Skip Bayless’ use of a visit to a psychiatrist’s office in “Schizophrenia? You go figure out these Cubs” (Sports, Aug. 17) as an analogy of the behavior of the Cubs on the baseball field was an insult. Two million or more Americans and their families struggle every day to survive in the face of this debilitating and incurable yet treatable disease.
I have a 37-year-old son, a gifted artist, who has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since he was 17 years old. It has not been easy accepting the fact that my son will never fulfill the promise of his youth. It has been even more difficult for his brothers and sisters to accept that their brother is permanently disabled by a disease that robs him of the ability to live up to his potential.
Articles that stereotype mental illnesses or treat mental diseases lightly make it very difficult for our society to accept the need to address the issues related to mental illness. The first step in helping our society deal openly and honestly with mental illnesses is for so-called wordsmiths to use the appropriate words for the situations they are describing.
