He Sold Away His People’s Heritage. He’s in the Jungle to Get It Back.

He Sold Away His People’s Heritage. He’s in the Jungle to Get It Back.

In the two decades he was active, ending in the late 1990s, Toek Tik, who goes by the nickname Lion, estimates he plundered more than 1,000 artifacts, many of them considered the finest masterpieces of Khmer culture, such as huge sandstone sculptures of deities and their attendants.

So far, he has identified more than 100 as being in the collections of museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Others he has spotted in respected private collections.

His testimony, and that of others who worked for him, has become the centerpiece of a global effort by Cambodia to claw back its fabled heritage as it challenges the museums and collectors who have long defended their acquisitions as fully documented and unquestionably lawful.

Already Cambodian officials have begun to press the Met to return 45 items, in part because of the testimony of Toek Tik, who says he personally excavated most of them. The Met has said it began “proactively” to research its collection independent of the Cambodian request.

Why people with mental illness are at higher risk of COVID

Why people with mental illness are at higher risk of COVID

Enlarge this image toggle caption Andriy Onufriyenko/Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Andriy Onufriyenko/Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images

Even before the federal government’s recent decision last week to authorize COVID boosters all adults, it had already recommended them in October for people with certain high-risk conditions. Along with with illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, that list included mental health conditions.

The decision to prioritize people with psychiatric diagnoses in the early rollout of boosters came after a growing number of studies linked mental health disorders with higher risk of both COVID-19 infection and of serious outcomes.

Last year, researchers analyzed data from five hospitals in the Yale New Haven Health System to see how people with a mental health diagnosis who were hospitalized with COVID-19 fared compared to others.

“What we found was we had a higher level of mortality for those that had a prior psychiatric history,” says psychiatrist Dr. Luming Li, who was working on her Master’s degree at Yale University at the time.

The risk of death from COVID-19 went up by 50% for those with a history of mental illness compared to those with no such history, says Li, who is now the Chief Medical Officer at the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD in Texas.

Another study published last year looked at a nationwide database of electronic health records with information on people who’d tested positive for COVID-19 and those who were hospitalized.

If an individual had a history of a mental disorder, they were more likely to get infected," says study author Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “And if they got infected, then they were more likely to have negative outcomes, such as hospitalization and death.”

There are several things going on that explain this, she says.

For one, mental illnesses change people’s behaviors which can make them less likely to protect themselves from an infection, with measures like social distancing or wearing masks.

Second, people with mental illness tend to have poorer overall health and many chronic health problems, like diabetes, cardiovascular problems, kidney disease.

“It is this very high prevalence of comorbid medical conditions that’s likely to actually be putting them at greater risk for negative outcomes [from COVID-19],” says Volkow.

It’s well known that people with mental illness on average live shorter lives and die of health conditions other than their psychiatric diagnosis.

“They suffer prematurely from chronic illnesses, medical neglect,” says Dr. Ashwin Vasan is the president and CEO of Fountain House, a mental health non-profit.

They are also among the most isolated in society, he says, and that isolation takes an immense toll on their bodies putting them at a higher risk of chronic illnesses.

“There have been study after study showing that it leads to inflammation, immunologic stress, neurodegenerative decline, immunologic impairment, endocrinological impairment,” says Vasan. It’s equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, he notes.

And many medications used to treat mental illnesses, particularly antipsychotics also increase risk of these chronic health problems, says Volkow.

“This has been one of the main challenges that we have with the use of antipsychotics overall, which help control certain symptoms in schizophrenia but are negatively associated with a much higher risk of diabetes and hypertension and metabolic diseases,” she says.

Certainly the risk isn’t the same for all psychiatric diagnoses. It’s higher for people with serious mental illness, than say mild depression. But as Vasan pointed out, mental illness is not a static thing.

“People’s severity of mental illness and impairment can ebb and flow depending on the amount of care and support they’re getting,” he says. “Whether or not you’re in the throes of a crisis or managing your chronic mental illness, we know on balance, at a population health epidemiologic level, that you’re at greater risk.”

There’s also a clear overlap between serious mental illness and homelessness and substance abuse, which are also linked to high risk of infection and severe COVID-19.

“About 40% of our chronically homeless population has serious mental illness and addiction,” says Vasan.

Most of the 13 million people with serious mental illness in the US are on Medicaid, he says, but 40% have no access to care at all.

“This is a systematically marginalized, sicker population that has less access to care and supports,” he says.

For all these reasons, Vasan and other mental health experts were glad to see that CDC prioritized people with mental illness for COVID-19 vaccination, something they say should have happened long before.

But many people with mental illness, especially those with serious mental illness (people with significant impairments in their daily functioning) may not be aware of their own risks, or the new recommendations, says Li.

It’s important for both health care workers and family members to also be aware of the risks of serious COVID-19 faced by people with mental health diagnoses, and help make sure they are vaccinated, says Li.

“It’s going to be a very important first step to make sure that they have their vaccines to start out with and then, second, to be able to get the boosters,” she says.

Jussie Smollett Makes First Red Carpet Appearance in Years Following Alleged Hate Crime Attack

The former Empire actor attended a screening of his new film and directorial debut B-Boy Blues in New York City on Friday evening

Jussie Smollett attends the New York Screening of “B-Boy Blues” at AMC Magic Johnson Harlem on November 19, 2021 in New York City.

Jussie Smollett attends the New York Screening of “B-Boy Blues” at AMC Magic Johnson Harlem on November 19, 2021 in New York City.

Jussie Smollett has returned to the red carpet.

On Friday evening, the 39-year-old actor attended a screening of his new film B-Boy Blues at the AMC Magic Johnson Harlem multiplex in New York City — his first red carpet since his alleged 2019 hate crime attack in Chicago and subsequent legal troubles.

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For the outing, the Empire alum wore a black turtleneck and gray jacket as he smiled and posed for cameras before him.

“Beyond humbled by last night’s screening,” Smollett said on his Instagram Story the following day. “To see all the love for the film is crazy beautiful. More to come while I catch up but to everyone who came out last night with so much love and community … on behalf of everyone @bboybluesthefilm, Thank you. We love y’all. Now to find a home for it so the whole world can see.”

On her Instagram Story, Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, also praised the project — which marks her older brother’s first time directing a film (Jussie previously directed two episodes of Empire as well as several music videos).

Jussie Smollett Returns to Red Carpet After His Alleged Attack Credit: Jussie Smollett/Instagram

“So proud of you @jussiesmollett!!,” the actress, 35, wrote alongside a photo of the siblings from the event. “Congrats on making your feature directorial debut with @bboybluesthefilm! Can’t wait for the world to see the magic you all have created in this film!”

B-Boy Blues, a movie adaption of James Earl Hardy’s best-selling 1994 novel of the same name, was produced through Smollett’s SuperMassive Movies, along with Hardy and others.

The film follows the complicated relationship between Mitchell Crawford, a 27-year-old journalist, and Raheim Rivers, a 21-year-old bike messenger and banjee boy, sometimes known as a B-boy.

Jussie Smollett and Jurnee Smollett-Bell Credit: Leon Bennett/Getty

The pair fall in love after meeting in a gay bar in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1993 but are soon faced with a world of homophobia and violence.

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Hardy’s B-Boy was the first in a series of five additional books that remain a pivotal piece of literature for the LGBTQ+ community.

Smollett’s appearance at the film’s screening came just days before the actor is set to face a jury over the disorderly conduct charges against him surrounding the alleged hate crime he said he was involved in back in 2019.

Lawyers for the actor recently tried to dismiss the case, but a judge denied the motion last month, NBC News reported. The trial is now set to begin on Nov. 29.

Smollett, an openly gay Black actor, was originally indicted in March 2019 with 16 counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false report in Chicago when he claimed two men attacked him on Jan. 29, 2019, while spewing racist and homophobic slurs. He pleaded not guilty to allegations that he lied to police about the incident, which authorities claimed he had staged with two acquaintances to draw attention to himself.