What society needs is help for mental illness

Mr. Richard Kaiser is correct as the headline of his letter to the editor "Fixing family, not poverty, is solution to violent crime" suggested.

To blame this problem on President Johnson's War on Poverty and so-called high birthrate of minority single moms for violent crimes is not accurate. To honestly fix the violent crime problem, you must do something that no one on the Planet Earth wants to do. That is, provide mental health services to everyone rich and poor.

Bipolar disorder and depression are mostly misdiagnosed among physicians as the underlying cause for health problems. If you really care about crime, you must start at the seventh-grade level and up.

Every gun-carrying person should be screened for this and that includes the military. Most often severe cases are a main case of suicide, and people with weapons sometimes harm other people so they can be killed themselves.

Most people with these illnesses do a lot of damage. Blaming minorities as the solution for people problems as listed above is wrong. I have seen mental illness and depression in my family for the last 35 years, so I have had a good look at it. If we start today on doing the right thing, it may take 12 to 15 years to see the results. Let start now.

Floyd Freeman

Hoffman Estates