Health care system fails on mental illness

Dear Editor:

A Mom’s heartbreak (Herald, July 8).

Sam Stuart’s life shows how our mentalhealth care system is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that hospitals for people with mental illness are bad, and that patients would be better off free and active in the community, whether homeless or in supportive housing.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The negative environment of street life inevitably trumps worker care and guidance. Leaving mentally ill patients on the street, as Sam’s grieving mother, Judith, says, is “not doing the right thing.”

Hospitals are needed and fill a crucial role in the safe care of mentally ill patients. William Tate

Victoria