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Local help for the indigent mentally ill is hard to find

Re: Care for the mentally ill falls to jails, Jan. 2.

I would like to thank the St. Petersburg Times and Curtis Krueger for the article concerning the plight of so many of the mentally ill in our communities. This lack of funding for the indigent and homeless mentally ill is a problem not just in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, but all over America.

While looking in a Pinellas phone book for telephone numbers to assist an indigent person with a mental illness, I found just one phone number! Right next to it were 18 phone numbers for Animal Services.

While the importance of animal services is not the argument here, one must admit that an "18 to 1" ratio is an imbalance of great injustice and shame. It makes me angry to think of the cutbacks that are occurring in this already underfunded area.

Something can and should be done to rectify this horrible injustice. We as citizens should all contact our representatives, our senators, our governor and president urging them to properly fund the care and treatment of those mentally ill persons who truly need help.

A cycle of inadequacy

The Jan. 2 article Care for the mentally ill falls to jails confirms that the state is inadequately caring for the mentally ill. What programs we do have are inadequately funded, and the necessary changes are being ignored. Despite population increases, in the past five years there has been a marked reduction in the number of state hospital beds and the elimination of highly supervised community residences.

The Florida Assertive Community Treatment program was initiated to watch over these persons but is not set up to safely care for the 10 to 20 percent of the seriously mentally ill who belong in the dropped high-care beds. Proof of this is shown in the results for 2,800 clients in the FACT program for nine months of 2005: 34 deaths and 420 jailings.

Through the desperate phone calls handled on our local National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline, we also know that the crisis units handling persons deemed to be a danger to themselves or others are discharging clients before they are properly stabilized on the right medications. Thus, the revolving door from one crisis unit to another continues as our major complaint.

Until the state mental health care directors, the Legislature and the general citizenry acknowledge and deal with these problems, our mentally ill will continue to die, continue to be housed in jails and continue to cycle from one hospital bed to another.

An alarming amount of medication

Re: Study counters antidepressant warnings, Jan. 2.

The article states, "Antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States, with almost 200-million prescriptions written a year."

This one statement in itself should sound alarms. Something is very wrong here if so many in our society need to be taking antidepressants. I'm going to take a wild guess here and state that there must be an awful lot of money being made by medicating others.

President is not above the law

Re: Democrats are the real threat, letter, Dec. 30.

The desperate letter writers seeking to excuse the president's illegal domestic spying miss the real issues every time.

The main issue is that the president already has legal authority to initiate domestic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under FISA, the president has 72 hours after initiation of surveillance before he has to obtain a warrant from a secret court set up specifically for this purpose. The question is, with such leeway under the law, why did the president step outside the law?

The writer claims that Democrats are worried about offending the terrorists and says he doesn't "care if President Bush spies on me if he is safeguarding my family." I have news for him. The terrorists won't be offended that the president thinks he's above the law. They'll rejoice, because if the American president is above the law, he is for all intents and purposes a dictator, and American Democracy is in its death throes. That would be a real terrorist victory. Is that how the writer sees his family being safeguarded?

The writer closes by stating that "The real danger is a party that cares more about power than it does this country." Now we're getting somewhere! The real danger is the party headed by a president whose quest for power leads him to believe and act as if he is above the law. The New York Times, Democrats, and many others cooperated to put a stop to Richard Nixon's trashing of the Constitution. We can only hope we have the will to stop George W. Bush from finishing the job.

Another angle to attack Bush

So the left is suddenly worried about government intrusion on the individual, isn't that rich? Apparently, the only thing liberals object to government doing is eavesdropping on potential terror suspects. Telling us what to do with our money, controlling our bodies (helmet and seat belt laws) and interfering with our property and how we raise our children - that isn't as objectionable?

We all know that the people complaining about the spying couldn't care less about it, they just know it is a easy way to stick it to President Bush.

Let's work together

Re: Better uses for research money, letter, Dec. 29.

The letter writer thought it was "a shame to be concentrating so much effort" on AIDS. Perhaps the letter writer needs to have her memory refreshed.

1. Many people contract HIV by means other than sexual transmission.

2. Other sexually transmitted diseases are routinely treated without comment after years of research to discover ways to fight against them.

3. Many of the people who are afflicted with AIDS live in this country. Our countrymen will certainly benefit from such a vaccine, and the vaccine will save millions in the cost of treatment.

Who are we to pass judgment on anyone? I believe there is a higher power who should be the only one to do so. In the meantime, perhaps we all could stop from time to time and remember that we are all on this earth together, and survival would be much easier if we all worked together.

A new addiction

Re: Seduced by Sudoku, Jan. 2.

Just when I had gotten comfortable with my daily "addiction" to the crossword puzzle, jumble and cryptoquote, you have to complicate my life some more by adding the intriguing Sudoku to the puzzle scene. You know my type. We just can't say no to another new challenge. My daughter and I both enjoyed this new teaser. Keep them coming.

[Last modified January 5, 2006, 01:18:19]