LETTERS

Suicide caused by mental illness

Posted

To the Editor:

I just got a call from a parent of a son I know who took his life this past week. Two friends of mine lost children in eight months. Does anyone know why? Mental illness, a disease that is not being addressed appropriately. You don’t see anyone standing strong to get some legislation to work with this disease.

So what do you do? You get diagnosed, you get medicated and you see your counselor once a month.

Does this solve the problem, your family is not educated and you just keep calling 911.

What can they do? I was on the board of NAMI-RI and funding was very low, hands are tied with HIPAA and things can’t get done.

We need elected officials to step up to the plate and appropriate better-funded programs and talk with these families, who deal with this on a daily basis. We need a progressive step program to monitor these patients 24 hours a day in order to keep them and the public safe. This disease is associated with drugs, alcohol, anxiety, depression, violence, crime, and more.

Contact your elected officials and ask them to help. The public needs to better educated to understand mental Illness and the statistics that affect everyone. I speak from a personal experience of a close family member.

Once a person reaches 18 years old the really problems start. They make their own decisions and really are not capable, due to their illness. How do you solve that issue? This affects families every day and there are no laws on the books to monitor these people. So, they remain unstable and their families uneducated, and no one to turn to for answers.

This really is a hidden disease and everyone is affected in society, be careful to look for the signs of mental illness.

Louis Spremulli

Johnston

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