Yes,please- more mental institutions !

  Thank you, Robert Whitcomb , for your very sane column today on a very urgent issue: the need for more and better mental hospitals  in the United States. How many families have been hurt or ruined by our clearly dysfunctional mental health care system ?  You can find a whole shelf- full of books on the failure of de-institutionalization-written by compassionate and competent mental health professionals- in any public library. Alas, some of these books were published three or four decades ago.

            Deep depression is also a form of " madness ". In his popular book on the subject, " Darkness Visible ", William Styron explains how at a certain stage in his illness nothing was more beneficial to him than a long stay in a decent mental institution.

     Above all, the mentally ill have a right to recovery. And they can best recover far removed from the competitive, capitalist- almost Darwinian- " struggle for existence ".

          No doubt I will soon be reading more stories in the newspapers about tragic crackups who " fell through the cracks " of our otherwise outstanding  mental health care system. So much too for the " right of citizens not to be imperiled by crazy people walking around... "

Inexcusable neglect of mentally ill girl

I think I should relate this incident that reflects on our dysfunctional mental health system  while it is still fresh in my mind. Just before 5:00 pm( Monday, May 12 ) the RIPTA BUS 29 stopped at the Kent Hospital bus stop in Warwick. Soon I was hearing hysterical crying . And a woman across from me explained that it was a young female just discharged from the " psycho " ward. " In that condition ? " I asked.  We both agreed that something was wrong here. The disturbed female continued to cry hysterically all the way to the Warwick Mall bus stop - where I last observed her squatting down in the shelter.

            For a moment I wondered if I could get a coherent story from her. But I had to catch the very next bus to Cranston.

              Isn't a young female in this state of mind extremely vulnerable to even more neglect and abuse? Why was she not calmed down before being discharged ? Why was there no protection here ?

           Am I just being an old busy- body ? Our so called mental health professionals should be ashamed of themselves.

Must atheism turn nasty ?

          Letter writer Don Gormley( March 12, " Bullying and Bigotry ) )  perceived a certain mocking tone in Steve Ahlquist's  March 6 Commentary piece( " Bigotry is bigotry, religious or not " ).  I do think that the recently vetoed anti-gay rights bill in Arizona was politically unwise.. Yet   I also feel that this village atheist inspired war on ALL traditional religion borders on the demonic- in the ironic sense. The late ogre-former Trotskyist- Christopher Hitchens set the hateful tone of the New Atheism in his popular book "  God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ". The book is quite obnoxious with chapters titled "  Is Religion Child Abuse "  and " Religion's Corrupt Beginnings ".

        I note that so many new atheists have abandoned the secular religion of millions of common people-socialism - in order to worship at the feet of Wall Street and the war machine Moloch of global capitalism.  Amusing how Ayn Rand can replace the Holy Mother in the hearts of born again atheists.

Pleased by anti-nationalist letter( John St.Lawrence )

I was pleased to read John St. Lawrence's letter ( " Four Families fight over territory " , March 9 , on line ).   It speaks for many patriotic Americans who reject neo-nationalist poison in all its forms. Any belligerent obsession with national identity and ethnic roots is crypto-fascism -in the Ukraine or anywhere else on this small ( doomed ? ) planet.  Every mad mob does not epitomize some innocent form of political idealism. I am reading with revived interest old Bertrand Russell's experiences opposing the madness of the First World War. That war made so many nice sounding words ugly.