[ OUR OPINION ]
THE horrid attack on three joggers along the Ala Wai, resulting in the drowning death of a cherished former colleague at the Star-Bulletin, should direct public attention to the complex and difficult problem of dealing with mental illness. The community-based safety nets that were created after the mentally ill began being released from institutional care 35 years ago are flawed, and a nationwide effort is needed to mend them. Ala Wai attack
reveals problems
treating mentally ill
THE ISSUE A man with a history of mental illness allegedly killed a man and assaulted two women along the canal.
Cline Kahue, charged with murdering retired Star-Bulletin freelance sports writer Jack Wyatt and the assault of two women, has suffered from mental illness for many years. Janet Kahue, describing her son as violent and schizophrenic, obtained a restraining order against him in 1995. He was convicted of assault the following year and acquitted -- by reason of insanity -- of four more assaults occurring in 1997. He had been involuntarily committed to the psychiatric ward at Queen's Medical Center for 90 days.
The Council of State Governments this month submitted a 432-page report to the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining how law enforcement and mental-health providers have been overwhelmed by the alarming rate at which the mentally ill are falling through cracks in the system. More than 16 percent of the nation's 2 million prison or jail inmates have a mental illness.
"There are far too many stories, in every jurisdiction I have talked to about this, in which the person with mental illness is injured or killed or that person lashes out at an officer or bystander," Gary Margolis, the police chief for the University of Vermont, told the committee. "And too often, police had been there before, had a previous contact with the individual or known of the problem, but the underlying mental-health issues were never fully addressed."
Dr. Thomas Hester, the new chief of the state Adult Mental Health Division, says Hawaii is developing a plan to expand and strengthen services for people discharged from the State Hospital at Kaneohe. Mobile crisis teams, recommended in the national report to be called upon once the scene of an incident has been secured by police, are in operation on Oahu. Hester says Hawaii particularly needs to improve services for people with symptoms of both mental illness and substance abuse.
Similar innovative approaches are being taken across the country, often tailored to fit the area, but states and counties are strapped to provide adequate resources and need increased federal assistance.
Authors of the national report call for greater collaboration between criminal justice and health and human-service agencies. However, they emphasize that mentally ill offenders should be given treatment rather than incarceration. Jail only adds to and exacerbates their trauma, assuring the continuation of the revolving door and creating the potential for other tragedies such as that which occurred along the banks of the Ala Wai.
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[IN APPRECIATION]
Wyatt led
an unfettered life
"Hail to thee, blythe spirit!"
Jack Wyatt: Free spirit refused to be tethered to modern life's conveniences
The Star-Bulletin's longtime free-lance sports writer Jack Wyatt would probably be amused to be memorialized in those words of English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but that phrase came to mind this week when his violent death generated Wyatt anecdotes.
He truly seemed free as a bird, as unencumbered by mortgage, possessions, commitments, even work-shift hours, as he was in dress. He'd pass through the newsroom in tank top, running shorts and shoes but no socks, to deliver his boating column or a running or biking story -- and often some cynical commentary on office politics.
A former sports editor said he never knew where to find Wyatt at a phone number or address, but if he'd committed to do a story, it always was delivered.
Another staffer knew that Wyatt didn't carry cash as he made his way around town on foot but he had a cache outside a supermarket should he need to shop.
He may have slowed from a run to a walk, but he seemed liberated from the baggage of life. I envied him.
--Mary Adamski
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, Editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, Assistant Editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, Assistant Editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comMary Poole, Editorial Page Editor, 529-4790; mpoole@starbulletin.com
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