
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 24, 1990                   TAG: 9004240494
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

POOR WORD CHOICE ON MENTAL ILLNESS

YOUR STAFF must have been out to lunch to allow the April 6 Cox News Service story referring to "Crazy People" to slip past. The story said that the movie's lead character was "thrown into an insane asylum." Perhaps the writer was following the mind set of the movie title itself. Whatever the reason, the choice of words was poor.

The term "insane asylum" is archaic and evokes images of the Middle Ages, when mentally ill people were abused, feared and hidden in dungeons, chained to walls to be forgotten and ignored. Thankfully, insane asylums have gone the way of the dinosaur. They have been replaced by the mental hospital where the environment is both therapeutic and supportive to patients and their families.

Thanks to medical science and research into the disease of mental illness, progress is being made in this field. No thanks, however, to those (including the media) who, by their choice of words or actions, unwittingly instill deeper into our social consciousness the stigma attached to mental illness. Many others are working hard to remove the stigma. Mental illness is no laughing matter; it hurts.

MILDRED WILLIS\ ROANOKE

by CNB