In response to The Sun's recent editorial, "Refusing treatment" (Dec. 11), what disability rights groups omit when they say that "assertive community outpatient services" are better than outpatient civil commitment for the seriously mentally are the following sad and enduring facts.
Assertive outpatient services barely exist and can easily be refused. A third of prisoners are mentally ill and a third of homeless people are. Meanwhile, civil liberties are violated each and every day all across our Land of the Free, and in the case of other brain illnesses or impairments such as Alzheimer's, dementia, intellectual impairment, stroke, brain cancer and autism, these disabilities are themselves legal reason to assist. Other restrictions in place legally, such as HIPAA regulations and legal standards for dangerousness, ensure that a full 40 percent of people with mental illness receive no care of any kind, not just inadequate care but none. And finally, this painful fact is always true — insanity does not choose sanity while insane but sanity very often chooses sanity.
My only son has schizophrenia and when I die, I hope someone violates his rights if needed to keep him in the care we've worked for years to attain. Without outpatient civil commitment laws, there won't be much anyone can do to help him.
Laura Pogliano, Baltimore
The writer is director of Parents for Care.