The bad, and the good, at state hospitals

Re “Conditions Worsen at Reinvented State Hospital,” Dec. 15

No wonder California has trouble maintaining staff at such mental hospitals as Metropolitan and Atascadero. Under the recovery program, and in accordance with a state Supreme Court ruling, patients with a long history of psychotic behavior can, once they are stabilized, demand and get reductions in (and even eliminations of) their medications. So it’s no surprise when, a few months later, some of them attack themselves, their friends and the staff who try to restrain them. It’s no surprise if staff members who have been threatened or injured decide to leave. Who should be running the asylum?

HOPE F. O’NEILL

Pacific Palisades

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My son, who is 34 and terminally ill with advanced Huntington’s disease, is a patient at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Because the disease presented itself early in his teens, he and I have, unfortunately, acquired a lifelong experience of these kinds of institutions.

In all the public and private institutions my son has been placed -- well over two dozen -- only Metropolitan has provided him with the kind of thoughtful care, professional staff and a clean and safe environment where he can live. The staff is remarkable in its thorough attention to my son’s special needs. If I could have hoped for the best place to have my son spend the last part of his courageous life with a disease that always wins, I could not have made a better find than Metropolitan.

HERBERT E. DREYER

Palm Desert