Barbara J. Hamby

Stigma

to communicate with all of us what mental illness means to the patients and how it affects their relationships. I have lost contact with her and fear she may have given up on those of us who have no vocabulary to understand what she tried to tell us.

At some level we all know the terrible price we pay for our attitudes about mental illness. Our feeble attempts to control alcohol and drug abuse and the criminal actions that accompany them eat dollars at an alarming rate. Incarceration is expensive and ineffective. Treatment, no matter how expensive, may or may not work. We all pay for our inattention to this problem, either taxes for new jails or increased health insurance premiums for psychological or psychiatric treatment. Yet our homes and streets are still not safe while a part of our population wanders in confusion and terror.

I sincerely hope the generations following us, who have grown up in a more open society than we knew, will turn their eyes and their minds to the problems of mental illness and apply their expertise to workable solutions.