Mental Illness

I regret that you chose to counterbalance your strong Dec. 20 editorial endorsement of the Thomson-Perata bill (“Redefining Mental Illness”) by publishing “Surgeon General’s Report Is Laudable but Misleading” (Commentary, Dec. 20). It is the author of that piece who misleads through his misunderstanding of the relationship between neural processes in the brain and the psychosocial processes involved in development and psychotherapy. A decade and more of focusing on the brain has decidedly not led to “forgetting the human context that shapes the mind.” Neuroscience research has actually strongly confirmed the necessity of studying and, through psychotherapy, implementing psychosocial factors, which are inseparably implicated in alterations of nerve cell connections.

During my tenure as first director of the Los Angeles County Mental Health Department, I pleaded with Assemblyman Frank Lanterman to refrain from weakening the ability of the communities of California to secure proper and humane involuntary care for the seriously mentally ill. Lanterman persisted, contributing to the lamentably high percentage of chronically mentally ill people on the streets. He unfortunately heeded the strident voices of opponents to good psychiatric care. I say thumbs up to Surgeon General David Satcher and to the Thomson-Perata bill.

HARRY R. BRICKMAN MD, PhD

Clinical Professor, Psychiatry

and Biobehavioral Sciences

UCLA School of Medicine