Letter: Behavioral health facility needed here

The proposed Stanwood behavioral health facility is very much needed. I feel that this newspaper is doing a disservice to the community by not covering the story that families know who live with a lack of local mental health resources such as this facility.

There are some 40,000 homeless people in King County, some of whom have mental illness issues, who have collected there because of a whole chain of circumstances, which includes a lack of community-based mental health treatment resources in other counties and other states.

It is certainly a national issue. But the lack of adequate local community mental health care facilities is a vital element. My family dealt with a member who suffered from a lifelong chronic and debilitating mental illness, beginning when they were in high school. In Texas, local communities could not or would not support families with this issue, so people who needed help had to move to the state capitol. There, the city, county and state tried to coordinate funding and various services for this population.

I would have thought Washington was ahead of Texas in sizing up the problem and organizing better local solutions. To not recognize the need is to pretend it doesn’t exist by sending people out of sight and out of mind, to live in the streets, go to jail or just suffer for lack of proper treatment. These are people who, with modern care, could be restored to a productive life. After all, there but for the grace of God, goes each of us.

Stuart Heady

Camano Island