Mental Illness

* Bravo to The Times for its recent insightful series on the broken contract with the mentally ill.

Reform of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act is badly needed and should not be lost in the din of a vocal minority insisting that mentally ill people have the right to make unwise decisions just like the rest of the population. I shudder at the logic of an outspoken client network member telling me my suicidally depressed father was entitled to kill himself if he chose.

This libertarian thinking ignores what recent science has discovered about the damage to the frontal lobe of the brain in mentally ill people that prevents them from realizing they are ill and prevents them from seeing any hope for a better life. Depression is a highly treatable brain disorder when given enough time for appropriate medications to kick in.

Unfortunately, my father was not given that window of time to heal. Prematurely released from the hospital against my mother’s wishes, he was given a license to kill himself--and he did.

I believe we have a moral obligation to give distraught, mentally ill people an opportunity to choose life by first healing the part of their brain that has lost its ability to reason and its ability to hope. Even though many lifesaving medications have been developed during this “Decade of the Brain,” the antiquated Lanterman-Petris-Short laws denied my father adequate time for the physical protection and treatment that would have restored his former vigorous life.

I hope he has not died in vain. I hope our legislators are ready to take the morally courageous route out of the abyss.

SUSAN VINSON

Ventura