Thank you, Mr Florez, for this thoughtful and much-needed column.

Mr Florez, you are right on. I wholeheartedly agree. Thanks for speaking up about this--it is greatly needed to bring this to the attention of all. Thank you.

How can we abandon the mentally ill? 75% of Americans have some mental issues, and just about every other person I talk to is either on antidepressants or Bipolar or some other mental issue.

I recently read that "the US is the worst industrialized country in the world to have a mental illness". The mentally ill are the people who are abandoned by family, friends, churches and society. I just cringe when I hear about the beds at the state hospital being closed or that 70% of the budget cuts for human services are coming out of Mental Health. Do we think that if we ignore the chronic mentally ill that they will go away? They go to jails and prisons, which is much more costly. I appreciate Mr. Florez for writing this article and bringing our attention to the problem.

I believe we are just more able to and more WILLING to diagnose a mental illness in someone else.

Just look howe every behavior is now consider be to some degree, (no matter how small) related of some kind of mental illness.

My oldest child, now 11, has Asperger's, major depression with a histroy of psychosis, ADHD, phobias, anxiety, ODD, etc. It is a heartbreaking reality for my family that my son will never grow up, get married and move away. He would be doing much better than he is now, except that we can't get decent care for him. There are almost no services in the St. George area. We got permission from our insurance company (we have 2 major medical insurances) to receive services at Southwest Behavior Health Center. Then we were told we couldn't come because of budget cuts and because we have the audacity to have insurance. Now we have nothing. My son was hospitalized 1 year ago for being suicidal. And we are on our own for care. Now that he has been diagnosed with Asperger's our insurances are refusing to pay because autism spectrum disorders are not covered. Even though we work, we have to try to get him on medicaid - but that program is being cut, too. Why do we have to make the state pay for his care when we have 2 insurances? It's all a money game.