Browse archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995

Published on 11/24/1997 All articles from this issue

Still in search of a solution for the mentally ill

printer friendly version

By Yun Huh

Other Voices

Winter approaches, heralding cold weather. This year, like last year and the year before, approximately 1,000 people will literally freeze to death on the streets of cities like San Francisco and New York, many of them unable to find shelter because of the disabling effects of their mental diseases. The mentally ill, who make up 30-40 percent of the homeless population, receive little or no treatment for their conditions, due to the lack of space in the few available psychiatric centers. It is difficult for potential mental patients to even qualify for treatment because they must first meet certain conditions, such as the stipulation that they must be dangerous to others or themselves.

However, these problems do not exist in other nations which employ the policy of mandatory institutionalization. For example, in the country of Korea, mentally ill people are involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities, which are not always adequate medical centers. Many of them are operated by individuals with government funding and private donations, and lack professional doctors or aides to look after the patients. But even in these simple centers, the patients are provided with food, medication, and homes. Moreover, there are few mental patients roaming the streets of Korea; the mentally ill may be out of sight, but they are not ignored.

How then, can the dilemma of the mentally ill exist in America? In the 1960s, radical civil rights groups attacked institutionalization, claiming that the mentally ill were simply social nonconformists who did not deserve to be committed. Likewise, conservatives opposed the concept of mental illness by condemning the expansion of the insanity defense. California, soon followed by other states, took the first step towards de-institutionalization by passing the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967, which restricted involuntary commitment to mental hospitals and limited the duration of commitment in psychiatric wards.

Unfortunately, although the deviation from institutionalization has resulted in untreated and homeless mental patients, a return to it may not resolve the situation. It is possible that people with only mild symptoms of mental instability may be forcibly committed under this policy, as in the Kenneth Donaldson case, which lasted from 1956 to 1975. Donaldson had suffered from short bouts with mental illness throughout his lifetime, but he had led an otherwise normal family life. He was suddenly arrested in 1956 after a group of people reported him to be insane, and he was detained in a mental ward for 15 years, until the Supreme Court ruled that the states could not violate the freedom of mentally ill people.

The Donaldson case demonstrated that a strict system of mandatory institutionalization can be disadvantageous. On the other hand, allowing mentally ill people to fend for themselves for the past three decades has proven ineffective. The current policy needs reform, not necessarily towards the former course, but rather in a new and innovative direction.

It was our state of California that cast the first stone against the accepted policy 30 years ago, an initiative which helped to bring about changes that have deprived people across the nation of their shelter, treatment, and dignity.

Perhaps Californians can once again help to bring about a revolution, through the creation and support of new legislation that can effectively curtail the predicament of the mentally ill.

Yun Huh, a resident of Los Altos Hills, is a senior attending St. Francis High School in Mountain View. He was in Korea last summer as a volunteer helping mentally ill patients.