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Tampa Tribune

January 7, 2004

Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

LETTER
Courts' help is needed

Regarding ``Let Judges Help People Before Tragedy Strikes'' (Our Opinion, Dec. 28):

Lack of insight in mental illness is, so far, a nontreatable symptom of psychosis. Half of all patients with mental illness can't comprehend that they are sick and understandably refuse treatment.

Families of Untreated Mentally Ill Persons supports reforms to the Baker Act implementing court-ordered outpatient treatment and supervision. Only the courts can give our afflicted relatives the possibility to be rescued from their symptoms. Living with uncontrollable distrust, fear, sadness, delusions, voices, etc., is painful.

When the Baker Act was written, we believed that families were somehow responsible for the illnesses and that the sick person was simply in denial. Science and the success of medications in changing inappropriate behaviors have proved that dysfunctions in the frontal lobes alter the modulation of neurotransmitters, causing patients to lose contact with reality.

Biological mental illnesses are complex, treatable, no-fault, genetic, chronic and recurrent brain disorders that don't discriminate.

RACHEL H. DIAZ
Miami