A Personal Victory Over Severe Mental Illness

Congratulations to Sandy Banks for highlighting, in her May 6 column, the tragedy that occurs when people with mental illness do not receive treatment. At one time, I was homeless, suicidal and involuntarily treated. That treatment saved my life.

Without effective medication, patients sometimes were strapped down to keep them from hurting themselves or others. What medication that was available did have horrendous side effects. But we do people with mental illness and the general public a disservice when we scare them with stories of the old horrors. New medications have substantially fewer side effects, frequently none at all. In the rare instances that restraint must be used, hospitals have developed procedures to help maintain the dignity of the individual.

I am not cured of my mental illness; each day of my life I will continue to take my medication and need the support of my friends, family and treatment providers. But, with the newer medication and helpful services that are now available, I am working, paying taxes and contributing to my community.

Treatment works, if only you can get it. Assemblywoman Helen Thomson’s (D-Davis) bill is a first step in helping people who are severely disabled toward the health I experience today.

CHUCK SOSEBEE

San Diego

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I am the mother of an adult son with mental illness. I am also a psychiatric social worker employed by a Southern California county department of mental health for the past seven years as a full-time family advocate for family members of individuals with serious and persistent mental illnesses.

I hear stories like Janet Hoover’s nearly every day. The family members of individuals with serious mental illnesses are like family members of a person with any serious illness--they want to help their ill loved one. However, unlike other illnesses (except perhaps Alzheimer’s disease), one of the symptoms experienced by many individuals with serious mental illnesses is anosognosia, the physical inability of a malfunctioning brain to monitor itself. That is, they do not realize that they are ill.

Consequently, if an individual does not believe he or she is ill, the individual does not appreciate the need for treatment and will refuse to seek out treatment voluntarily--in spite of heroic efforts on the part of family members and the mental health system to assist them. Unfortunately, current California statutes permit involuntary treatment only if an individual is either a danger to him/herself/others or gravely disabled. Studies have shown that most individuals with serious mental illnesses are not violent. Thus, we have a situation where a person must be violent to receive treatment.

It is frustrating, and heartbreaking, for me when I have to tell family members that although the mental health system does have services that would assist their ill family member, unless he/she is willing to avail themselves of services or exhibits violent behaviors there is nothing I--or the system--can do to help them.

Many of the family members I am involved with are parents of adults with serious mental illnesses--often elderly and frail. Their emotional, physical and financial resources are frequently limited and they are desperately worried about what will happen to their ill child when they are no longer able to provide care.

This is why I strongly support the legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Helen Thomson (Assembly Bills 1421, 1422, 1424), which will reform our current commitment statutes to more accurately reflect the reality of what we now know about the treatment of serious mental illnesses and provide treatment to those who are so in need of it.

CAMILLE M. CALLAHAN, MSW

Newport Beach