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Verdict is not the crime - Refusing to step in to avert tragedy is

While a death sentence would have been worse, Andrea Yates' sentence to life in prison is a travesty. She joins the more than 16% of inmates in the nation's jails and prisons who have a severe mental illness - a situation that results in poor or inadequate treatment and increased rates of victimization and premature death.

This is just the latest in a series of unspeakable horrors that began with Yates' descent into madness. Many want to see her punished for the horrific crimes she committed. Others plead for leniency because she was so sick. But where were they when Yates needed them most - when she was too sick to realize she needed treatment?

Acting to avert tragedy is harder than reacting to a verdict that did not take her illness into account. Averting tragedy is not always politically correct. It is not simple, or easy. It often requires family members to petition the court for intervention, and people who are desperately ill to be treated despite refusing treatment.

An estimated 4.5 million Americans today suffer from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness. The National Advisory Mental Health Council estimates that 40 percent of these individuals, or 1.8 million people, are not receiving treatment on any given day.

Approximately half of those who are not being treated do not understand that they are ill. They suffer from a neurological deficit also found in cerebrovascular accidents (strokes) and with Alzheimer's disease. Such individuals consistently refuse to take medication because they do not believe they are sick. In most cases they will take medication only under some form of assisted treatment.

It is popular to spread the cheerful message that people with mental illnesses are no more dangerous than the general population. It is much harder to qualify that message with the truth - that this is only true of people with severe mental illnesses when they are undergoing treatment. When they are not, studies indicate that the risk of violence increases substantially.

In the past few weeks alone, a man off his medication for schizophrenia shot and killed people in a church in New York, a man with untreated schizophrenia in Washington state was found guilty of murdering coworkers in a delusional rage, and a man in Georgia with untreated schizophrenia attacked a little girl with a hammer.

Treatment embraced voluntarily is always preferred - but in these cases and many others, the disease may not make that possible. That Andrea Yates will live her life confined is not a reason to rejoice. It is time for us to realize that it is just and humane to intervene long before a mother kills her children to save them from Satan - not only for the children, but for the person with the disease.

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