Mental

I'm at a loss to understand why a mentally ill person is thought to be better off living under a bridge with a handful of pills rather than in a comfortable mental hospital.

Almost the last of the huge institutions for the mentally ill has been closed and the patients sent to live in homes in the community. Sure, for some of the bewildered it might be okay to live among the ordinary population with an occasional visit from a social worker. But it doesn't take more than a glance at the homeless on the sidewalk to see they don't know what the world is about.

I cannot believe that those mental institutions we used to pass at Smiths Falls or Orillia with their pleasant lawns and trees are some sort of hideous prison where patients sit staring at the walls. Many of these men and women had lived in such institutional environments for dozens of years and a home under a bridge doesn't seem an adequate substitute for a place where they were warm and well-fed.

I guess it's too late now to reconsider returning some of these unstable men and women to a place where they have felt secure among caring staff and even some friends.

But shoving them out the door seems to me to have been a cruel mistake.

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