For Profit-or People?
In regards to Sally Giddens’s article “The Selling of Sanity” [June], I would like to say “bravo” for someone finally stating the truth concerning these for-profit treatment centers and private psychiatric hospitals.
I sat in a counseling session at a local for-profit center with my now ex-husband and listened to the therapist gush about his newly discovered Valium addiction. They recommended extended treatment and told him he desperately needed it and should not go home at the end of his thirty-day stay. He was discharged the next day because his insurance had run out. Treatment centers have little to do with healing and human compassion, but have everything to do with-you guessed it-money!
JANE SMITH
Dallas
I thought Sally Giddens’s article was terrific: pointed yet balanced, and very readable.
KENNETH Z. ALTSHULER, M.D.
PROFESSON AND CHAIRMAN
SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER
Dallas
Sally Giddens has crafted a rather sensational article that was certain to attract your readers; however, her tone, slant, and biases disqualify her work from acceptance as valid health or medical science reporting. The comparison of in-patient psychiatric treatment with the retail meat industry illustrates an alarming lack of research and understand-ing and a disquieting attempt to trivialize the treatment.
Mental illnesses are complex diseases and psychiatric treatments are not readily grasped by those without years of training and experience. “Hospitalization disrupts life,” Giddens writes. It certainly does. The life it disrupts has somehow led to a human being now dangerous to him- or herself or to others or who is unable to function.
“Psych hospitals already had a blank check with generous insurance policies,” Giddens writes. She should have interviewed any random selection of men and women on the street to determine what their actual mental health insurance coverage is compared with their other medical coverage. We know that conservative estimates put the number of America’s children under eighteen in need of mental health services at about eight million {or 12 percent). In fact, what is Giddens’s mental health coverage compared with her physical health benefits?
“Many kids are found well enough to be discharged in three to four weeks, just about the time they run out of benefits,” illustrates how the incorrect presentation of what is perhaps almost correct information can mislead the public. Did it occur to Giddens that hospitals are forced by insufficient insurance coverage to do what they can for a patient within the time limits that patient is covered? Often longer-term treatment is what’s really needed, but-like all major medical interventions-it is out of the reach of almost everyone’s ability to pay by themselves.
Only 25 percent of Americans believe they are well informed about mental illness, and 60 percent believe they need to know more. Let’s give them unbiased information.
ROBERT L. THOMAS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
PRIVATE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
We feel that a disservice has been done to both the community and staff of Charter Hospital in Grapevine through the representation that use of costumed celebrities was a publicity stunt.
We feel this does an injustice to the intent of Charter’s opening, which was to encourage families to visit the facility before we had any patients and to help remove the powerful stigma about psychiatric hospitals that deters individuals from seeking such help when it is needed. We are open about the rationale of our approach and how it helped educate the community, but no one from your magazine consulted us to inquire about that rationale.
GARY L. M ALONE, M. D.
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
RICHARD C. GIBSON, ADMINISTRATOR
CHARTER HOSPITAL
GRAPEVINE
Your article summed up how we want to hide the psychiatric hospital and the problems our young people experience. We hold onto the myth that we can protect our children from abuse, chemical imbalances, trauma, depression, stress, broken homes, economic distress, character disorder, and the list goes on. To face this myth is to face that there is a need for psychiatric hospitals, for-profit or otherwise. We don’t blink an eye when new companies, including medical centers, open their doors with advertising techniques to get our attention that they are there to offer their services. But we want to close our eyes when a psychiatric hospital opens and blast its techniques for making us aware that it too offers a service to us-a service we still want to keep in a dark closet to protect the myth that “all is well and good.”
MARY JANE WALLACE, A. C. & W. -A. C. P.
PLANO
It is unfortunate that Dallas is overbedded and that many of psychiatry’s media campaigns lack professionalism. Nevertheless, “The Selling of Sanity” suggests only the inflammatory adage “let the buyer beware!” It highlights only our blemishes with histrionic and provocative flamboyance.
The article leaves the reader with the impression that psychiatric in-patient care for youth in the Dallas/Fort Worth community resembles at best babysitting and at worst imprisonment executed by greedy physicians and hospitals. This report is a terrible disservice to the troubled people who are often hampered by the stigma of psychiatric care anyway, who are fearful to face the seriousness of their difficulties, and who already struggle with the frightening ambiguities of psychiatry, which for many patients harken back dimly to medieval charlatans and magicians.
Mark J. Blotcky, M. D.
Dallas
Give Him the Night
I’d like to thank you for the excellent rundown on Dallas nightlife (“Nightlife: The Guide,” June]. As a relative newcomer to Big D, this kind of clear, concise info is invaluable for after-work activities. I did notice, however, that you failed to mention perhaps my favorite dance club, the home of “Trash Disco,” Club A.
Richard Head
Dallas
Murphy’s Flaw?
Even though her status as a columnist entitles her to express her opinions, Laura Miller may have compromised her journalistic integrity by documenting with bias issues that affect her husband’s position as a Texas state representative.
In her account of Craig Murphy’s defeat as precinct chairman by Todd Smith [June], she calls Smith a “no name” but fails to mention that Murphy didn’t stay in touch with his precinct while he was its chairman.
She says Murphy lost though he sent a mailer and walked door to door. She doesn’t say that Smith walked the precinct first (forcing Murphy to don his walking shoes in an attempt to keep up) or that Smith sent two mailers.
A younger Craig Murphy, living in Oak Lawn, was known to political insiders as a champion of liberal ideas, but since moving to Oak Cliff, he and his wife Jan have become the paid-for right arm of conservative political candidates seeking liberal and minority support. By contrast, Todd Smith is young, energetic, hard-working, dedicated, uncompensated, and uncompromising. It’s no wonder that he won his race. He may well be state house material.
Mrs. Steve Wolens (alias Laura Miller) would do well to refrain from issues that affect her husband’s state representative district, especially if she won’t tell the whole story.
Glenn Lane
DALLAS
Patriot Games
Glenna Whitley, writing about the tragedy that occurred to the patriot movement [“Inside Dallas,” June], seemed quite callous. Yes, Tom Donahue apparently lost faith, and followed the wrong path. I believe his original motives were pure, however, and that most American Liberty Association members are patriots first and foremost.
The patriot movement should not be compared to the showmanship and zaniness of the wrestling fraternity. Most members are dedicated to Christian ideals and the original concepts of freedom whereby the public servants take office to “serve,” rather than enforce their will.
AL SUGAR
LEWISVILLE
Speaking Freely
I appreciate the “Thumbs Up” that you gave me in your June issue. Regardless of how one feels on the |redistricting] issue, I do think that it is important that ail council members feel free to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech, without threat of recall.
GLENN BOX, CITY COUNCILMAN
DALLAS
Beside Ourselves
We did not read past the first paragraph of Glenna Whitley’s article “Art’s Bad Boy” [July]. When she states. . .”office surrounded on two sides,” I realized the woman cannot be too astute, at least as a writer. “Surround: to encompass on ail sides.” The word explains itself. I cannot trust the artistic opinion of a person who would use the word so incorrectly. Alas, the English language falls into disuse.
JOHN F. HARDISON
RICHARDSON
Ouch. Not only did we defy Webster, but our usage ignored the well-established precedent of Stevie Wtmder: “A child is born in Hard Times, Mississippi/Surrounded by four walls that ain’t so pretty!” (“Living for the City,” 1974). Sorry.
Apoplectic About Eclectic
I thought that I actually might make it through the entire issue of D without that disgusting word “eclectic” jumping up at me. I am sorry to say a caption over an article by Mary Malouf, July 1990, page 93, regarding Cafe America has spoiled the morning. Can your staff publish one issue that does not contain this offensive word? These are not the early days of the first fern bars, and surely some better adjectival words can be found than this old, over-used, over-the-hill one. This egregious qualification will, I promise, not entice me to dine at the Cafe America! Quite the contrary, I’m afraid.
JARED KELLEY, M.D., P.AA.
IRVING
