To the editor:

On Aug. 1, the NBC Evening News reported a story on the sentencing of Ariel Castro. Mr. Castro is the person who held the three women hostage for ten years in Cleveland. Brian Williams opened his newscast with the Mr. Castro’s sentencing hearing and stated that Castro was “arguably the face of mental illness, a man described as a monster.”

I am a husband, father, grandfather, brother and good neighbor. I have been mentally ill for 50 years. I claim that I, and millions of other people with mental illness across this nation, are the real faces of mental illness.

Mr. Castro is an extreme aberration. Such news reporting only contributes to the false image people have about the mentally ill. Shame on NBC News!