Treatment of the Mentally Ill

I am a psychiatrist with 18 years of experience in private practice and in various inpatient psychiatric settings. I was appalled at the article titled “Where Have All the Crazies Gone? To Prison, It Seems.” Do you think you will help the cause of these sick people by degrading them and calling them “crazies”; and by your example, pandering to people’s fears of emotional illness?

A humane book written by Samuel Tuke in 1813 describes the loving and humane care given the emotionally ill in an institution near York, England, built and run by the Quakers. At the end of the book he says: “What a reflection upon human nature, that the greatest calamity to which it is incident should have been frequently aggravated by those who had the power, and whose duty it was to employ means of mitigation.”

The English language is a powerful tool for good and for harm and must be used very carefully. To use antiquated and derogatory terms to belittle troubled human beings falls far below any ethical standard within the medical profession today, and is certainly out of character with what I know about The Times.

LAURANCE F. JOHNSON MD, Pasadena