Put Funds Behind Help for Mentally Ill

* Re “A Law to Reclaim Lives,” editorial, April 23: I feel that it is ludicrous for lawmakers to foreclose legislative consideration of long-term care for the mentally ill due to the state’s fiscal crisis. As proven in successful models like the city of Long Beach, programs that provide the essential care and assistance needed by the mentally ill have been shown to reduce costly hospitalizations and needless incarcerations. No one has yet provided a correlation between incarceration and adequately deterring the mentally ill from harming someone or otherwise breaking the law.

I believe that if the moneys are allocated appropriately to programs that will encourage and provide such assistance as housing and therapy, instead of going toward the temporary institutionalization of the mentally ill, the result will help in the redirection and assistance of the mentally ill toward productive lives.

SYLVIA WANG

Torrance

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In response to your editorial on AB 1421, which would amend the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act: I can see how it affects the families. It affected my own family when I was a young girl. My mother was in Patton State Hospital in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. She was schizophrenic and bipolar. My father would take her to the hospital when we were children. In 1972, after the laws changed, she could leave when she chose, and she committed suicide and died on Christmas Eve in 1972 when I was 14 years old. She left five children.

She should have been in the hospital. She might be alive today if the laws had not changed. I want people to be aware that in some cases our relatives are better off getting the treatment they don’t understand they need.

I wonder if my mother would have ended up on the streets like so many others. When the state hospitals closed, where do you think they went? Home? Unfortunately our society stigmatizes these people, and they are treated as subhuman. We need to recognize that this could happen to anyone. You or me, your mother or mine.

BRENDA SCOTT

Hemet