Lack of Help for Mentally Ill

My heart goes out to the family of Victoria Jacobs Madeira, not only for the loss of a beloved member of their family but for the frustrating pain and grief they have endured throughout the years in their attempts to help Madeira.

My own mother narrowly escaped death at the hands of my kid sister whose “voices� told her to kill our mother. From a loving, normal young woman in her 20s, my sister progressively went on to live the hellishly life of the paranoid schizophrenic--diagnosed as such at age 43. For years we exhausted every public and private mental health agency in California to no avail. Even when arrested for some violent behavior, she was immediately dumped back on the street by the courts.

In one brief moment of lucidity, I convinced her to sign herself into Camarillo State Mental Institution. Two weeks later she was allowed to sign herself out. Two years later, knife in hand she approached our mother, screamed “help,� stole my mother’s car and crashed it into a medical building. She lived the rest of her short life in the woods, cut off from all human contact, surrounded by dozens of animals that she so gently cared for.

JoANNE MEREDITH LeBOUVIER

Beverly Hills