STRAIGHT TALK... ABOUT CRIME AND MENTAL ILLNESS

"Biological organs, the brain included, are biochemical laboratories, and mental disorders are medical problems, striking the parts of the brain that control emotion, thought and speech. Society resists this realization, though, the way the church once refused to believe that the earth orbited the sun. For if society were to accept what science has to say about mental illness, it would undermine the rationale for ignoring the biggest public health problem in America."
Tom Siegfried,
in The Dallas Morning News,
April 29, 1996

"There is a valid role for psychiatrists in the criminal justice system-a role that psychiatrists are not performing. That role consists of identifying and, when possible, correcting, the brain disorders of criminal offenders. There's strong evidence that a significant percentage of hard-core criminals suffer from serious brain dysfunctions-and that society could be saved much grief and expense if psychiatry focused on understanding the causes and aiding in the treatment or prevention of such dysfunctions."
Sydney Walker, M.D.,
in A Dose of Sanity, 1996