehead and Baby...

A Cheltenham Township securities broker who admitted defrauding banks and scores of clients - including his own parents and other relatives - out of more than $1.3 million was sentenced yesterday to almost four years in prison and ordered to make restitution. In sentencing Warren C. Nachmann, U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner rejected the contention raised by experts called by defense lawyer Stephen Robert La Cheen. They said the 48-year-old certified public accountant and investment broker deserved leniency because an unusual personality disorder made it impossible for Nachmann to resist committing the crimes.

Compassionate government has rained new rights and entitlements so rapidly you may have missed this: You have a right to be an obnoxious jerk on the job. If you are seriously insufferable to colleagues, you have a right not to be fired, and are entitled to have your employer make reasonable accommodations for your "disability. " That is how the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is being construed. An essay in The Public Interest quarterly by G.E. Zuriff, professor of psychology at Wheaton College and a clinical psychologist at MIT, suggests that the ADA, as elaborated by regulations, threatens "to undermine our culture's already fragile sense of personal responsibility.

Drugs took Matthew C. Ploppert from his loving, middle-class family and sent him on the way to a life of crime and murder, a defense psychologist testified yesterday. Ploppert's case was "a kind of tragic story of an individual from a strong family background with middle-class values and mores whose addiction to drugs led to a criminal lifestyle," Jonathan P. Vitriol, a psychologist from Bensalem, told the jury in Superior Court Judge Paul R. Kramer's Mount Holly courtroom.

Kristina C. Burris, a convicted murderer who shot her mother to death and then used her credit cards to pay for a shopping spree and a romantic night out, says she is no longer a threat to anyone. She needs to get out of prison, she says, to get psychiatric counseling for a personality disorder. Burris is serving a state prison sentence of 30 years without parole for the April 19, 1990, death of her mother, Carol Jean Burris, who was 42. Burris was 20 at the time of the killing in her mother's Deptford home.

A psychologist testifying for Jerry Sandusky's defense is expected to present a novel defense soon on behalf of the former football coach: He has a "histrionic personality disorder," characterized by an excessive need for attention, and that condition explains his e-mails and "grooming"-type behavior toward his alleged victims. Sandusky is facing multiple charges involving sexual crimes against children, and as soon as Tuesday, the defense could call a psychologist, arguing that Sandusky suffers from a disorder whose symptoms include exaggerated expressions of emotion.

A psychiatrist who helped establish the professional criteria for diagnosing mental disorders testified yesterday that surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead is not suffering from a personality disorder, as other mental- health experts have asserted. Appearing on behalf of Whitehead at the Baby M trial, Dr. Donald F. Klein testified that Wynnewood psychiatrist Marshall D. Schechter improperly diagnosed Whitehead as having a "mixed personality disorder. " In his diagnosis, prepared for the baby's court-appointed guardian, Schechter said he used the criteria established in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, referred to as DSM- III. Klein, a practicing psychiatrist in New York City and a medical professor at Columbia University, testified yesterday that he had been on the 19-member task force that helped write the manual.

The post-holiday blahs are upon us, a time when studios unleash pictures they didn't consider good enough to release during the pre-Christmas movie rush. In other words, pictures so bad even Hollywood was leery of them. The worst thus far is "Loose Cannons," a movie that draws upon the combined talents of the producer of "Charlie's Angels," the director of "Porky's," and a screenwriter who sharpened his skills churning out scripts for "The Incredible Hulk. " If those were bloodlines, and "Loose Cannons" were a horse, it'd be pulling a carriage past Independence Hall right about now. "Loose Cannons" stars Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd in that most familiar of genre flicks, the cop-buddy movie.

Kristina C. Burris was told yesterday that there would be no reduction in her 30-year prison term for the 1990 murder of her mother. Burris had sought a shorter sentence so she could seek treatment for a personality disorder. But Judge Joseph F. Lisa of Gloucester County Superior Court said that would violate state laws prohibiting resentencing during a minimum mandatory sentence. "I find no merit to this application," Lisa ruled, calling the sentence "fair and reasonable.

A Superior Court judge signed an order yesterday that would allow the testimony of a key defense witness in the murder trial of Luis A. Cruz Jr., who is accused in the 1995 stabbing of a 74-year-old Woolwich grocer. Judge Martin A. Herman said he would allow the defense team to use the testimony of psychiatrist Robert Latimer, who has said that Cruz might suffer from a personality disorder. Latimer's testimony would be used to rebut a Feb. 27, 1996, taped conversation between authorities at the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office and Cruz in which he admitted stabbing Santina Leonardi on Dec. 11, 1995.

You knew it. But now it's official. So now you really, really know. Barbara Walters , 83, since 1961 one of TV's most accomplished reporters, and since 1997 host of ABC's wildly populous The View , which she created, will leave TV journalism in summer 2014. (That leaves doors open for specials, etc.) ABC announced it late Sunday; Babs confirmed it on The View Monday. She stays exec producer. When rumors flew in March, Babs said she'd say when, and she said it. Joy Behar leaves The View in August, and rumors teem that token rightist Elisabeth Hasselbeck may be booted; all hands deny it, as per industry standard.

N EWTOWN, CONN. - The young man responsible Friday morning for what ended up as the second-deadliest school-shooting rampage in U.S. history was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother in a well-to-do section of this New England town, a law-enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation said. Authorities shed no light on the motive for the massacre unleashed by Adam Lanza, 20. Lanza, police said, first killed his mother, Nancy, then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where his mother taught and where he opened fire inside two classrooms, killing 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in corners and closets and trembled helplessly to the sound of shots reverberating through the building.

Over her life, June Sams has been told she has schizophrenia and four mental health disorders: bipolar, post-traumatic stress, major depressive, and personality. The 60-year-old Chester woman's current diagnoses - she thinks these fit - are major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders plus PTSD due to childhood trauma. A doctor told Elisa-Beth Gardner, 51, of Swarthmore, that she had borderline personality disorder (BPD) in 1996. Three months later, she was told she had bipolar disorder.

A psychologist testifying for Jerry Sandusky's defense is expected to present a novel defense soon on behalf of the former football coach: He has a "histrionic personality disorder," characterized by an excessive need for attention, and that condition explains his e-mails and "grooming"-type behavior toward his alleged victims. Sandusky is facing multiple charges involving sexual crimes against children, and as soon as Tuesday, the defense could call a psychologist, arguing that Sandusky suffers from a disorder whose symptoms include exaggerated expressions of emotion.

It was a challenge to get the label rip started Saturday. So many "psychiatric survivors" were milling around outside the Convention Center that it was hard to get them to pick one of the big cards printed with names of mental illnesses. "Who wants a psychotic one?" yelled Faith Rhyne, a North Carolina woman who belongs to MindFreedom International, an Oregon-based group that helped organize the protest outside the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Who wants obsessive-compulsive?"

Christian Hernandez's legal problems began with an argument over religion. They ended Friday in prayer, with his mother on her knees in court, imploring God and a Philadelphia judge to spare her son from life in prison. "Dios mio, Dios mio!" cried Rosaria Fontanez, dropping to her knees at the bar of the court and raising her palms toward the ceiling. "Mi hijo, mi hijo!" But, as Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart explained, there was nothing he could do for her son. In Pennsylvania, a first-degree murder conviction mandates life in prison with no chance of parole.

Concetta Jackson knew exactly what she was doing when she took the infant daughters from the arms of their unsuspecting parents and then turned them over to her boyfriend, pedophile John Jackey Worman, authorities say. Prosecutors said Jackson, who operated a day-care center in her Delaware County home, was the conduit for what they have called the most heinous case involving child pornography they have seen. Yesterday, Jackson was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel to 25 years in prison.

If you like thrillers, then you're familiar with the MacGuffin. It's the element - a package, a necklace, a Maltese falcon, even - that propels the suspense, but in the end proves not be a major plot point, just the bait the filmmakers cast to reel you in. Perfect Stranger is the Egg MacGuffin of whodunits, a cheesy affair that casts so many baited lures that they tangle each other and don't hook you. In this one about a drop-dead gorgeous reporter...

Two-time Booker Prize finalist David Mitchell loves to play with stories. Turn them inside out, accordion them, as if the laws of narrative physics didn't apply. With his latest novel, though, Mitchell takes this approach down to the molecular level. The deck being shuffled this go-around is not just any tale. It's Mitchell's own life. Sitting in a seaside restaurant in this coastal Irish town where he lives with his wife and two children, Mitchell talked about his novel Black Swan Green and why its main character, Jason Taylor, shares so many similarities with himself.

A CONVERSATION you won't hear in the men's locker room: Guy One: "My heart really goes out to this guy John Mason. If Jennifer Willbanks was my fiance, I'd stick with her too. Guy Two: "Yeah bro, I'm feeling that. Ain't love grand. " You'll hear a parakeet reciting the Magna Carta before you'll hear that from the typical male. To most men, John Mason looks like a guy who went berserk and ripped up his get-out-of-jail-free card. That's what they'd say. It's the way men talk about marriage, even some of those in good marriages.