"The Army had a most severe problem," said James L. Long III, chief executive of Wackenhut Services in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. "You literally had thousands of military police, national guardsman and reservists working as gate guards.
"It's an increasingly severe problem," says Walter M. Haney, a senior researcher at Boston College's Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy.
Many of the elderly residents of the East 117th Street building have similarly severe problems, said Peter Santiago, an Acorn organizer.
Many families learn of problems this way, as routine ultrasounds uncover abnormalities like extra digits, club feet or cleft palates that sometimes signal far more severe problems, said Dr. Suzanne Toce, medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and director of a hospice program.
Other symptoms that can indicate a severe problem, she said, include itching, cough, sputum production, shortness of breath, palpitations, chest pain and diarrhea.
"It's almost as though the department and the minister don't acknowledge that mental illness is a severe problem," she said.
Inside penitentiaries, some governments, like El Salvador's, have taken steps like adding security cameras, blocking signals from smuggled cellphones and reducing visiting hours to curtail contraband, but a shortage of well-trained, uncorrupted guards remains a severe problem, officials said.
Even before he came to Russia, Mr. Howard had a severe drinking problem, said Mr. Wise.
"It's easy to say now that construction was done wrong and now we have a severe problem," Mr. Guzzetti said.
"But if we turn the National Health Service – and the clue is in the name, it's designed for this country – if we turn the National Health Service into a global health service, we have a severe problem with resources," he said.
