Mental Illness

Rhonda Seaton misses the point in her Aug. 6 letter regarding the Mitchell suit. She assumes that Richard Mitchell “allowed his mother to become victim to the streets.” As the daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic mother, I can personally attest to the difficulties in getting someone help when he or she doesn’t want it.

Many parties are complicit in this: state mental health laws, which have made it harder to hold people for evaluation and treatment; the courts that have been hamstrung by such laws; psychiatrists sometimes retained by the mentally ill person, who report findings of a lesser mental condition to the court to keep their clients from an institution which may help them; and the mentally ill person who does not see the need for medication.

After running such a formidable gauntlet of obstacles to getting their loved one help, many families just give up. Not out of lack of love but from sheer exhaustion.

KATHY HARRIS-ZMUDKA

Moreno Valley