At a conference earlier this week on jail diversion programs such as Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), a speaker asked what we call those with mental illness. Take a minute and see what you come up with. One I had never heard was "two sandwiches short of a picnic."

Now, what do we call those with cancer?

Part of this may come down to the debate between Thomas Szasz and E. Fuller Torrey. Szasz argues that mental illness is an illusion. Torrey argues that there is a physiological and neurological component. I think Torrey has the better case, and consider serious mental illness the equivalent of chronic heart disease.

In either case, we house at great taxpayer cost a lot of mentally ill people in jails and prisons where their condition, whatver its cause, does not improve. Mental health needs some consideration in our discussions, besides just questioning the value of parity legislation.