Letters to the Editor

Letter: Society does mentally ill an injustice

It is a disturbing notion that the only foreseeable solution for those with mental illness is jail; which is apparently turning into the socially accepted paradigm. Mental illness is a widely uncharted landscape of the human psyche and therefore frightening. Eagerly packaged with an array of labels (i.e., schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, etc.), we hope to beat this societal ghost into submission. But perhaps this is a matter that goes deeper than we would like. Intent on immediate fixes, we settle for pills and prisons. Still, the daily ritual of ingesting words of shootings and suicides along with breakfast continues. Maybe we're indifferent. Going numb is comfortable … enough. For now. "If I can't see it, it's not real, right?" … that's the principle with ghosts. But we're positioning ourselves for mediocrity by denying ourselves all of the facets of our humanity. Even the ugly parts. I ask readers to meditate on the matter of society's relation to the individual — the large to small and vice versa. Remembering it is a group effort.

— Brianna Hutchison

Seward

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