Understanding the Mentally Ill

The column made me weep, not for the author, but for those of us who are “sane,” and do not have the compassion to provide programs, money and medicine for the minority of our citizens who suffer from biological brain disorders.

We have the resources but not the will to prevent countless tragedies by attending to the medical needs of the brain-disordered. Instead of weapons to guard against the enemy without, our tax dollars must be redirected to eradicate the enemy within.

When the organ of thinking, decision-making, and understanding reality is affected by disease, the ill person cannot confront his problem with any kind of attitude or intentional behavior. When one investigates the roots of much social pathology, one finds mental disorder, some of which is organic, much of which is preventable, manageable or treatable.

If President Bush wants a “kinder, gentler” America, he could stop the shrill cries for more prisons and more death sentences and, instead, propose a comprehensive program to identify and care for those who suffer mental illness. Until he does so, both the ill person and the people he lives and moves among will continue to suffer the consequences of our neglect.

JEAN ROSENFELD

Tarzana