It’s recreation time at a Los Angeles County jail known as the Twin Towers. Nearly a dozen disheveled young men stand docilely as they munch on sandwiches out of brown paper bags. They’re half-naked except for sleeveless, thick, blanket-like restraints wrapped around them like medieval garments. All are chained and handcuffed to shiny metal tables […]

Total deaths from suicide, alcohol, or drugs, what some call “deaths of despair,” increased by 51 percent from 2005 to 2016 in the United States, and drug overdose deaths increased by 16 percent per year between 2014 and 2017. These statistics reflect the well-documented opioid crisis and what some experts have called a national “mental […]

One does not have to go that far back in cinema to find another film besides Jon Avnet’s newly released Three Christs that is based on medical case history. There is, for example, Penny Marshall’s Awakenings (1990), which finds its source in Oliver Sacks’s 1973 account of the application of L-dopa, a then-recently formulated medication, […]

It’s Dec. 29, 1 p.m., and I’m at a hospital in Prince George’s County. The emergency room is packed with people with varying degrees of illnesses. Many have severe colds; others have flu symptoms. Some have broken ribs or fractures and cuts and bruises from domestic violence (and broken hearts). Sadly, some have come here […]

IN AWARDING $3.65 million to the family of a 17-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer responding to a “suicide threat” call, a Loudoun County jury sent a message to authorities. “We would like you to change your training,” said one juror, expressing the belief that there were options — other than immediately […]