Dear Adam Lanza's Mother

A Hallway Photograph taken from the Book, Asylum (amazon link below)

A mom wrote a beautiful perspective on Mental Illness as a result of the CT School Massacre. She titled it, I Am Adam Lanza's Mother.


Here is my reply:

Dear Mom,

You do need help and so do all of the other people in our nation who have mental illness or family members suffering.

Once upon a time, America had beautiful places built by rich loving family members (and even churches) for those in the community who became mental ill. (Incidentally, it was at the turn of the 19th century when whole wheat was processed to remove the healthy grain and wheat germ to sell to farm animals and to give humans the pasty, waste product that was even bleached to look appealing. Americas greatest, healthiest, basic food source - real natural whole grain bread was turned into unhealthily, powder stripped of all of its nutritional value. Dr. Wise, a chemist/doctor in the early 19th century wrote about the discovery that the white wheat lacked necessary vitamins and was causing people to become mentally ill.... and then came the need for mental homes.)

These homes were simply the best - magnificent gardens and grounds, theatre, art, music, food and well taken care of residents. Matter of fact, the residence themselves did the work and needed limited caretakers. Each worked to his or her best ability and thrived in being productive and expressing themselves in the arts in a safe/protected environment. The residents had dignity!

Things continued this way for a few decades. Details can be read in a beautiful, haunting photographical historical account in the book Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals.

A photograph from the book, Asylum

Then Social Designers began to stir in the late 1920s and 1930s who look for ways to solve societies problems through government's solutions decided that these hospitals needed to be regulated and taken over by State and later Federal funding. The policymakers said it was wrong to make residents work: growing their food in gardens, cooking meals, planning entertainment events, even participating in upkeep of their joint home. They made laws to stop all of this forced labor and to let the mentally ill simply sit all day long.

Not surprisingly, the people in the homes lost a will to life; they didn't see much use in their life. They wilted and became more depressed and exhibited worse and strange behaviors.

Of course, God was soon not allowed in these government run institutions - University educated doctors and legislators knew better how to take care of people than God and His people... even better than the families - clearly Government and social movements who make their own studies to prove their own outcomes provided statistics that their methods were right and their ways were taught as the new wise, updated, latest researched policies and law of the Land. Their standards naturally were to replace God's.

By the 1970s State Institutions were so horrible, corrupt, disgraceful, dull, inhumane places for people to vegetate on chemically produced and government approved medications that people clamored to have these rotten asylums closed. Asylums - a place to rest - became a bad word and the once beautiful estates established by loving families and churches have turned into tombs of their ghastly end. They look more like horror mansions than beautiful residential homes.

And the mentally ill, now have no place to turn... they are living homeless on the streets or end up in prison or drugged to a stupor at home. Progressive society at its best in taking care of citizens according to the proper established standards of University experts and Lifelong politicians who churn out laws to keep themselves and their highly connected 'friends' wealthy by being awarded lush grants, contracts and regulatory boards/agencies. And the big wheel keeps turning,

individual humans... they are a cog in the system... a bump in the road to progress.

We can look back to when times were not like they are today and find the real answers, but that would take humbling, considering that what we have been taught and are teaching is WRONG. Few people can humble themselves. Pride always ruins everything. It is a great evil that causes heartache and sin.

The solutions are known, but few want to listen or believe.