"After 355 days locked up, he's forging a new life" (March 29) describes a broken mental health system destroyed by years of neglect from a no-new-tax mentality. Policymakers, professionals, patients and families should look to a model of mental health care in Finland that is the best in the world in treating first-episodes of psychosis. The Finnish Open Dialogue was implemented in the 1980s when Finland struggled with high rates of hospitalization and disability outlays. Today that trend has been reversed.

Minnesota needs to take the lead in mental health vision. Imagine outcomes that result in shorter hospital stays; young people able to return to their family, school, job and community, pursuing their dreams and not their nightmares. Let's move forward and treat our fellow citizens with the best system in the world.

Patrick Thibault, Willmar, Minn.

The writer is a mental health nurse.

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Once again, the difficulty in placing patients from the Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center back into community settings has become newsworthy — as it should be. But the simple solution to this chronic problem never seems to reach the table for discussion.

In our current mental health system, the state has to try to convince private vendors, in a very crowded supportive-housing market, to accept patients who may carry huge liability risks or present enormous problems in day-to-day management. Predictably, residential programs are often reluctant to care for these people, even in the rare situations where they have vacancies. Some of us have been advocating for decades for the Department of Human Services to create decent, long-term residential facilities that are under its direct control. We've created wonderful, proven, cost-effective model programs that state administrators have toured (Touchstone's Rising Cedar program is an excellent example). But the DHS has long taken the position that when it comes to mental health, "bricks and mortar" is not an option — meaning that the department will continue to depend on the private vendors to create programs to care for committed mentally ill patients after they've stabilized in the hospital. The ongoing logjam of patients waiting for community placement (at more than $1,000 a day) is going to continue until the DHS has some supportive residential programs of its own that it can transfer people to.

Dr. Kevin Turnquist, Shoreview

The writer is a psychiatrist.

JAMAR CLARK CASE

If we can't eliminate race as a factor, we can't claim justice

Although Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman may have needed to decide not to charge the officers in the Jamar Clark shooting based on the evidence available, it does not demonstrate that justice was served. Several haunting questions remain:

1) If Clark had been a young white man, or an older white man from an affluent area (domestic violence cuts across all races, ages and socioeconomic categories), would he have been approached in a different manner by the police officers?

2) If Clark had been white, would the officers have disregarded the Minneapolis police protocol regarding not restraining someone due to noncompliance?

3) If Clark had been white, would the officers have spent more time trying to talk to him before resorting to taking him down, and would the restraint have happened in a less violent manner?

4) If Clark had been white, would the officer have tried something less lethal than shooting him in the head?

5) If Clark had been white, would he be alive today?

Until we can answer with confidence that race played no role in the factors leading up to the death of Jamar Clark, we cannot say that justice has been served.

Lynn Strauss, Plymouth

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Black Lives Matter is unhappy with the outcome of the investigation of the death of Jamar Clark. There is nothing at this point that will make everyone happy. So let's move on. Why not try to keep the incidences like this from happening in the future? Black Lives Matter could really accomplish something if it would expend its time and energy on improving the lives of young people in the community. It is greatly believed that the education of minorities has fallen by the wayside. Use your organization to change that. Form groups to see that kids get to school. Volunteer in the schools to encourage young people to get a good education. Tutor the kids who need it and give them support. Encourage parents to become involved in the education of their children. Use your organization and individuals to start and supervise after-school programs to keep kids off the streets and out of gangs. Become involved in summer programs that give kids the support they need and help keep their school work up to date. Be involved in stopping the problems that lead to the issues we are seeing now.

Police, please join Black Lives Matter with all these programs. With the positive involvement of the entire community, prevention is much better than reaction.

Pamela Olberg, Minnetonka
FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Today's world isn't right for U.S. intervention — not like before

Fred Hiatt's March 29 commentary "Like it or not, the U.S. must lead the world" was off on so many levels that it is hard to know where to begin. The analogy comparing the U.S. role in the world today to that in postwar Europe and Asia is way off-base. First, World War II ended in the utter defeat of the enemy, with a formalization of the cessation of hostilities and with countries while largely devastated, still intact with borders and leaders and populations ready and eager to build a better world. None of these things exist at a workable level in the Middle East today.

The enemy (or enemies) are largely amorphous (nonstate actors); the leadership that exists is not intent on building democracies, and populations are drawn largely on ethnic lines fraught with hatred of one another. The postwar national boundaries imposed on countries such as Iraq have been problematic from the beginning.

So, I would ask: "How is our involvement in the Middle East now working out for us?" We have spent billions of dollars and have lost thousands of Americans (not to mention so many others) to the proposed ends of building democracy in a region that does not seem to want it — that has no leaders able to work in concert with the U.S. and one another toward a commitment to eradicate the enemies (whoever they are).

President Obama, to his credit, has taken a different path. While some would like to retain a large footprint in the Middle East and send hundreds or thousands of our troops to utilize our massive firepower to kill, maim and destroy infrastructure for our own goals, this has not worked over the terms of previous presidents. Until such time as the situation in the Middle East changes to embrace democracy-building, there is no justification for U.S. involvement to the level argued for by the likes of Mr. Hiatt. Obama's pivot to Asia and other parts of the world reflects the opinion of the vast majority of American citizens and gives much-needed American attention to the rest of the world.

Judy Duffy, White Bear Lake

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Hiatt noted as support for U.S. intervention around the world that American family incomes increased from a median of $27,000 in 1945 to a current median of $62,000. It is worthwhile to note that inflation has far exceeded that. An item that cost $27,000 in 1945 would cost a whopping $355,666 today. Maybe we should consider carefully the value and costs of our world interventions.

Tom Ebacher, Kensington, Minn.