Time To Tackle Mental Illness Issues

The CBS show "60 Minutes" recently reported on the criminalization of political satire in Egypt, the risk of an asteroid blowing us up, and the fact that jails and prisons are warehousing mentally ill Americans.

We can't do much about Egyptian politics or asteroid apocalypse, but we can do something about treatment of mentally ill persons in our community. Reportedly, mentally ill persons often are sicker when they leave jail than when they entered.

That is surprising only for the qualification of "often" instead of always.

We, in Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas, have a window in which I believe we can improve the quality of life for all of us by tackling this and related problems. Our economy is prosperous and growing. Our population is not yet too large to make the problem insurmountable.

State and federal reforms are needed but the likelihood of that is less than the asteroid apocalypse. How about we help ourselves and maybe develop a model for local action?

I'm sure the courts, social services, charities, hospitals, schools, law enforcement and others deal with facets of this issue. But we need a local commitment by each city and county to be sure "our people" do not fall in the cracks and end up warehoused in prison, which is, of course, just one dimension of the overall problem.

A start would be a task force to study and report on the issue periodically to promote understanding and as a basis for action.

Do we have enough pride in our community? Are we generous enough to bear the burden? Do we care? Do our leaders have the imagination?

Howell Medders

Fayetteville

Commentary on 06/20/2014

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