Jan. 17, 2001: Our readers write

Treating mental illness
I agree that the Tucson shooting should have been a front-page article.
When is our country going to wake up about treating individuals and families dealing with mental illness? Mental illness costs the lives of many innocent people. A person with mental illness needs treatment. Psychiatrists tell us that untreated mental illness just gets worse. They can become ill enough to justify murder.
Murders by untreated individuals are epidemic in the news. You have mothers and fathers killing their children — recently a son killed his parents — college shootings and many more. Most of them were committed by people with mental illness who were not receiving proper treatment at the time.
Our government created a whole department for our safety called Homeland Security. They are responsible for protecting us from impending danger of terrorists. I don’t know what else they are responsible for. Bartenders have become responsible for what happens to patrons when they are drunk from having to much alcohol. Who is responsible for not treating patients diagnosed with schizophrenia when they refuse treatment knowing they are going to get worse? Our mentally ill suffer from lack of medical care because of refusal to take medication because of delusional or paranoid thinking. Sometimes the problem is being able to afford expensive drugs and treatment costs.
A patient’s right to refuse treatment should be examined because of what we do know about the consequences of not treating mental illness. It gets worse without medication and can cause innocent people injury or death — and cause the ill person to become a criminal.
Treatment works. Treatment costs less, which will take our country’s health care costs down and help our economy plus save lives of untreated victims who are victimizing our country to the point of mass murders. Look at the news. It is epidemic.
Wake up people. Come out of the closet for treatment of the mentally ill. Give mentally ill people a right to have their chemical imbalance taken away for better thinking. Give them a right to a better life for them and their families and a safer place for those who would otherwise be shot or killed by someone with a mental illness.
Lavone McCoy
Rineyville

Headlights
are for safety
This is a plea for drivers to turn on their headlights when it is sunrise, sunset, raining, foggy, snowy, etc. All cars are difficult to see at these times, but especially black, gray, silver or blue, they just blend in with the elements.
It was my understanding that within the last few years the Kentucky Legislature passed a law requiring drivers to turn on their lights when conditions require use of their windshield wipers. Many states have had this law for three or four decades.
It also is important that drivers turn on their lights when the sun is rising or setting behind them. Yes, behind them. To oncoming drivers, who are looking into the sun, objects just disappear into a black hole.
Safety is the reason newer cars are manufactured with lights that come on as soon as the engine is started.
While we are talking about safety; those new style eye-glasses with the wide temples or ear pieces are dangerous. They block peripheral vision, kind of like blinders on a horse. No matter how far one tries to turn his or her head to offset the effect, peripheral vision continues to be seriously limited. Recently, while riding with a friend, who was wearing glasses with that type of frame, she nearly struck a bicyclist and a lady pushing a baby in a stroller. Thankfully I was there to say, “Stop, stop.”
I don’t even want to think about how many injuries have resulted from this decrease in peripheral vision. The thinner the temples the smaller the blind spots.
The lives we save could be our own loved one’s.
lucia beeler
Cecilia