(Jan 8. 2013) I am the parent of a 31-year-old son suffering from a serious and persistent mental illness who has been hospitalized 27 times in eight years.
I am stunned every time I read about people in a position to help our seriously mentally ill (SMI) by changing legislation to facilitate getting them the help they need who don't act because of the mistaken belief that we are infringing upon their civil rights.
This is NOT a civil rights issue, it's a medical issue.
Commissioner Rehmer, if your Mother were wandering the streets on a cold winter's night, lost because she was suffering from Alzheimer's, would you just leave her there because it would be a violation of her civil rights to get her into treatment? I think not!
My son, like up to 50 percent of those suffering from an SMI, lacks the capacity to know he is sick. I have had mental health professionals here in Maine, where I live, tell me that my son's right to be psychotic supersedes his right to treatment. So, I am supposed to believe that the fact that he doesn't know he is sick doesn't matter?
I'm supposed to believe that it's acceptable to let him wander the streets barefoot in the snow which, by the way, has happened many times here in Maine.
Only once, did the powers that be whom I had contacted each and every time this happened, see this as a reason to get him help, albeit against his will, because he could not recognize that he was ill.
Read the entire letter from Jeanne Mirisola, whose son has a serious mental illness, to Commissioner Patricia Rehmer, which was published in the CT Mirror.
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