Treatments for Mentally Ill

In response to your Aug. 3 editorial, “From Tragedy, New Hope”: We are all dismayed at the level of violence witnessed in the Capitol killings. But your editorial attempts to assuage our fear and anxiety by simplifying this particular incident. Specifically: 1) The violence is perpetrated by “paranoid schizophrenics” who go without medical supervision, and 2) the solution is to “allow doctors to mandate treatment, hospitalizing very ill patients involuntarily or . . . requiring them to take medications as a condition of their freedom.”

One man, Russell E. Weston Jr., diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, shot and killed two officers. He should be tried and sentenced for the crime. This tragedy does not give us the right to judge and confine all people living with mental illness.

I agree with the editorial’s comment that we must provide the resources to “ensure a range of treatment options” for persons with severe mental illness. As long as treatment options are intolerable, too few and/or coercive, individuals will not seek or participate in them. There are proven, highly effective, voluntary treatment models in Los Angeles today. Our focus needs to be on learning about these models and duplicating and expanding them to serve more of the people who need them.

MOLLIE LOWERY

Exec. Dir., LAMP on Skid Row

Los Angeles