Letters to the Editor: Forcing mental health treatment isn’t key. Community support is
To the editor: As a retired professional social worker and county behavioral health systems director with more than 50 years of experience across five counties, I support the position taken in the editorial, “Forcing treatment on mentally ill homeless people is a bad idea.”
We all need to recount 1963, when the Community Mental Health Services Act was enacted. This federal legislation provided community-based treatment and services as an alternative to restrictive institutional care in hospitals.
Over the last 50 years I have experienced all the major public policy changes in the delivery of behavioral health services. These efforts work only if they receive support by the entire community.
We must accept that behavioral health issues are truly medical issues, and that individuals must be treated as we do other medical problems in our society. What’s missing is the political will at all levels of government to make these programs effective, and the required community acceptance that makes it a comprehensive system of care.
Allan Rawland, Rancho Cucamonga
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To the editor: The Times’ editorial opposed to forced treatment of mentally ill people is based on a delusion about mental illness.
For many people with mental illness, part of the diagnostic evaluation includes the person’s ability to recognize that they are sick. Many people in crisis fail to recognize that they are suffering from a mental abnormality.
Without forced intervention, this inability to recognize a need for treatment will prevent treatment no matter how well funded or staffed.
The voluntary model fails when faced with a disease that precludes acceptance of the fact that someone is actually sick.
Norman Rodewald, Moorpark
