Don't use pejoratives to describe mentally ill
Published:Sunday | June 3, 2018 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
With regard to the story titled 'Manhunt on for mentally challenged man' (Gleaner, June 2, 2018), can you please modernise the terms that you use in your newspaper?
For example, you refer to people who are suffering from a mental illness as persons of "unsound mind" or who are "mentally challenged". Those are such archaic terms.
Please make reference to the fact that a person is 'mentally ill' so that people do not go around murdering them, but will understand that they are suffering from a sickness.
Maybe you could devote a column to bring awareness to mental illness because people are not being protected in the Jamaican society. Vigilante justice, in all forms, is barbaric and is also something that needs to be completely eradicated in Jamaica.
Anybody who takes it upon themselves to kill someone because he or she is mentally ill should get some serious prison time.
ANN-MARIE WILLIAMS