Disabled People Are People First

To the Editor:

An article in your October 30 issue (“Two’s Company,” The Face of Philanthropy) refers to people like me as both “the mentally ill” and as being “with mental illness.”

The Americans With Disabilities Act considers us as “people with psychiatric disabilities.” The people I work with and represent — even though we have been stigmatized as “mental patients” — prefer the term used in the disabilities act.

Perhaps in the future you could recognize that we are people first and are more than the labels laid upon us.

George Ebert
Coordinator
Mental Patients Liberation Alliance
Syracuse, N.Y.