To the editor:

I just read that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has cut $7 million from the state mental health budget. This comes at a time when mental health in the state of Kansas is bankrupt.

Local mental health agencies are underfunded. Without the dedicated professionals working for less than adequate pay, these agencies would fold. The state hospital system is a joke. Many of the severe and persistent mentally ill patients go to the hospital and are sent back three days later with a pocket full of pills and nowhere to live.

Most of them end up in our homeless shelters, the Douglas County Jail or state prison. If you want to talk to the experts on inpatient care for the mentally ill, talk to Undersheriff Massey and his officers. Our local correctional facility is doing the best it can with limited resources, but jails and prisons are not designed to be the primary care facility for our mentally ill residents.

When did we lose our social values? When did we stop believing that we should care for the least of these? Forty years ago the Kansas mental health system was the model used throughout the nation. Today we are a pathetic, primitive joke.

E. Kent Hayes,

Lawrence