As someone who worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health in the Metro Boston area DMH Police for 40 years,  I read with much interest the news story (“New bill would allow judges to order treatment,” 4/09/23). I feel really bad for the parents in this news story feeling helpless with their adult son’s mental health issues.

What they are going through happens to many parents of adult children who have the right to refuse treatment even if they really need it. In 1975 when state psychiatric facilities instituted a new reform called “deinstitutionalization,” facilities unlocked their in-patient units and people were released to the streets. This new found freedom I believe made life worse. In 1982, the state created a new reform. This was called “community-based care’ except there wasn’t nearly enough care to be found in the community.

I am not too sure that giving judges the power to force somebody into out-patient care is really the answer. Some say it is better than the status quo, but is it really?

Today, the reforms of the ’70s and ’80s have proven to be not nearly the panacea many thought they would be. We see the evidence all around us in the streets of our communities: homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness.

Parents agonize with adult children who have short stays here and short stays there and many times without any real medical continuum.

I worked as a mental health counselor (six years) and 28 years as a DMH police officer. I was there when the reforms came into being. I used to see many patients remain in locked units I thought too long and then I saw what happened when psych care went in the wrong direction too. Too many were discharged with little out there available for them.

I believe involuntary commitment sounds much better than it is. People  have to want to get better.  You can’t force anyone to get better.

\We don’t spend nearly enough on treating the mentally ill. We don’t spend enough on chronic care too. Simply put, we still don’t treat mental illness as a real illness. Until we find real equity between mental and physical illnesses, the problems of  the many who fall through the cracks will only multiply.

Sal Giarratani
East Boston

The Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. For sure, the one amendment that is discussed, debated and criticized is the 2nd Amendment that  protects the right to keep and bear arms. Machine guns were banned in 1986, and it’s time this country bans any gun that is similar. I’m tired of the mass killings throughout our country and representatives we all vote for pointing fingers at each other and saying we got to do something, but that something never happens. It really doesn’t matter what I feel should be done to address this issue because I unfortunately believe our elected officials would listen but do nothing as usual.

Tony Meschini
Scituate