Another Mainer for Peet

You have had a handful of wonderful Oped pieces over the last year on the subject of the problems in our mental health system — its payment inequities, the inadequate delivery systems, the bureaucratic snafus, and the core issue: gross misunderstanding on the part of so many people about the brain’s functions, the organic basis of many impairments, and our need to treat problems from the neck up in the same manner as other illnesses.

I would like to have thanked earlier writers and now don’t recall their names. But today, I’m sitting down with the page still in front of me to say thanks. Thank you, state Sen. Susan W. Longley, and thank you, Linda H. Grant [BDN, Sept. 24].

The brain is the last human-body frontier of misinformation and plain old ignorance. Even the umbrella term used to define this subject — “the mental health system” — is not accurate. Throughout the history of institutions, unlucky men, women and children have been misdiagnosed and cast aside, to spend the remainder of their lives in our large brick buildings with bars on the windows. The institutions themselves have often added to stigmatizing these persons, making it even harder to fit them into a productive role.

Their conditions often had organic roots — chemical imbalances or damage to brain tissue. Some also had an element of societal and psychological causes, often due to the very ignorance our society displays. More recently, we have advanced our diagnostic capabilities and many more labels exist to define the conditions, just as cardiologists now have more advanced knowledge of the pump within us that keeps our blood circulating. Brain-injured persons, for instance, are a relatively new phenomena in the numbers we now have, since we have only been saving the lives of people with serious brain damage to a much greater degree in the last 15 to 20 years.

Our county sheriff’s roles are made all the harder by the transition stage we are currently in. Jails are becoming one more place to temporarily cope with our “problems.” This shouldn’t be.

Mental Health Commissioner Melodie Peet has a tremendous task in front of her. With too few funds and a Legislature with a long history of burying heads in the manure pile, our state is a challenge to the most capable administrator. Sen. Susan Longley said it well. And Linda Grant reminds us of the multitude of diagnostic challenges our families and friends face. We must get beyond thinking of illnesses and dysfunctions related to the brain as less important or more within our own control than quadruple bypasses. They are equally, if not more, important, for the brain controls the rest of the body.

Let’s let Commissioner Peet do her job in trying to set up a better system. Here’s my “yes” vote for the commissioner.

Patricia I. Felton of Brooks is the author of the book, “Through This Window: Views on Traumatic Brain Injury.”