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San Diego Union Tribune

January 20, 2007

Reprinted with permission of the author. Visit the San Diego Union Tribune online.

Letter to the Editor

Untold story Helping those suffering with mental illness

Regarding “Son pleads not guilty in stabbing 'tragedy' ” (Local, Jan. 18):

When are we going to learn that we need more options to help people with severe mental illnesses, not fewer? I am the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit dedicated to removing barriers to treatment of severe mental illnesses. By all accounts, Kai Carpenter's family had been trying for years to get him long-term treatment for schizophrenia. Yet, tools to get real help for the sickest people are minimal.

Inpatient treatment? Good luck. Since the 1960s, California has closed one psychiatric hospital bed after another with the goal of providing community-based care to those who otherwise might have been inpatients.

So, community care? Not for someone who is too sick to make that decision. San Diego County has yet to authorize use of Laura's Law, which would close that loophole by requiring consistent and intensive outpatient psychiatric care for those who are most compromised by psychiatric illness. For participants in one state that widely implements a similar law, violent behavior was reduced 44 percent.

Families like the Carpenters can thus plead for an inpatient bed that doesn't exist or hope for a court to order outpatient commitment that the county has not yet put into place. Sadly, Diane Carpenter's death will likely ensure that her son finally gets some form of treatment in the one place that has been unable to turn away people with severe mental illnesses – prison.

MARY ZDANOWICZ

Arlington, VA.

MORE ON: Laura’s Law | Hospital Closures | Violence