Fourteen of the would-be donors were suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or alcohol dependency -- problems known as "Axis 1" disorders to psychologists and psychiatrists, said Mary Ellen Olbrisch, associate professor of psychiatry and surgery at the Richmond institution.

      One person had a personality disorder -- and "Axis 2" disorder; while seven patients had combinations of Axis 1 and Axis 2 disorders, Olbrisch said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Washington.

      "We need to know the mental health of these individuals, "said Deborah Haller, an associate professor of psychiatry, "because a lot of people with these disorders have difficulty in dealing with stressful conditions, and donating part of the liver is quite stressful."

      In the operation, a large inverted Y-shaped incision is made in the abdomen and a portion of the right lobe of the liver -- the larger section of the liver -- is removed and is transplanted into another person whose liver has been destroyed. The usual reason for liver transplantation, Olbrisch said, is Hepatitis C infection and alcohol abuse and often a combination of both.

      The operation to remove the healthy liver from the donor takes about 10 hours; the patient spends about 5 to 7 days in the hospital and then another 4 to 6 weeks recuperating. Olbrisch said the liver regenerates in about a month in the donor -- as well as in the recipient.

      In their study, the Virginia transplant team said that eventually 36 of the first 50 donors-to-be did undergo the procedures, but eight donors were turned down for medical reasons; three were turned down because of combined medical and psychological reasons; two didn't undergo the operation because the recipient became too ill or received a cadaver liver; one donor was turned down by the recipient.

      "In that case, the recipient -- the mother of the donor -- refused because she didn't want to put her daughter who was raising small children through the surgical ordeal," said Sharon Benedict, another researcher on the project. The mother eventually received a cadaver liver.     "No one was rejected solely because of behavioral or psychosocial reasons," Olbrisch said.

      Olbrisch said the success of the living transplantation donor program will give researchers the opportunity to further evaluate the motives and relationships created with such surgeries.

      In other studies presented at the closing sessions of the week-long APA meeting that drew more than 13,000 participants:

      --Researchers at Rutgers University found about 25 percent of women college students with health problems are using herbal medications.

      "They seem to believe that if a medication is natural it has to be safer that prescription medications," said Jennifer Drake, a researcher in health psychology at the New Brunswick, N.J., university.

      She said her study found that only about 12 percent of college men favored herbal medications. She also found that students were more likely to take an herbal medication than the prescription drug if there was uncertainty about the outcome of the treatments. She and colleagues interviewed 318 students.

      --The complete loss of teeth at an early age appears to cause more serious concern about overall health than loss of the teeth in older age, said Elizabeth Welleford, assistant professor of gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University.

      In addition, she said that those who lost teeth at an earlier age -- before age 50 -- also experienced more depression than people who lost all their teeth and required full dental plates after age 70.

      "It appears that older people are more accepting of complete tooth loss than the younger people," she said. The study examined more than 9, 000 people who participated in a national health survey in the 1980s.

      --Apparently what a teacher wears while instructing his class has less to do with motivating students as his fervor in lecturing. Researchers at Emporia (Kan.) State University asked subjects in a study to rate a teacher who was shown in four different videos -- one time dressed formally and teaching with an energetic style; dressed casually and teaching energetically; dressed formally and teaching in a subdued manner or dressed casually and teaching in a subdued manner.