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Albuquerque Tribune

Letter to the Editor

Kendra's Law is a moral responsibility

I invite Nancy Koenigsberg ("Kendra's Lies," Insight & Opinion, Sept. 26) and you to spend a night in a house with my brother - an untreated, paranoid schizophrenic.

Try not to cry as you listen to him pound on walls, scream, swear and make threats at some unseen person.

Watch as my mother, who should be enjoying her senior years, has to call the police when it becomes too much for her to take.

Be there when the staff at the psychiatric hospital tells her that, true, her son is psychotic, but he is refusing medication and that's his right - since he doesn't appear to be imminently violent.

Take him home; see how comfortable you feel with the determination that he is not imminently violent.

Watch him sink into complete insanity, tormented by demons that don't exist.

Know that there are drugs that would help him. Also, know that you can't get him those medications, because your government tells you it's his right to be delusional.

My brother has a brain disease, one that makes it impossible for him to choose to take the medication that can relieve his nightmares.

It is absolutely immoral for us not to make the decision for him. If it were not for my family, my brother would be on the streets, starving and in danger.

Of course, we also need much more funding and community assistance for those suffering from mental illness.

No one disputes that the majority of consumers can make their own decisions regarding medication, but there are some mentally ill people who cannot. Kendra's Law is designed to help them.

While certainly I want to protect the police and the community from the few mentally ill people who do become violent, my main interest in getting Kendra's Law passed is so that my brother and other people lost to psychosis can get the help they need.

They deserve medical treatment like every other person with a health problem.

We should be addressing this issue as a health issue, because it is.

Susan Warren

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